Are you overwhelming your clients with too much value?
Huh, I hear you mutter… How can there possibly be too much value. Haven’t we all been told to ‘over deliver’?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, you must provide value. However all great teachers understand that you only feed students the amount of information they can absorb at the time. Too little, they get bored. Too much, they get overwhelmed and shut down.
The same holds true for your clients.
Which leads me to the consultant’s prayer.
“Forgive me for I have sinned against my clients. I have overwhelmed them by giving them too much, too soon. And they have become confused and often taken no action as a result. Please give me the insight to give less and ironically deliver more value.”
Personally, both Barbara and I learned this lesson the hard way.
We felt we needed to constantly demonstrate and prove our value. We used to overwhelm our clients with ideas and tasks. Too many options. Too many simultaneous actions. As a result they’d get overwhelmed and not finish anything. Ergo, not get the results they wanted.
And we got frustrated because we thought they wouldn’t take our advice and implement.
Two simple ideas changed all that.
Less is more. And move from ad-hoc projects to “programs”.
The 80/20 rule always applies.
By distilling down exactly what your clients need (the 20% which gives 80% of the result), you can focus on what’s really important to obtaining the outcome.
You give people only the information they need. Possibly a couple of options on moving forward and have them take specific action. Too much information and too much choice often leads to paralysis by analysis.
And move from “projects” to “programs”.
Projects by definition tend to be shorter term, one off activities.
Programs imply a longer term, overarching, cohesive plan. A plan which can be broken down into discrete bite sized chunks all of which mesh together to give you a result.
And naming your programs gives them an “identity”.
Which is exactly what we did.
By creating our “Business Acceleration Program”, we wrapped up components of marketing, selling and leadership into a cohesive program which runs over a minimum of 12 months.
Spreading out the activities allows our clients to digest the information we impart and implement in bite sized chunks, meaning it gets done and delivers results.
Another client offers “Fire Protection Remediation” programs where complex and expensive building rectification gets done over a period of months and years, defraying costs.
At our recommendation a leadership coach moved his offering from one to three years at triple the price. Ironically it was his clients who suggested that they needed a longer timeframe to implement and were willing to commit.
So my question to you is… How could you do less and provide more while wrapping your offerings up into a program?
If you’d like help figuring this out, give Rashid a hoy on 0414-913-334.
