I Didn’t Know You Do That!
No simpler words have ever hurt an owner more. Despite all your messaging, marketing, selling, and posturing, you learn it’s all for naught when:
- At a networking event, you overhear a colleague refer an ideal prospect to a competitor of yours. When you ask your colleague why he referred your competitor and not you, he says, “I didn’t know you did that.”
- Worse, even, you learn your customer just suggested his friend call an unqualified competitor instead of automatically pushing the work your way. And, when confronted, your client says, “You do that? I had no idea!”
- Your own employee hears and ignores your client drop multiple buying signals. As gently as you can, you point this out and your employee responds, “Oh that’s right, I guess we do that.”
This is painful for three reasons:
- Your marketing and sales messaging is ineffective
- You have no idea how much business you are losing every day
- Your colleagues, customers and employees feel sheepish for not knowing better
But what can and should you do? Keep refining and simplifying your message. Look at it through the eyes of your colleagues, clients and staff. Have you really made it simple?
Who do you refer and why is it easy to refer those you can? Make it as easy for your supporters as you want them to do unto you. Are you able to refer your closest clients and colleagues to their prospects? Where you have done so, isn’t it because your clients and colleagues:
- Communicate a clear, current and simple grasp of how their best and highest use is purchased and referred
- Know how their message is understood and repeated by others
- Track how and who is referring them and conversely who and how they are referring others
Hearing the damning words, “I didn’t know you do that,” is most painful when your own customers or clients are hiring others to do work you could be doing. Ask yourself, “Do you have a 100% share of your customer’s business?”
If not, then start uncovering and gaining these opportunities so your clients will see, first-hand, what you do!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
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August 13th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually offers returns that other investments cannot guarantee in order to entice new investors, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.
The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments. Usually, the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses because a Ponzi scheme is suspected or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.
The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi,[1] who became notorious for using the technique in early 1920. He had emigrated from Italy to the United States in 1903. Ponzi did not invent the scheme (Charles Dickens’ 1857 novel Little Dorrit described such a scheme decades before Ponzi was born, for example), but his operation took in so much money that it was the first to become known throughout the United States. His original scheme was in theory based on arbitraging international reply coupons for postage stamps, but soon diverted investors’ money to support payments to earlier investors and Ponzi’s personal wealth.
Knowingly entering a Ponzi scheme, even at the last round of the scheme, can be rational economically if government bails out those participating in the Ponzi scheme.[2]
Contents [hide]
1 Hypothetical example
2 Similar schemes
3 Notable Ponzi schemes
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links