Michael Gerber Quotes

CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System.

Documentation says, “This is how we do it here.

Your arrows do not carry,’ observed the Master, ‘because they do not reach far enough spiritually.’ Eugen Herrigel Zen and the Art of Archery

Por ejemplo, si pregunta a cien personas que hayan tratado con un contratista de obras sobre cómo ha ido el proceso, seguro que al menos setenta y cinco responderán: «No lo acabaron en el plazo al que se habían comprometido; si no ponían una excusa, ponían otra». Si pregunta a cien personas que hayan llevado su coche al taller sobre cómo ha ido el proceso, seguro que al menos ochenta responderán: «Sentía que había perdido el control y me hicieron sentir todavía peor». Si pregunta a cien personas que hayan ido al médico sobre cómo ha ido el proceso, seguro que al menos noventa responderán: «¡Tuve que esperar demasiado!». ¿Estereotipos? Sí, por supuesto. Pero estas respuestas estereotipadas contienen tanto la frustración primaria como la mejor manera de hacer las cosas. Qué sucedería con el contratista de obras que dijera: «En Construcciones Sinceridad, siempre cumplimos los plazos, siempre cumplimos el presupuesto y siempre ofrecemos resultados impecables. O pagamos nosotros. ¡Garantizado!».

What’s the difference? The commodity is the thing your customer actually walks out with in his hand. The product is what your customer feels as he walks out of your business. What he feels about your business, not what he feels about the commodity.

It reveals an understanding of what makes a great business great. It also tells us what makes all other businesses survivable at their best; intolerable at their worst.

Hi, have you been in here before?” The customer will respond with either a “yes” or a “no.” In either case, you are then free to pursue the conversation.

Ouspensky was saying that hell on earth is life as we have always lived it, and heaven on earth is breaking free of our long-standing patterns.

…for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized.”2 The operative word here is clear. Documentation provides the clarity structure needs if it is to be meaningful to your people.

Knowing where the money is and where it will be when you need it is a critically important task of both the Contractor-as-Employee and the Contractor-as-Owner.

the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important — the way it’s delivered is.

Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

It happens to all of us, time and time again. Because we’ve been deluded into thinking we’re really one person.

But before you can determine what that role will be, you must ask yourself

A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they’re doing.