Customers — If they think you don’t give a crap, they won’t either. Pardon the title and the language, but it’s so true. This came from one of those random, Jonathan-Kelly-drops-a-knowledge-bomb-in-an-early-morning-conversation quotes. Yet I thought it was so good, people needed to hear it. Folks, if your customers think you don’t care, they won’t buy from you. It’s that simple.
The United States has 30.7 million small businesses according to the Small Business Administration at last count in 2019. That means there’s a lot of competition out there. Seth Godin talks about this in the Purple Cow. He says, “In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” How do you keep from being invisible to customers, or potential customers? GIVE A CRAP! Care more about your customers than the other guys. Care more about providing the solution to the problem they have, MORE than your customers even care about the problem itself.
Here’s the thing though: you can’t care about EVERYTHING. There are not enough hours in the day to develop the mental energy to care about everything all of the time. In fact, Mark Manson talks about this in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F$%k. As a business owner, you have to prioritize what is worth your time, energy, money, and any resource you have. Good thing business coach Clay Clark developed his system to tell you EXACTLY what you should care about, because when customers know you care about these things, or your actions show a direct benefit to the customer for caring about these things, it pays off.
Give a Crap About Your Goals
Clay Clark says, “The business exists to serve you”. Define your goals. What are you working for and what is the point of it all if you don’t know your goals? The first step to implementing a plan is to know where the road leads. Know your goals. Commit to them. Be specific about them.
Give a Crap About Your Numbers
I truly can’t stress this enough. Your numbers tell you everything you need to know about your business. It’s not enough to run the business, you have to know your numbers and KNOW if the business is profitable or not. This seems obvious, yet NO business owner wants to take the time to do this. What’s the solution? Hire a business coach who makes you track your numbers. That alone is worth whatever you want it to be.
Give a Crap About the Work You Put in and the Hours you Commit
I’ll quote Clay as a business coach again here, “The business exists to serve you.” Therefore, make sure you define how many hours you’re willing to work ON your business. Once it’s defined, put in the hours and give every ounce of passion you have into every second of those hours.
Give a Crap About the Value You Bring
You must have a unique value proposition to the customer. To follow the theme of this blog post, sometimes it’s unique to care. Just make sure you care more than the other guys. Give away your first service for just $1. Find a charity that matters to you and serves others. Bring value!
Give a Crap About Your Branding
Customers care about branding. You should too. In fact, it shows customers that you care. It’s all in the details. The value of your product or service goes up when customers realize you care enough to brand the thing you say matters so much!
Give a Crap About Your Marketing Strategy
Care about your marketing. Care about your marketing. Care about your marketing. See what I did there? Make sure you have a three-legged marketing stool that shows you care enough to reach your ideal and likely buyer and they are worth finding. Make sure you have three!
Give a Crap About Improving Your Sales
This one should need no explanation. If you follow my previous blog posts, you now know sales is my FAVORITE part of the business. So, you know my opinion on how much your customers should know you care!
Give a Crap About Acquiring New Customers
When I say you should care about acquiring new customers, yes I mean sales and sales from new customers. But I also mean, care enough to find out the numbers and the logistics of getting these new customers. When customers know you care about them and their problem, they will refer you and new ones will come.
Give a Crap About Creating Systems
This. Is. Huge! If you care about offering your product or service to more people, you MUST create systems and checklists to be able to scale your product or service to MORE customers who will soon find out how much you care. The other guys, many of them do not care enough to document their processes. They won’t win and more customers will not come because of this. Systems make the customer experience seamless. Look at Chick-Fil-A for example. Have you been to the drive-thru lately? Need I say more?
Give a Crap About Managing Your Team
This is good. Management is mentorship. Dale Carnegie has a quote I like: “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” These are your employees. Managing them effectively means managing their emotions, and of course back to point #9, creating systems that set them up for success. When your employees care, truly care about the success of the business, customers know that and the customer, the employee, and the business (you) win!
Give a Crap About Your CONSISTENT Schedule
What’s the point if it’s not sustainable? Everything you do in your business must be consistent. Your schedule is the first line of consistency that must be nailed. Determine what a sustainable schedule looks like and follow that calendar off a cliff.
Give a Crap About Employees
You must take the time and put in the effort to hire, inspire, and retain the right people. This is one of, if not the most rewarding and difficult parts of the business. Finding the right people and having the right systems in place to attract them to your organization. Jack Welch has a very good quote on this subject. He says, “If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.” Bottom line, when your employees care, when they truly care about the success of the business, customers know that and the customer, the employee, and the business (you) win!
Give a Crap About Your Accounting
You can’t say you care about your customers if you are going backward. For one, that doesn’t serve you or show customers you care. You can’t serve customers if you’re going bankrupt. Although this may be the most painfully tedious part of business, it’s one of the most important pieces.
Make the effort to care. Care about yourself, care about the business, and care about your customers and employees. Success is simple. Consistency is hard. If you consistently care about your customers and they know it, everybody wins. Make sure your customers know you give a Crap!.
