Over-Servicing Clients In The Way Of Your Business Growth?
The thing is, everything is important in business. Ask any business owner and they’ll tell you how they must do five radically important things all at once:
Fulfilling on client orders/projects/sessions
Invoicing and ensuring payments are made
Business development, lead generation, marketing
Sales calls, proposals and follow ups
Plus that project they’re simultaneously working on
And while there’s never an end in sight of these tasks / areas ever being fully complete (I mean, you wouldn’t want to see the end of having to invoice clients), how you prioritise any given task will always reveal insight into why your business is where it is, and if you maintain this same streak, what the future will likely entail.
From this list above, I can bet if you’re like any other business you spend the most amount of your time on client-oriented tasks, followed by ‘faffing around’ as my UK counterparts would describe, and the remainder of your “left-over” time on the true needle-movers.
If you’d like more clients:
If you’d like to be working with even more clients than you are currently, are you putting business development, lead generation, marketing and sales ahead of your current clients?
This by no means means you lessen your commitment and follow through to your current clients, it just means you switch up the order at which you attend to these tasks / areas and how you prioritise them.
I’ve seen impressive businesses lose out on winning new clients because they delayed sending out proposals by a couple of days - what were they doing instead? They were attending to current client needs.
And yes, you want to keep the clients you have, you want to do your best work by the clients right in front of you, but if your business needs to grow, you need to start doing things differently.
Avoid over-servicing clients when it isn’t required:
We can easily over-service clients when it isn’t needed, noticed or necessary, this can include:
Overextending your availability
Pouring more time into clients beyond the scope
Proactive problem solving beyond your engagement
Excessive communication be it at the clients request or your own
Over-extending and over-servicing your current clients can put a chokehold on your business’ growth, and if your business can’t grow to where you need or want it to, then it’s almost a ticking time bomb until something changes.
Time expands to that which time is given:
A pinnacle of Parkinson's Law, this concept reinforces that if you allocate more time to a task, the task will inevitably take up that entire time, even if it could have been completed more quickly.
Say you had to complete a client report each month, if the pressure was on and you had a template (given you do this task each and every month), this task could be completed in under 30 minutes. I suggest you start challenging yourself to minimise the time you’re giving tasks in your business so you can get back more of that valuable time.
Reallocating your time wisely:
There’s no point freeing up your time if you’re not going to use it wisely, particularly in business. So, if you’re completing your much-loved client-orientated tasks in far less time, and you’re de-prioritising these tasks to second, what should come first are the activities that will grow your business.
Here are a few suggestions (some borrowed from above):
Business development, lead generation, marketing
Sales calls, proposals and follow ups
Client retention, reviews and case studies
If growing your business is your number one priority, then ensure these tasks get your focus and are completed as first priority above and beyond all else.
HINT: don’t make the mistake of getting busy with new clients and throwing your growth activities onto the back-burner. You have to find a way to do both (this is where great systems and a quality team will help you - listen to my podcast “Good Marketing, Good Business” for endless ways to help grow your business right.
→ If you’re a service based business and found this helpful, I invite you to join the waitlist for the Service Business Boardroom, which is a one-of-a-kind business program that helps businesses under $2million in revenue go from scattered and stagnant to profitable and sustainable.
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✋ I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business & marketing consultant and I specialise in helping service based businesses strengthen their sales, enhance their team and better manage their business.
👉 Connect with me on LinkedIn for more content to help you grow your service based business.
