Introduction

Creating Synchronicity with
Perfect Customers and Clients

If we don’t change the direction

          we’re going, we’re likely to

         end up where we’re headed.

                      Ancient Chinese proverb

HOW MANY times have you thought, “We need more customers”?

The vast majority of business owners and corporate executives believe that all of the problems in their businesses would be solved if they could just figure out the secret to finding more customers.

With this book, we are inviting you to partake of what owners, directors, and employees of successful businesses know: that it is essential to replace the thought “We need more customers” with the conviction “Our business now attracts perfect customers only.”

What Is a “Perfect” Customer?

Of course, we all know that there is no such thing as a perfect person. So how could there possibly be a perfect customer?

As we will explore further throughout this book, by our definition, a perfect customer is one whose needs are a perfect fit for a company’s mission. When the relationship between need and service are perfectly aligned, positive results occur with amazing velocity and synergy—almost without effort.

A Perfect Customer Has the “Spark of Strategic Synchronicity”

Take a moment to picture one of your most “perfect” customers or clients—the one person with whom you enjoy or have enjoyed working. Is this person the perfect customer because he or she shows you respect and values your time? Does he or she trust that you have his or her best interests at heart? Does this perfect customer come to you with realistic expectations? Does he or she appreciate your efforts— happily paying what your product or service is worth and referring others to your company? Does working with this customer make you feel needed, appreciated, respected, and understood? Does he or she reconnect you with the passion and purpose that puts joy in your work—the very reason you began working in this company in the first place? Did this perfect customer come to you easily: did you feel an immediate sense of attraction and connection with this customer, as if fate brought you together at the perfect time and place? Did you feel as if you were the answer to this customer’s prayers—the one for whom he or she had been searching—the perfect fit of need and solution?

How many of your customers are currently a perfect fit for your company? If the number is less than you wish, are you willing to believe that it is possible to create a profitable business that consists completely of customers who are attracted to doing business with you? Can you believe that it is possible to experience a “spark of Strategic Synchronicity” every time you begin a relationship with a new customer? Can you imagine it is possible to stand still and attract more than enough customers who value your service, pay you what you are worth, and send referrals to your business or Web site on a regular basis?

Not only is this possible, but it is as true for sole proprietorships as it is for Fortune 500 companies and for every size and type of business in between.

A Unique Marketing Model

We will introduce you to our Strategic Attraction Planning Process— a logical, practical, and unique model that is the catalyst for a new sales and marketing reality. It’s a fundamental way of thinking that shifts how organizations are operated.

The Strategic Attraction Planning Process is designed to be used by business owners, corporate executives, and sales and marketing representatives. It is also meant to be used by receptionists, warehouse workers, engineers, technicians, lawyers, accountants—anyone at any level in an organization—because each has the power to attract or deflect “perfect” customers for the organization.

How Is the Strategic Attraction Planning Process Different from Other Marketing Models?

Traditional marketing models, which put emphasis on capturing market share and stealing customers away from competitors, require a business to adopt a mind-set of acquiring ever-larger numbers of customers. This never-ending search for more customers requires an abundance of people, time, and money, resources that are usually in short supply, even in the largest companies. For example, many dot-com organizations, with millions of dollars invested to assure their success, failed because their deep financial wells ran dry before the companies found enough actual customers to meet unrealistic sales projections.

Over the last ten years, numerous articles in magazines such as Inc., Fast Company, and Sales and Marketing Management, as well as a plethora of “relationship marketing” books, have been written to address the demise of so many companies as a result of this very dilemma. All of the research that has been compiled in these articles and books points to the fact that companies must spend less time on finding new customers and more time on defining their missions and values. Once the missions and values are identified, organizational structures and practices can be put in place to support the building of stronger relationships with the customers they are already serving. The equation: more clarity + more bonding = greater loyalty.

A long-held adage says that 20 percent of a business’s customers account for 50 to 80 percent of the profits. With an increase of just 5 percent in the customer maintenance rate, according to a study conducted by Bain & Company, a Boston-based consultancy, a company can boost its profits by 25 to 95 percent.¹

However, we ask the question,Why are only 20 percent of a company’s customers considered to be “the best”? If these 20 percent account for the vast majority of profits, why does the company need the other 80 percent?

Rahul Jacob, in his Fortune magazine article “Why Some Customers Are More Equal Than Others,” states that it has “always made intuitive sense to focus a company’s resources on the best customers rather than on the flighty, fair-weather types.”² We agree.

The next question is, Is it possible to build a business where every customer is “the best” or, as we would say, the “most perfect”? We say it is possible, and so do the hundreds of companies that have experienced the freedom of serving only perfect customers. It is also true that everyone working within an organization already has the power to attract these perfect customers, as well as to attract perfect employees, coworkers, vendors, and other stakeholders.

