1. common set of easily identifiable needs, problems that you can help them with
2. common lifestyle: desires, passions, values, interests, hobbies, that you can cater to
3. established, high quality hubs, communication networks etc. You can find them and reach them easily.
4. there’s enough of them to meet your needs
5. they’re fun to work with and in alignment with your nature (these are likely the kinds of clients you most easily and naturally attract and the ones to whom you feel the most attracted - it’s a niche or community that you want to see thrive).
6. they are underserved
7. they can afford to pay you full price for your products and services
8. they are in alignment with your long-term business goals (e.g. if you do eco-lawn care and want to work with “Golf Clubs" eventually, but now need to do residential, it might be wise to focus on people who golf for now so that you can bridge into that later).
If Mohandas Gandhi were a typical North American activist these days, he would probably be wearing a three-piece suit and working in a plush office with his law degree prominently displayed. He would have little time to lead protests, since every other week would be spent meeting with donors – and those power lunches would hardly go well with fasting. He would be careful to avoid salt marches or cotton boycotts, so as not to offend key donors. To sharpen his annual pitch to foundations, he would be constantly dreaming up new one-year projects on narrowly focused topics, perhaps a one-time conference on English human-rights abuses, or a documentary on anti-colonial activities in New Delhi. To ensure that various allies didn’t steal away core funders, he would keep his distance and be inclined to trash talk behind their backs. In short, there’s little doubt that the British would still be running India.
The problem with activism today is that it is largely funded by grants and gifts from rich foundations and individuals. The long-standing assumption that you can take the money with few strings attached, and then run, needs to be fundamentally reexamined.
Building a philanthropic base of support can cripple an organization’s mission and wreck it altogether when the well runs dry. Most nonprofits have engaged in a kind of fundraising arms race in which our best leaders focus more time, energy and resources, not on changing the world, but on improving their panhandling prowess to capture just a little more of a philanthropic pie that actually expands very little from year to year. Armies of “development” staff spend as much as a third of an organization’s resources, not to advance the poor, but to cultivate wealthy donors. Significant numbers of our colleagues create campaigns, direct-mail pitches, telemarketing scripts, newsletters and other products exclusively to “care and feed” prospects and to frame positions that will not offend the rich.
Nonprofit structures dictated by this mode of funding also burden organizers with the heavy regulatory hand of the state. To qualify for tax-deductible contributions, for example, US nonprofits must agree to limit lobbying and not to campaign for political causes of candidates.
We believe it’s time for North American progressives to break free from the philanthropic plantation. Those of us serious about social change increasingly must get down to business, figuratively and literally. Every social change group may not be able to generate all its funding through revenue-generation, but every nonprofit certainly can generate a greater percentage than it is doing now. In other words, we should become our own funders. Once we start generating our own resources, we can invest them politically – as corporations do now – largely without limitation, without wasting our time on fundraising appeals, without worrying about that next grant, without apologies.
To get a sense of the possibilities, check out Cabbages & Condoms, a popular restaurant in Bangkok. As your senses become intoxicated by the aromas of garlic, ginger, basil, galangal and lemongrass, you cannot avoid noticing the origins of the name. On top of each heavy wooden table is a slab of glass, under which are neatly arranged rows of colorful prophylactics. Posters and paintings adorn the half-dozen large rooms, all communicating the restaurant’s central message: the AIDS epidemic afflicting Thailand can be checked only through the unabashed promotion and use of male contraception. With balloon animals made from carefully inflated and twisted condoms and the after-dinner candies replaced with your own take-home “condom-mints,” even teens cannot escape the message prominently framed on the wall: “Sex is fun but don’t be stupid – use protection.”
What makes the five “C&C” restaurants unique, along with an affiliated beach-front resort and numerous gift shops, is that they are all owned by the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), a rural development organization that has been a leader in promoting family planning and fighting aids in Thailand. Seven out of every ten dollars spent by the PDA on such activities as free vasectomies and mobile health clinics are covered by the net revenues from its 16 subsidiary for-profits. Were the PDA dependent on funding from the Thai government, the World Bank or even the Rockefeller Foundation, it no doubt would be told to tone down the message. Jokes on its website – like “the Cabbages and Condoms Restaurants in Thailand don’t only present excellent Thai food, the food is guaranteed not to get you pregnant” – would certainly be discouraged.
The cash flow gives the PDA a measure of confidence and boldness. The founder, Mechai Viravaidya, has no qualms about his decision to employ for-profits: “Unlimited demand is chasing limited supply [of charitable donations]. No longer are gifts, grants or begging enough. From day one, thirty years ago, we have been acutely aware of sustainability and cost-recovery.”
