Quotes to Fuel Your Client-Powered Start-Up

By: Michelle M. Campbell

In the current business environment of dynamic and dramatic changes, every advantage matters. This is especially true for start-ups with an unstable method of revenue generation.

For start-ups, the most impactful and highly beneficial competitive advantage is to focus on the clients being served. To interweave client focus into the very texture of the organization means tightly managing the service offer and client journey. After all, clients strengthen their impression of a company through multiple interactions. One major negative interaction, however, can risk the entire relationship.

For a start-up this is particularly exciting, as it is a chance to build, from scratch, a culture of a client-focused organization. By focusing on addressing the clients’ needs proactively, there is no need to retroactively attempt to raise client satisfaction scores. A client-focused organization builds the client avatar into every aspect of the business, from product design to metrics to employee incentive compensation.

[Related: Human-Centric Organizations: A Positive Result of the Pandemic?]

Here are inspiring words for managing a client-driven organization:

Clients don’t pay you to try. Their least expectation is to at least get from you value for their money. However, your aim should be to wow them. –Allan Amanyire

Only the market determines the validity of your assumptions –Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

[If] your product doesn’t earn traction with your customers, they wouldn’t miss you if you were gone — the substitutes are easy. –Seth Godin

Our product development efforts became magically more productive — not because we were working harder but because we were working smarter, aligned with our customers’ real needs. –Eric Ries

Don’t sell based on inventory. Inventory based on who you want to sell. –Richie Norton

[Related: Commit to a Business Growth Strategy You Can Believe In]

The process of converting customers should be built around what the buyer wants the process to be. This is critical to delivering value and creating passion in the product. –Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

Now, the only way to grow is to stand out, to create something worth talking about, to treat people with respect, and to have them spread the word. –Seth Godin

When you focus on helping your client, every other problem will simply disappear. –Chinmai Swamy

Most products — even the ones that fail — do not have zero traction. Most products have some customers, some growth, and some positive results. One of the most dangerous outcomes for a start-up is to bumble along in the land of the living dead. –Eric Ries

Companies that cannot bring themselves to pivot in a new direction on the basis of feedback from the marketplace can get stuck in the land of the living dead, neither growing enough nor dying, consuming resources and commitment from employees and other stakeholders but not moving ahead. –Eric Ries

If you are building the wrong thing, optimizing the product or its marketing will not yield significant results. –Eric Ries

Culture…does mean that you create proximity to your customer as part of the fundamental DNA. –Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits

You get better clients as soon as you act like the creator who deserves better clients. –Seth Godin

Spoil your clients. –Richie Norton

[Related: The Power of the Pivot]

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Michelle M. Campbell is a global program and project manager experienced in managing strategic programs/projects aimed at revenue growth, cost reduction, client satisfaction, governance, and transformation at business and enterprise levels. You can find her management musings at linkedin.com/in/michellemcampbell.

Originally published at https://www.ellevatenetwork.com.