Your Strategic Objective is a very clear statement of what your business has to ultimately do for you to achieve your Primary Aim. - Michael Gerber

CONFUSION 4: HOW TO KEEP YOUR CUSTOMER HAPPY Let’s say you’ve overcome the first three confusions — now how do you keep your Customer happy? Very simple…just keep your promise! And make sure your Customer knows you kept your promise every step along the way. In short, giving your Customers what they think they want is the key to keeping your Customers (or anyone else, for that matter) really happy. If your Customers need to interact with people (high touch, Tactile), make certain that they do. If they need to interact with things (high-tech, Neutral), make certain that they do. If they need to interact with ideas (in their head, Withdrawal), make certain that they do. And so forth. At E-Myth, we call this your Client Fulfillment System. It’s the step-by-step process by which you do the job you’ve contracted to do, and deliver the product you’ve promised. But what happens when your Customers are not happy? What happens when you’ve done everything I’ve mentioned here, and they are still dissatisfied?

IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream — my vision — was in place. The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company which looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done. The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one. From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one

CONFUSION 6: WHO TO CALL A CUSTOMER At this stage, it’s important to ask some questions: Which types of Customers would you most like to do business with? Where do you see your real market opportunities? Who would you like to work with, provide service for, and position your business for? A Tactile Customer for whom people is most important? A Neutral Customer for whom the mechanics of how you do business is most important? An Experimental Customer for whom cutting-edge innovation is important? A Traditional Customer for whom low cost and certainty of delivery are absolutely essential? In short, it’s all up to you. No mystery. No magic. Just a systematic process for shaping your business’s future. But you must have the passion to pursue the process. And you must be absolutely clear about every aspect of it. Until you know your Customers as well as you know yourself. Until all your complaints about Customers are a thing of the past. Until you accept the undeniable fact that Customer Acquisition and Customer Satisfaction are more science than art. But unless you’re willing to grow your business, you better not follow any of the above recommendations. Because it will definitely grow.