Are You Chasing Clients Away by Trying too Hard?

Thanksgiving at Aunt Elise’s is an event. Family members gather from all over the country. The food is terrific. The children have a blast. And you get to see favorite cousin.

In spite of that, you dread going. Why?

Because Aunt Elise tries too hard.

From the apologetic refrain that accompanies the presentation of each succulent dish to the endless hovering to the fact that she won’t accept a lick of help, everything Elise does to make you comfortable has the opposite effect.

Trying too hard spoils a party and it can drive customers away.

Running a Business is like Hosting a Party
Whether you deliver your work as a product or service or both, running a business is a lot like hosting a party. You invite folks in (advertising and marketing). They come or not (prospects). You entertain them (deliver goods and services). They eat, mingle, and talk (use your goods and services)). The party ends.

But you and I know there is more to the story: Did they enjoy themselves? Will they come again?

You can give your clients and prospects the best of the best, but if you try too hard, they won’t be comfortable asking for more. In other words, they won’t come back and they won’t be referring their friends.

And this distinction affects your clients and customers as much as it affects you.

When Perfection Repels
Aunt Elise tries so hard and gives so much that her guests feel burdened. The more she tries, the less comfortable they feel. She feels hurt and tries harder.

The same thing happens when we try too hard to please our clients and customers. We shower them with so much attention and information that they instinctively retreat. If they didn’t, they’d be overwhelmed. (Tip: The ones that get overwhelmed and stay and ask for more are not your just-right customers.)

When customers pull back, we feel it. It shows in our pocketbooks and in our psyches. I can’t explain how, but I swear I can feel the collective contraction when I overload you, the readers of this ezine. And, like the good people pleaser I am, I contract in response, curling inward around my wounded self-esteem. (Hey, I’m not proud of it. And I don’t recommend it. But it happens. And it happens less and less often and for shorter periods of time. Yahoo!)

That’s the dynamic of trying too hard: the more you try, the more they pull away. Instead of developing a relationship, you become even less connected to your customers. That feels icky, so you either hide or try harder. (If you’re really adept, you can do both at once. Talk about kinks in one’s spiritual spine!)

When Does It Pay to Try Harder?
In 1963, back in the days when car rental was a new thing and Hertz dominated the market (and I was a ten year old in Bowie, Maryland), Avis adopted the slogan, “We try harder.”

With this campaign, Avis switched the game from who’s number one to who works harder for the company. Pretty smart.

For Avis, trying harder meant doing a better job of listening to and serving customers than Hertz.

It did not mean reinventing car rental. That would have made customers crazy. (In those days renting a car was a Big Deal. It was exotic enough without new twists.)

We accidental entrepreneurs, by contrast, generally compete with Them or with ourselves.

You know who They are: the individuals who just made a big splash in your industry. The latest guest on Oprah. The most recent Internet marketing sensation. We compare ourselves to Them, find ourselves wanting, and copy the most visible of their actions.

But these are not our direct competitors. In fact, if you’re following The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur, you have no direct competitors. (Now that’s a relief.) And their visible actions are meaningless unless you know and share their underlying purpose.

And as for competing with ourselves? Well, it’s not really competition because there is  never a winner. We keep raising the bar without ever pausing to collect a trophy. The result? We are always in second place (at best).

Fretting About How You Fall Short Cheats Your Customers
Hang on, it gets worse. ;-)

While you are busy beating yourself up for being no closer to a bestselling author today than yesterday (and can you know that it’s true?), your clients and customers are looking for help.

While you’re scrambling to keep up with the latest marketing fad or to offer something new and improved so that your customers will realize that you are a Big Deal, they are looking for someone who will listen to them.

We just don’t have enough bandwidth to listen to our customers and worry about our performance at the same time. And we certainly don’t have the bandwidth to hear them when we are busy talking.

Which brings us to signs of trying too hard.

Three Signs You’re Trying Too Hard
The first sign that you’re trying too hard is both obvious and easy to overlook: you’re the only one speaking.

It begins innocently enough with a desire to see things from your customers’ point of view. But instead of asking them about their experience (and then shutting up), we wonder, then worry, about their experience. It’s not long before we’re running a full-fledged drama with multiple characters, all scripted and performed by yours truly.

Owie!

The second sign that you’re trying to hard is that thinking about success makes you tired and thinking about being more successful makes you weep. Success shouldn’t be a burden. When it is, nobody wins. (So why do we call it success? Beats me.)

And the third sign that you’re trying too hard is that the door to your business swings one way: out. You’re obsessed with putting out enough of the right stuff to enough of the right people so that money will come in. But how can customers (and their money) come in when your obsession is blocking the door.

For all you know, there’s a line of folks who would love to work with you, if only it didn’t feel like Thanksgiving at Aunt Elise’s.

Great Parties Take Work
Don’t get me wrong, hosting Thanksgiving for 30 guests and making a go of self-employment both entail considerable work. But work can be a cross or a celebration. Believe it or not, you do get to choose.

Of course, making that choice is not as simple as some would have us believe. There is no toggle switch we can throw to drop the cross and permanently align ourselves with celebration.

Making the choice in the first place requires insight, information, and discernment. And that’s just the beginning.

Because choosing is never finished. Each choice generates a new set of possibilities.(How goofy that we even imagine we can tell be a single outcome whether or not we made a “mistake”!)

Choosing is an ongoing engagement with possibilities and outcomes. Most of the time we cannot know with certainty how our choices will turn out. And perhaps that is why the cross is paradoxically attractive. At least no one can say we didn’t try; we have the wounds to prove that we did.

Or so says Aunt Elise.