How often do you ask your clients for feedback – you know when you have finished a job for them, or part way through a project? How happy are they with what you have done?

And when you do ask, isn’t it great when they tell you how fantastic they think you are and how great the service was from you. It makes us feel awesome doesn’t it, nice, warm and fuzzy inside. But, as awesome as it makes you feel how useful is it to help you grow your business?

Of course we want our clients to be delighted by us and what we do, and we should be striving for nothing less. But to help us grow in the long term we really need to know two important things:

What is it that the client loves about what we do and how we do it; what makes them come back for more, and tell others about us, and what don’t they like, what doesn’t work for them and what could we do better.

Both sets of information are vital to us, but as with all things, if you don’t ask you don’t get.

We think we know

We all think we know why people come to us and why they use us, but are we right?

The more we find out what it is they love about us the easier it is for us to market that ‘secret sauce’ to the world at large. And, were we right? Was it the thing we thought it was, or was it something else, or what we thought plus that something else too?

There may be a fantastic differentiator lying there in hiding that you didn’t know existed, and once you uncover it – imagine the 

The other, harder to get feedback, is the negative stuff, the what wasn’t great about you. It’s hard to get because often people don’t like to be negative, especially to your face, and it’s harder to accept because, well the business is our baby, isn’t it? No it’s not. It’s business and we want it to grow.possibilities.

Business is never personal, and if you could improve what you do and the service you deliver, wouldn’t you? Well of course you would.

Ask the clients you are working with currently to give you very direct feedback. Ask them to be brutally honest and take what they say on board and use it to your advantage. The long term results could be really awesome.