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How to Find Clients that Fit Just-Right

Written by: Molly Gordon

Article Overview: How do you know you have the right client base? When a typo in yet another email explaining why a product hasn’t been shipped generates chuckles and appreciation.

How to Find Clients that Fit Just-Right

How do you know you have the right client base? When a typo in yet another email explaining why a product hasn’t been shipped generates chuckles and appreciation.

Here’s the story.

500 individually wrapped copies of The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur arrived last Thursday, and on Friday the marvelous Margaret shipped a copy to all 380 folks who pre-ordered. Yahoo!

The books had been delayed a week by the printer because of a quality control issue and then for a few more days by snow in Boise. Maggie sent a note about the latter delay, inadvertently using “fowl” instead of “foul” to describe the weather.

One reader wrote back, “So, it’s stuck in Boise due to ‘fowl’ weather...are they gulls, storks, or eagles? Maybe a gaggle of geese?” (I’m thinking storks. That works well with the whole pregnancy and delivery metaphor.)

Another person shot back, “Those damn chickens!” Tee hee.

Yet another kind soul wrote, “Thank you for making me laugh, I needed that! I read ‘fowl weather’ and my brain had a hey-day with all sorts of pictures of raining chickens and ducks, and I was going to send you an email that said "Well that's just ducky!" or something equally silly. My computer is dying and stressing me out and I needed some fowl weather to make me laugh!!!”

All of this leads to this thought: Just-right customers and clients are the ones that benefit even when you mess up.

Think about it. What if the relationship you have with your clients and customers is so mutually beneficial that even your errors can deliver value?

This is not to excuse sloppiness or sanction broken commitments. It’s a given that you want to do your best. And it is also a given – at least in my experience – that things happen. Not everyone is going to like the hiccups it when you stumble, nor should they. But some folks will find that the value of their relationship with you and your business is greater than the sum of individual transactions. Those are your just-right customers.

Just-right clients and customers also tell you the truth about their experience. Real life relationships are not all sweetness and light. Sometimes we rub each other the wrong way; sometimes there is a failure to communicate. And the relationships that last are the ones in which each partner tells the truth of their own experience and is open to hearing the truth of the other’s.

It’s about growing together, thriving together, and – my favorite – laughing together over our mistakes.

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Article Tags: accidental entrepreneur, boise, chickens, ducks, ducky, fowl weather, gaggle of geese, greater than the sum, gulls, hey day, hiccups, kind soul, last thursday, maggie, metaphor, pregnancy and delivery, quality control, storks, tee hee, weather one



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