Discomfort paralyzes us, but as my friend and fellow consultant recently said, growing business is uncomfortable.
The actions required to grow business are inherently uncomfortable.
This is why we don’t ask for testimonials, or referrals. We are uncomfortable doing so.
It is why we are uncomfortable with asking for more business by telling the customer what else they can buy from us. (Your customer is only aware of about 20% of all of what they can buy from you!)
And it’s certainly why we don’t raise prices, or even hold prices when customers ask for discounts. We’re uncomfortable with it.
We’re afraid of losing the business altogether.
That’s what this psychological discomfort is: fear.
So, we don’t ask for testimonials and referrals even though our customers would be happy to give them to us, if only we asked. That’s why we don’t tell our customers about all the different ways we can help them (we don’t want to offend them, or take their time). But they need some of those other things, and they likely already buy them from your competition. In fact, they’d like to buy them from you, but they can’t, because they don’t know about them. And we don’t raise prices because we fear the customer will simply leave us. But they’ve been with you for years (decades?) for a reason. They won’t leave you over a 1-2% price increase. I’ve asked nearly ever client’s customers about this. And, unanimously, they say they wouldn’t leave over a small increase like that.
And so we do the safe work, the comfortable work, the work that doesn’t lead to significant growth. We let our discomfort paralyze us and keep us from doing the growth work.
Thing is, the discomfort is ours, not our customers’. It’s our fear. The customer doesn’t share it. The customer is happy to help us, and even happier to buy more from us.
Get out of your comfort zone and do the bold work that revenue growth demands. You know what to do. It’s time to do it.
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Last week’s Revenue Growth Video looked at the powerful role of beliefs in sales growth.
Want to grow your business? Sell more to existing customers? Infuse your culture with the positivity of your happy customers? Implement a simple but powerful selling system based on your great value as opposed to reducing your prices? Reply to this email or call me at directly 847-459-6322.
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