One of the lessons I work hardest to help my readers (and clients) understand is that there is a tremendous gap between knowing what you need to do and actually doing it.
It's easy to put off doing important work because we tend to feel that once we understand something, we've already done it.
An example I often use to illustrate this came from a marketing conference I was speaking at in 2011.
I watched three sessions where people were debating the best time to send an email - was it Monday at 9:00 am, or Wednesday at 1:07 pm?
Theoretically, everybody in the room knew the importance of having strong, clear messaging, and knew that without that in place, no amount of “optimization” would help them. But when I looked at the emails they were debating so much about, I found that the messaging itself was horrible. The headlines stunk, the body copy was flat, and there was nothing compelling about it.
The people in those rooms were wasting hours trying to optimize send times, when they hadn't spent 10 minutes ensuring their content was of high quality, or if they had anything useful to say.
They somehow thought that since they already knew that it was important to have a strong message, they didn’t need to work on it… That somehow they needed to learn something new, rather than work on what was most important.
Even I'm not immune to this.
A core part of my methodology is "Cleaning the Messy Closet," a concept first introduced in my book Evergreen, and since I thought I had a good handle on it, I let my closet get messy while I was focusing on other areas
Specifically, I'm talking about my website.
Over the years, I'd just kept adding to it, rather than periodically stepping back and making sure that it still conveyed the core value I bring to my clients (and the core values that I try to embody in my life and my work).
I added more and more packages, offerings, products and services, bits of information, and found that I had lost my way.
To that end, over the past month, I've been working to pare away the inessentials, and to ensure that my messaging is crystal clear. You can see the finished product here: http://noahfleming.com
I help my clients do three things really well. Simply, I help my clients:
1) Get more clients.
2) Keep their existing clients.
3) Maximize their revenues.
Are there other benefits? Sure, of course. But 99% of the clients I’ve worked with were all trying to solve at least one or more of these challenges.
I help them do this in only a few ways, like the 1-day sales process™ which can finely tune a broken or in-need-of-improvement sales organization, or full-on consulting projects.
Here's how I original explained the theory of the messy closet.
The Messy Closet Theory:
Imagine that every piece of clothing in your house was dumped unceremoniously into a single closet, with no rhyme or reason.
Every morning before leaving the house, you have to sort through a random collection of the clothing owned by everybody in your home.
Trying to find a specific piece of clothing becomes a ridiculous chore.
On the other hand, a well-organized closet makes it a breeze to find what you're looking for.
The organization of your closet immediately makes it apparent what you have, what you need, and what goes together.
In the end, I was able to reduce my closet by about 90%. You can see the finished product here: http://noahfleming.com
The Messy Closet Theory applies to all areas of your organization and cleaning up once and awhile is essential.
Instead of throwing more stuff in the closet, consider how you can clean things up for your existing clients.
Is the value you bring to clients crystal clear?
Is it incredibly simple for prospects to understand the steps required to engage with you?
What do you need to clean up?
In other areas of your organization ask yourself:
- How can we tidy up and make our customer experience more enjoyable?
- How can we make our website easier to navigate?
- How can we make calling our customer support line a better experience?
- How can we convey our value better?
- How can you add more value without adding more stuff?
Best,
Noah
P.S. We are now booking 1-Day Sales Process™ sessions into 2020. I'm only scheduling a maximum of one of these per month. The best time to do this is right now. Ready to do everything I just mentioned (get more clients, keep existing clients, maximize your revenue?) Well, this is the best place to start. Go here to start the process.