Good Marketing, Good Business

067: Over-Servicing Clients In The Way Of Your Business Growth?

September 01, 2024 • Shannon Stone • Episode 67

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Well-intentioned business owners (and their team) will pour additional time and resources into their clients when sadly it’s not needed, noticed or necessary. This additional emphasis of trying to go above and beyond, pleasing clients, will burn holes in pockets and sink your business if you’re not careful.

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

  • How over-servicing your clients is getting in the way of growing your business
  • How to prioritise your business growth activities while maintaining the high quality of work you’re known for with your clients
  • How Parkinson’s Law of “time expands to that which time is given” can help you minimise the time spent per task and reduce procrastination

This could be one of my favourite episodes, enjoy!

Links Mentioned:

→ Join the waitlist for the Service Business Boardroom here

→ Episode 26: 3 Phases Of Growing And Strengthening Your Team

Resources:


If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Shannon Stone:

H ey guys.

Shannon Stone:

Welcome to the podcast, super excited to jump into this topic. Today we are talking about whether over-servicing clients is in the way of your business growth. It's going to be maybe a little bit of a savage one. I feel like some real honest home truths might be shared, so I definitely encourage you to listen in for sure, but also to see how this applies to you and your business. Sometimes it's those cold, hard, honest truths are the greatest things we actually need to hear. And I do want to preface this by saying over-servicing clients. It can be a problem, and it actually is a problem for so many businesses where they pour way too much into clients. But what I'm not saying by this and we'll talk about it is I'm not saying to reduce the quality of work that you do for people. Don't reduce meeting all the deliverables and even surprising and delighting your clients. I still want you to carry forward the beautiful essence of how you work with your clients, but I want to share with you and just shine a bit more of a light to, in certain ways, how over-servicing your clients can actually get in the way of your business growth. So listen to this and listen to it twice, because I think it's one that we probably need to hear, and we need to hear a couple of times, and maybe every so often as well.

Shannon Stone:

So there's a few things that I'm going to share with you today. The first thing I want to start with is you might have heard if you, or how you spend your time and money. It really reveals what you value in life, and the same thing goes into business how you spend your time, particularly your time in business, and also how you invest in things. Great exercise to look at your bank statements and to see, okay, where am I actually spending money? Same goes for your time. If you look at your calendar or you track your time, having a look through and getting that logbook, essentially, of how you're spending those two really valuable resources. It shows you what you value most and it's a great exercise to just dive into and see. It's just revealing. I think it's really really revealing.

Shannon Stone:

But when it comes to businesses, how people spend their time, it's radically insightful to their thought process, to what they prioritize, what they think they need to spend their attention on. And what I most believe about businesses is that we need to put our breathing mask on first before we put it on everyone else. So you know, in the plane the plane is going down, they're telling you you've got to put your mask on first before helping out your neighbor. Do we always do that? Well, I've never been in a plane that goes down and touch wood, that never happens but we always have to essentially put our breathing mask on first.

Shannon Stone:

So in business, you have to prioritize your business and your business growth as a priority, not in place of other things. I think that's a really important thing to remember, especially as we're talking about over-servicing clients. It's not that you're replacing certain things, we're just shifting the priority of it and we're shifting the order of it. So if you prioritize your business, your business growth, you actually need to do these things first, because if you don't, you're not going to have a business. You're not going to have a business that fulfills you. You're not going to have a business that runs the way that it needs to. And as time goes on and things start to chip away at you, maybe you're overpouring yourself into clients or certain type of work or whatever it might be, above the needs of your actual business. Your business is not going to hang around for as long as you would like it to and you're not going to get what we need or what you need from your business in order to have it live to its full potential. That includes from a business owner's perspective. I think fulfillment is definitely a really big one, but obviously paying yourself, paying yourself healthily, being able to expand and grow a team as well and create jobs for people, giving your clients an even better quality of service because you do grow it in the way where you can add more value to them. Your systems make things so much more efficient for them. It strengthens the service that you're delivering to them. You've got a great team that you're building who are really well equipped in what you do. So all of these things, these are the things that are to do with your business growth, and if you keep yourself small, if you only focus on what's in front of you, you're never really going to get any further than where you currently are.

Shannon Stone:

Okay, so next thing I want to share with you is if you would like more clients, and what I'm going to share it's not a soft landing at all. I don't want to butter it up to make it sound weeder than it is, but for so many businesses, they need to deprioritize their current clients and, like it almost makes me feel sick to say that, even to say that to someone, you need to lessen the time, the emphasis, the importance that you place on those clients above your own needs, for all the reasons we just explained. So takeaway is can you deprioritize your current clients, not stop helping them, not stop doing any of the good work that you're doing, but do it in a way where you can start to make space for the needle movers in your business and, honestly, how things should actually be done in your business. Honestly, how things should actually be done in your business. If your business was a pie chart. You're probably spending at least 50% of your time on client orientated activities. Now we'll talk a little bit more about the time we give.

