The secret to winning and retaining customers – Part 2 of 3

How do you create value and reach as many people as possible as a small or medium sized business? Ian Lowe from Go-Givers Australia explains how to impact and influence in this second of three blogs.

In last week’s post we looked at the first principle of winning and retaining customer – The Law of Value which simply says “Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”  In this week’s post we’re focused on the second and third principles – Impact and Influence.

The Second Principle: Impact

Of course, there is more to winning and retaining customers than simply adding more value than you receive in payment. Our second principle, The Law of Compensation, is this: “Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”

The second principle says that in addition to adding value to the process, you also must touch as many people as possible with that added value. As another character in the story explains it to Joe this way: “The First Law determines how valuable you are, that is, it describes your potential income — how much you could earn. But it’s the Second Law that determines how much you actually do earn.”

Very briefly, the accountant in the first example did a terrific job of giving more in value than she took in payment. If you’re her client, the chances are you feel good about her. You’d do business with her again, and you’d refer her to others. The chances are also good that her other clients feel the same way. So, our accountant is very quickly amassing what we call an “army of personal walking ambassadors.” And, as she continues to add that kind of exceptional value to the lives of more and more people, her income will continue to grow.

Here’s the key; the value is the building block, but just providing great value in and of itself isn’t enough to make you a great income because if you only serve one person, the chances are you’re not financially going to do that well. It’s also a matter of reach, which is where law number two comes in. We can sum up the first two laws, in a sense, by saying, exceptional value plus significant reach equals very high income.

Q: How can you have more impact?

The Third Principle: Influence

The first two laws describe how you create value and impact in your business interactions. Building on these first two, the third principle, The Law of Influence, provides the formula for creating genuine influence: “Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”

Like the Law of Value, this principle often strikes people as counterintuitive at best and downright naive at worst. Yet it’s actually quite practical. There is a Golden Rule of Business that says, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” And there is no faster or more effective way to elicit those feelings toward you in others than by your placing their interests first.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean it in a way that is self-sacrificial or martyr-ish or co-dependent. Nothing like that at all. It simply means that you’re looking for ways to provide value to other people, and as you do this you are planting seeds of goodwill with so many people, you’re developing those ‘know you, like you, trust you’ feelings.  You understand that the best relationships are not 50/50 or win/win; they’re simply 100. As you do this, you begin to attract more and more of those types of people in your life, and what a great network of people it is when you’ve got everyone focused on adding value to that other person.

Q: What more can you do to extend the reach of your influence?

I hope you enjoy reading about The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success and the critical roles they play in winning and retaining customers in this series of posts. Of course these pages allow for only a light touch so if you would like to dig a little deeper, we are pleased to offer First 5000 members access to The Go-Giver book at a special pre-launch price of $19:95 (RRP $24:95) plus postage.

To get your copy please email us at bookorders@thegogiverway.com.au  quoting Ref: First 5000.

Read the other blogs in this series:
The secret to winning and retaining customers – Part 1
The secret to winning and retaining customers – Part 3

Ian Lowe is the CEO of Go-Givers Australia, a consulting organisation offering a unique culture-defining philosophy and framework that makes giving value the cornerstone of a refreshingly open and authentic approach to business and selling.