Our house renovations continue.
Yesterday we had a bunch of new windows installed.
You may remember a few weeks back, what started with an unexpected water leak led to some significant repairs, which led to new windows, which led to additional exterior work.
Of course, now that we've seen how good these new windows look, we're considering more windows, and the installers also talked to us about new patio doors.
My friend Matt who renovates homes for a living, calls it "The Unraveling Sweater." He says it's even more true when it's your own place.
You know that favorite wool sweater with the loose piece of yarn? You start pulling it and it continues to unravel – well that's what's happening here.
One project leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another.
A lot of my clients find that the reason their customers do business with them the first time isn't the same reason they do business the 50th time. The real reason is their customers continue to see the benefits of working with them. Over the course of the relationship, they were able to show their customers so many new ways to add value, their customers are buying things they never would have expected (and loving that they can).
What are you doing to make it easy for customers to find all the other value you add?
It's analogous to the house. These are exciting new upgrades! And now that we've seen how awesome this improvement is, we want to keep going.
The challenge for some companies is it's often impossible to get started. It's a lot like our original house renovations. Companies often begin looking in one area and find years of issues they need to repair before making the improvements they initially set out to make.
When it comes to improvements, there are often two schools of thought.
1) If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Or
2) How can we continue to make this better?
The magic lies somewhere in the middle. But the challenge comes from the unexpected events that hamper your efforts.
Many organizations aren't able to do either. They're so caught up in the day-to-day busyness of their organizations it's challenging to make any improvements, even when they know they need to.
Consider a business with a lousy leak similar to my leaky roof. They're leaking customers left, right, and center. The solution for most companies is to simply add more customers instead of fixing the leaks.
This is the classic Leaky Bucket Principle.
Most businesses are like a leaky bucket and yet they focus on adding more water to the bucket instead of fixing the holes.
This leaves most businesses with things like:
- Poor insights on their customers.
- Lousy lifetime customer value.
- Few referrals or word-of-mouth.
- An inability to understand how to maximize customer value.
- Subpar marketing results and more.
So here's the good news which I've been telling my wife. We WERE caught off guard by our original leak even though we had taken the preventative steps to ensure it wasn't an issue, but it happened. Now we can handle anything thrown at us, and we've got a great opportunity to make our dream home even better.
You've NEVER had a better opportunity in the history of your business to make both the strategic and tactical shifts and improvements you need to come out of this pandemic better than you were before.
Your Challenge For This Week:
What steps are you taking?
Where do you need help?
Right now, I'm working very closely with just under half a dozen clients.
We're working on all of these crucially vital areas. Not one of them is asking how to simply add more water to the bucket. They're all asking, "What other upgrades can we make right now during this opportunity?"
What are you waiting for? Pull that thread!
If you want my help, head over to my site, and schedule a call with me. I'd love to show you how I'm working closer than ever with a select group of clients and we're generating fantastic results.
Now's the time to make your house even better.