Your Business Wants to Double, Here’s How to Help It

“Once you have demonstrated you can help a company solve problems, they never run out of problems they want you to help them solve.”

You have a great business, and you know it. You know that you could double it if only…and then the list starts:

• We had the right people
• We could get in the right meetings with the right buyers
• The economy would improve

It’s a lot longer list than this. I know. I’ve told myself the same things. Having a remarkable company and not growing when you KNOW you deserve to be growing is exasperating. Here is what I have learned:

“The reason a client buys from you differs from why they stay and grow with you.”

Your clients hired you to fix, teach, or do something. That’s what it means to be in the world of professional services. Now, think of your client’s contract with you as a first assignment. As you perform well on that assignment, you will see other opportunities for new assignments, or perhaps your client will see a new assignment. When you change your perspective from contract engagement to a portfolio of assignments, you will look for more challenges your client needs to resolve.

The Process:

Confirm your client’s confidence: You won’t be given another assignment if your client is unsatisfied with your current performance. I like the straightforward ask. Some do this as a part of a Quarterly Business Review. Other companies use outside services for performance interviews. Regardless of the mechanism, you need to know your client is confident in your current services to take the next assignment.

Growth is the only question: Serving as a strategic provider of professional services to a client, your assignments are best when aligned with growth. This could be the growth of the business, the number of products, the highest quality personnel acquisition, and leaps forward in technology. The list is long. To solve important and urgent problems, aligning them with the growth of the business moves you to the top of the list of assignments that you need to aid in solving. It is a cul-de-sac of consideration when your assignment discovery leads you into a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have for growth.

Money is the only measure: The economy and business circumstances have reduced the evaluation of our services’ impact down to a money measurement, versus the easily identified soft benefits. Our job is to do the math for the customer to determine the impact amount. Work through the math with your client and then shape your next assignment.

I have spent years with clients, and almost all have said there is more work they could do with their current customers. Working with a client recently, we calculated that there was 9x the amount of work available within their current customers than they were doing. As a result, they reached out to the senior buyer in 6 of those customers regarding their Growth. They didn’t ask, “How else can we help?” Rather, they then said, “I believe there are areas we can help,” and they told the customer what they were.

Your customers want to grow with you because they have assignments they need you to take on, and they trust your ability to accomplish the outcome. There is a double in your business already, without having to double the number of new customers you add.