Consider some US examples of social entrepreneurship:
These examples embody many possible models. A for-profit subsidiary can generate money for a parent nonprofit. Or, better still, a for-profit can become the change it seeks, by producing and selling socially important goods and services.
While we reject the libertarian argument that every human problem has an economic solution, many social-change issues clearly have economic dimensions that are susceptible to creative business plans. Hate nuclear power? Launch energy-service companies to spread conservation measures, or build local wind farms to take control of your own electricity future. Concerned about the poor, minorities and women having equal access to credit? Create more community banks, credit unions and micro-enterprise funds. Troubled by pharmaceutical prices that make life-saving drugs unattainable for impoverished people across the globe? Start, as several companies based in the developing world did, companies that mass-produce affordable generic versions of high-priced American drugs.
Socially responsible business should be not just a boutique sector of the private economy, but its mainstream. We have been impressed in recent years by the growing number of local businesspeople who not only “walk the walk” of social justice in the small details of their operations and products but also tout the virtues of local ownership. This third generation of entrepreneur-organizers is being led by groups like the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and by the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA). Each promotes local ownership of business, champions social justice and neighborhood revitalization, and pushes for new public policies that remove the tilts in a playing field that favors badly behaved big business.
Sooner or later, the concepts of social-change organization and of social-responsibility business should become indistinguishable. Truly responsible businesses would be owned by all members of a community (rich and poor), hire locally, expand local skills, comport with local labor and environmental standards, produce goods and services that meet urgent local needs and become allies of social justice movements. What better way to help the poor than to transform them into the captains, worker-bees, shareholders and customers of community-friendly business?
If foundations and donors had never existed and professional panhandling had been outlawed, social-change groups would have been forced to turn to creating and running new enterprises or new networks of local businesses, and our movement would be considerably healthier than it is today. Progressives have become the classic 20-something kid still living at home, expecting an allowance from deep-pocket parents for a few basic chores, while agreeing, as a condition for the chump change, to obey someone else’s rules on social change. It’s time to grow up and strike out on our own.
Here’s a challenge to activists (one we take seriously ourselves): let’s try to wean ourselves from the charity habit, say by three percent per year. Think about just one piece of your agenda that could be framed as a revenue generator, dream about it a little, develop a business plan and give it a try. If you lack the skills, skip your next fundraising class and instead attend one of thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurship programs around the world. Or hire someone who might start the entrepreneurial subsidiary of your nonprofit.
Gandhi understood that the key to freeing India was to transform his fellow citizens into economically productive agents by spinning their own cloth and taking their own salt from the sea. Martin Luther King Jr. implored African Americans to form their own credit unions and community development corporations. The secret to being as radical as we want to be – and as radical as we need to be – is to finance the revolution ourselves.
Michael Shuman is the vice president for enterprise development for the Training and Development Corporation. Merrian Fuller is a managing director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. This article was adapted from “Profits for Justice,” which first appeared in The Nation.
What? A monthly conversation circle like the ones that changed
Who? Sustainable business entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial consumers who want to make a difference.
How? Act like brothers and sisters and focus on one business or issue at a time; communicate in the month between; return to get feedback and turn to a new story.
Ingredients? Trust, transparency, humor, good organic local food, listening, storytelling, stretching to reach new paradigms.
Format (please feel free to evolve)?
1. (15 minutes)Quick creative introductions with a theme (eg. Name, work/mission, something new you’re trying in one word).
2. (40 minutes) Leader summarizes the story and feedback focus from the last meeting/ feedback is given by all with duct tape on the entrepreneur until the end/ entrepreneur acknowledges feedback.
3. (10 minutes) Break for food and one on ones.
4. (40 minutes) New entrepreneur presents the romance, conception, incubation, birth, and development of their business, ending with the key questions they want the group to consider.
5. (15 minutes) Clarifying questions to understand, not to lead (eg not: “have you thought of X?”)
6. Close on time then go somewhere else to party!
Where? So far in
Principle 1:
Falling in Love: Serve Clients, Don’t Sell Customers
DISTINCTIONS:
Consider carefully the difference between those two words because this distinction forms the philosophical core of the Principles of Preminence. The question before the house is this:
“Do you want to sell customers or do you want to
serve clients?”
If you are willing to step up into a new level of impeccability in your business conduct then read on.
Let’s start at with the bottom line . . .
You need to understand what they truly need at the deepest level – to help them gain clarity on what they truly want and then develop a clear strategy to get them that. You need to love them so much that you want to get the biggest and best possible outcomes for them.