The Law of Attraction

The ability of each person to achieve strength and success with the Strategic Attraction Planning Process is drawn from a phenomenon of nature—the law of attraction. This phenomenon has been beautifully explained by noted consultants and educators Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers in A Simpler Way. Their landmark book is an exploration into the question,How could we organize human endeavor if we developed different understandings of how life organizes itself? Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers find:

Attraction can also be the fundamental building block for creating successful, fulfilling, and harmonious businesses. The power of attraction increases as we become clear about who we are and what we want. This clarity transforms us into powerful magnets, each automatically attracting others who have the same intention.

Quantum physicists, human behavior experts, and even health practitioners have proven that the universal law of attraction is sound. We, and hundreds of businesses, have proven for ourselves that applying this law of attraction to our sales and marketing practices easily brings to us compatible customers who fully appreciate the value of our products and services.

Now it’s your turn to experience the powerful spark of Strategic Synchronicity. We invite you to research and explore these principles for yourself. We invite you to play with the Strategic Attraction Planning Process. We invite you to create your own Strategic Attraction Plan for serving more of your most perfect customers.

If you accept our invitation, then let’s proceed.

Experiencing the Process

This is a how-to handbook for strategically applying the natural and universal law of attraction to the sales and marketing of your business as quickly as possible. We ask you to immerse yourself in the Strategic Attraction Planning Process by using the examples and exercises available to you in every chapter of this book. If you want to explore these concepts at an even deeper level, we have included a bibliography and a list of the resources that have supported us in our exploration.

The first step toward consciously engaging in this process of forming a greater degree of relatedness with your customers, employees, coworkers, and other stakeholders is to give up whatever attachment you may have to the commonly used and accepted marketing techniques that involve targeting customers. The second step is to prepare to refocus your efforts on your business mission, the true source of your powers of attraction. Each business mission is as unique and distinct as the people who create it, and the clearer you become about your business mission, the more effectively you and your company can attract your most perfect customers to your real or virtual doorstep.

In our experience, it is no longer necessary, logical, or productive to work eighty-hour weeks, struggling to stay ahead of the competition, because there is no race—not even in the fast-paced world of dot-coms. It is also no longer necessary to get to the marketplace first. Your most perfect customers are patiently waiting for you. In fact, they are looking for you and are counting on you to stand still so that they can find you at the most perfect time and place.

So your first exercise is to slow down. Take the time to both read and do the exercises in this book. You could read this book in a day. Yet our intention is that you will continue to experience the exercises, and the insights that they reveal, for years to come.

How to Use This Book

We can’t stress this enough:The transformative power of this book lies in doing the exercises. Try each exercise on as if you were putting on a shirt for the first time. You won’t know if it fits unless you are inside it. If it’s too tight or uncomfortable, take it off—then try on another one until you discover those exercises that are a “perfect fit” for you.

To assist you on your journey of exploration, we’ve organized our book into three sections:

• Part I—The Six Standards of Strategic Synchronicity
• Part II—The Strategic Attraction Planning Process
• Part III—Strategic Attraction in Action: Twenty-One Daily Tips
  

In part I, you will begin to play with the six building blocks that cause the Strategic Attraction Planning Process to produce Strategic Synchronicities. In part II, you will be guided through the creation of your first Strategic Attraction Plan, the plan that re-creates your organization into a powerful and unwavering lighthouse, attracting perfect customers to its shore. Through the tips and exercises in part III, the intensity and breadth of your illumination will be greatly increased, and with that increase will come a corresponding increase in your organization’s powers of attraction.

According to Dr. Robert Fenn, regional director of the Northeast Ohio Procurement Technical Assistance Center, an economic development center: “Having been in business for over thirty years, I was surprised to learn of an approach to better marketing that I’d not heard before. I’m surprised because it seems so obvious. But, as we all know, the devil is in the details. I am clearly convinced that by adopting the Strategic Synchronicity philosophy, all companies can improve their effectiveness and, more importantly, the bottom line. I am still amazed at the pure simplicity of the approach; but then aren’t the best ideas always the simplest! ”⁴

Throughout this book, you will be introduced to many Synchronistic Perspectives provided by thought leaders—corporate executives, staff members of organizations, and entrepreneurs—all of whom have been experimenting with this process and who have voiced their own experiences with these same exercises. If you find that a spark of Strategic Synchronicity occurs with any or all of them, you are encouraged to contact them directly. Each one has volunteered to be a resource of advice and encouragement for those of you just beginning your exploration. You will find contact information in the Resources section at the end of this book.

One last note about how to use this book. You will notice the use of the word “perfect” over and over again. This is done intentionally. Behavior therapists have proven that a new behavior more quickly becomes a habit when the behavior is repeated frequently. So we give you many opportunities to play and practice with the term “perfect.”

In the process of adjusting to the term, our clients have often asked if “perfect” can be replaced with some other word, such as “ideal” or “desired.”We understand that the concept of perfection makes some people uncomfortable because many of us have been taught that no one is perfect. We ask you to resist the temptation to exchange the word for another,more comfortable yet less specific,word.

Let’s begin the practice of attracting perfect customers now.