Most people make the tragic mistake of falling in love with their business – rather than their client. You must do the opposite. An easy way to do this is to choose to serve those you already love. Before you even get into business – decide who it is you most love and would most want to serve and then it’s easy. It’s much easier to serve those you already love then to fall in love. But if the people you’re serving are not people with whom you are already in love – then start paying more attention to everything that is great and wonderful about them. Most businesses see their customers as numbers.
They hate being seen as a “number”.
They understood that most people inherently don’t like and don’t trust “the system”.
Most people feel static and out of connection. They really want to believe that there’s a much better way than the mainstream approach. Just look at the success of the movie phenomenon “The Matrix”. It deeply struck a chord in the psyche of our culture. It spoke to that nagging suspicion that something is fundamentally wrong with society – that the basis and very structure of society might be a lie. Most people feel this way.
Your role is to be the embodiment of a vision of something better. Most people, in the back of their minds, have the sneaking suspicion that there must be a more fulfilling, natural and easy way to do things.
They saw it as their job to affirm to them that their suspicions were indeed correct that, “You are not being told the entire truth. There is a better way.”
If you notice you aren’t really truly in love with your clients it’s because one of four things is going on:
A) Profession: You’re in the wrong business; you’re off your life’s path. Ouch. You probably need to change careers.
B) People: You aren’t clear enough on what your ideal client is and so you’re settling for poor quality clients who are draining your energy. Get clear on your perfect client and, whether slowly or quickly, weed out the energy drainers. Stop settling. Change your clients.
C) Perception: You aren’t taking the time to truly appreciate them – to notice what’s wonderful and loveable about them. You may have habitual and inappropriate questions, beliefs, language or metaphors about “clients” that block you from seeing their beauty. Start noticing how you think of clients, and what you say to yourself when you think of them. Are they “a pain in your ass?” “An interruption” or “an obstacle to you achieving your goals”? If so: Warning. Change the way your are looking at or describing your clients.
D) Procedure: You may be a night person but you’ve set up your job to see clients in the morning because you think you HAVE to; you’re a coach who hates his clients because his life is scheduled with unavoidable sporadic calls vs. setting it up so they “Call on demand”. You’ve made the client king and given them your cell # and said “Call me 24/7” …and they do. Change how you interact with your clients.
You need to set up your lifestyle so it works for you so that you have more to give to your clients. This “falling in love with your clients” likely sounds a little “woo-woo”. But it’s the most bottom line, highest ROI thing you can do. It’s a hard nose, business approach.
Do you get it?
Do you get that this is the key to obscene amounts of wealth and happiness in business?
“Great customer service” is respectable, even laudable… but trite. Focusing and creating “raving fans” is wonderful… but may be incomplete. Before your clients become raving fans of you or your company YOU need to be a raving fan of your clients.
Make sense?
Customer service is important but falling in love with your clients is a much more vast, expansive, deeper and connected foundation to build from. If you fall in love with your clients – if you come from that place – you will perform legendary service naturally. Legendary service is a byproduct of a great love for those you serve. Service is the flower but love of the client is the soil.
Is that a license to not develop systems? Is that a license to not develop policies and procedures around serving your clients? No. It’s an affirmation that, unless you really love your clients you likely won’t spend the time it takes – to develop such systems in the first place. You won’t invest the needed focus to make those systems not just excellent – but outstanding.
How do you know if you’ve fallen in love with them? Well, ask yourself “When I fall in love romantically what do I do?” Then translate these answers to business.
When you really love a particular client isn’t it true that:
These businesses realized that it was not their job to “dazzle them with their brilliance”. When they offered perspectives – they wanted their clients to say “ me too” not “so what”
The key is not that you think you understand them. Everyone thinks they understand each other. The key is that they feel understood. Read that sentence again. It’s not that you love them but that they feel loved.
Your job is to voice their innermost feelings and affirm them.
Most people are thinking:
When you are in conversation with your clients they need to think “What I feel, she feels too”
The most chronic blunder of most entrepreneurs is thinking that people want their product or service. They don’t. They want a result. They want a solution to a problem. They are looking for relief from an affliction. They are hoping that your product or service will help them achieve some desired goal. It isn’t about you.
In fact, they really don’t care about you or your business problems, how hard it is for you. They don’t care that you had a bad day. The sooner you realize that it was never about you or your business – the better.
Your product or service I just a means to an end for your client. What is that ‘end’?
Is there even a problem? Or do you just think that people should want it?
Most businesses fail because they fail to identify and address their clients' and prospects' deepest needs.
There are five levels of this. You know you’re making progress in this area when:
1) You realize that they have deeper needs than your product or service. You realize they want those for something.
2) You feel totally clear about what these needs are
3) You can articulate their needs better than they can.
4) You can articulate the needs and inklings that they barely even knew they had themselves – you can put words to those vague discomforts, niggling doubts and unclear concerns
5) You inspire people to see more, you bring awareness of such higher possibilities that they raise their standards for their life, they stop settling, they get out of “no man’s land” and they grow – this creates a new level of need; a new gap between where they are and where they want to be.
Remember: you must fall in love with your client more than your business or product. You’re there to serve THEM, not you.
This comes from a commitment to not only having a transactional relationship, but a transformational one. It calls on you to go beyond the superficial and mundane levels upon which most business relationships exist. It calls upon you to be a little vulnerable and candid. At its simplest level, it asks you to focus on being truly interested not interesting; engaged – not engaging.
Most people in business are so busy focusing on how they can be the most interesting, dynamic and engaging person so that people will buy their product or service. But those people will never get as far as someone who truly and deeply cares about their clients and focuses on their problems, their secret desires and frustrations, their hopes and dreams and their well-being.
Your answer to the following questions forms the core concept or proposition that you are making. In marketing, nothing is more important than your offer. A good concept will always transcend bad writing but a bad concept will never transcend good writing. The core premise must be strong and valuable to the end user. And it must be communicated powerfully.
Ask yourself, “How can I elegantly and powerfully educate people that:
1) They have a problem?”
2) It can be solved?”
3) It must be solved?” (they need to feel this at the emotional level not just understand it intellectually)
4) It must be solved now?”
5) I can solve it?” How can you help them feel certain about this?
6) I can solve it better?” (e.g. faster/with more skill/with more advantage and less risk to them than anyone else).
7) I just solved their problem?” Sometimes people “don’t get what they got” and that’s your fault.
Notice that each of the seven levels above focus not on YOUR products or services but on your CLIENT’S problems and pain. The Preeminent business owner focuses entirely on the client.
Since most people don’t trust the system you must position yourself as a viable and refreshing alternative - one that helps them regain power and control their lives. But that will never happen unless you truly care. It will feel like too much effort. It's probably an incredibly burned out phrase, but it's still true that people don't care how much you know, unless they know how much you care. You want to understand the fabric of their life well beyond the “transaction”.
The leaders in pre-eminent businesses know that their role isn’t to simply ‘hock their wares’ but rather to nurturously guide their clients on a journey from where they are to a better place.
Some people say, “But my job doesn’t lend itself to falling in love with clients.” If you believe that then, “yes” that will be true for you.
But, when you get that your real goal in business is to help solve people's problems and you get that solving people's problems is probably the most loving act that you can do for them - things start to shift for you immediately, dramatically and powerfully. And, I would go so far as to say that until and unless you embrace some higher purpose and sense of identity in business you will never be truly fulfilled or happy. Some people might look at this as a life of sacrifice, but really, the life of sacrifice is the life that you live before you find this sense of higher purpose.
"Someday you'll find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own. It is something I cannot explain, something within that sends a glow of warmth all through you."
- Honore de Balzac
If you ask for people’s business from any place other than service and inspiration - you will feel diminished. You will feel reduced to mere sales.
"Ultimately, it is not our credentials, but our commitment to a higher purpose that creates our effectiveness in the world."
-- Marianne Williamson
I remember best-selling author Marianne Williamson speaking once about her experience working in a bookstore. The bookstore owner was constantly fussing about how to sell this or sell that. She told Marianne to look at every single client, who came in the store and think to her self, "There's a potential sale." But Marianne had a very different relationship to the bookstore. She saw it as her ministry. She saw it as a chance to really love people. She saw it as a church. She refused to see her position in the same mundane and mediocre way that everyone else held it.
And, as she did that, the sales did just fine.
If you walk into a bookstore and you feel you're being looked at only as a source of money - you aren't going to stick around very long. But imagine going into another bookstore, where you feel better every single time, you walk in it. Imagine going to bookstore, where you feel loved and cherished just from walking in the door. At one point, Marianne Williamson woke up and said to her self, "Oh, I get it. They think this is a bookstore!"
I remember seeing on TV one day, a special 15 minute report about the traffic cop. Now, I don't know about you but I can't think of many jobs more mundane than being a traffic cop. You're basically just directing traffic. There's no time for idle chitchat, and you don't have a lot of time to really connect with people and send them love.
Or do you?
This was an old African-American Man from
Tactics of Pre-Eminence:
The Only Four Questions That Matter:
1) Do you, in your heart of hearts, know it to be true that your community and the world is better off for the existence of your company/product or service?
2) Do you, in your heart of hearts, know it to be true that your clients are better off for availing themselves of your product or service?
3) Do you, in your heart of hearts, know it to be true for your clients are better off under your care than with your competition?
4) Do you believe that you offer at least as much or more value than you charge for? IS it worth the price you ask them to pay?