Shannon Stone:

Something is the time that it takes, but what I want to bring your attention to is you're probably spending so much more time where it's actually not needed, not needed, not valued, not noticed, not reimbursed as well from a business perspective. So I want to tell you, if you do want more clients, in a sense we have to deprioritize the current clients to make more space for the needle movers in your business. And what I want to share with you because we've all probably been employees in some regard you're not an employee. An employee spends probably 80, 90% of their time doing the work In business. If you spend 80 to 90% of your time even sometimes 50% of your time doing the work, you don't really have a business or you're not going to have a business for as long as you would like in the way that you would like it to.

Shannon Stone:

So this reminder or this realization that you are a business and you're not an employee, it's a completely different playing field of how you divvy up your time, how you prioritize things, and let this be a reminder of all the other things you should be focusing on in business. You know a business does much more than an employee You've got. What you should have is business development activities, your lead generation, marketing activities, your sales activities, sending out proposals, all these kind of things. These are really big, important needle movers that every single business should be prioritizing. And when I say prioritizing, make that first. It doesn't mean your clients are going to, you're going to drop the ball on them. You're just going to start prioritizing some of those more important things so that you've even got clients to service in future, because there is a timeline and you would know this. There's a time when clients come to an end.

Shannon Stone:

I would love to say that you work with clients for life. That is definitely the goal, but for a range of different circumstances it isn't always that way. There is that natural attrition where clients do start to slowly drop off or whatever. It is the nature of the work that you do. Maybe it doesn't make sense, it's project-based, for example. I don't know. That would be on you to have a look at and to investigate a little bit more into. So the non-soft landing is can we deprioritize your current clients to make more space for the needle movers.

Shannon Stone:

Second point on that was really noticing that you're a business. You're not an employee. Even though you might be an employee within your business, a part of your time has to go into doing the work. Don't ever stop that. That is a big chunk of why you have a business, but you also have a range of other activities that you or your team need to consistently be doing as well. If you would like more clients, if you'd like your business to grow and on this I do want to share so if you have been working your business the way it currently has been, the way that you work with your clients, the way you prioritize tasks it's pretty much evidence as to where you're at at the moment and if you're happy with where you're at, that's amazing. But if you want to grow bigger, if you want to start moving your business in a bigger direction and work with more of those clients, you have to start doing things differently. And when I say differently, I don't mean change the work that you do or do less quality work by clients. I think I've reiterated that enough. It's more about how you prioritize the really important areas in your business. So sometimes it's just switching things around. Sometimes switching what you do first versus what you do second, how you set up your week and all those kinds of things can really make a huge difference.

Shannon Stone:

Okay, next thing around over-servicing your clients when it isn't required. So we can easily and I think because we love the work we do, we love the clients we work with, it's so easy to over-service clients but sometimes it's not needed, sometimes it's not noticed. Let's be honest, you're the expert and not them, so they're not going to notice when you do something above and beyond because it's within your wheelhouse. They have no idea. So sometimes it's not needed, it's not noticed and ultimately it's not necessary. So the way people can overextend their service to their clients is pouring more time into their clients beyond what they've engaged you for.

Shannon Stone:

For others it might be excessive communication. So keeping clients updated and this could be two ways. It could be that you want to. I know a business who overly communicates to their clients and it's beyond. It's beyond what, and I've heard beautiful business do amazing things, but clients have provided feedback to say the communication is, although it's great, I don't need to know. You know down to the granular. So sometimes it could be excessive communication. It could also be overextending your availability as well, depending on the work that you do.

Shannon Stone:

If you do anything strategic or consulting, like you know, a phone call from a client, depending how you've packaged up your services. For me, I allow my clients to contact me as often, whenever often, as they need. That's how I love to work with people, but for some people their time is limited to the sessions they provide for their clients. And if clients are calling you outside of that and that's not the package they've signed up for with you, you're overextending your availability and even just the headspace it takes up just by having to think about another conversation, an additional conversation you've had with someone, a client, that is not within the scope, it's not necessarily, and or maybe they should be in a different package with you. So just a few insights into how you could be over-servicing your clients and, like I mentioned, it could be not needed, not noticed, not necessary.

Shannon Stone:

And to summarize this over-servicing of your clients sometimes or slash a lot of the time or all the time, this over-servicing can be a very big chokehold to your business growth and if your business doesn't grow to where you want it to or need it to, then it's almost like a ticking time bomb. It's like it's going to get to a point where either one your business is not performing profitable the way that it needs to be, and that's always going to be a problem. Cash flow is always going to be a problem. And then, I think, the fulfillment piece so many people will walk away from businesses or clients or opportunities because they're just done. So you need to be really mindful and I guess sometimes rein yourself in or even just your awareness or a checkpoint of like are we overextending on these projects? Are we overextending beyond the point of where it needs to go? There's some reflections for you and for your team to have a look at.

Shannon Stone:

Okay, the last thing I wanted to share is a Parkinson's law, and I've summarized the quote. But basically time expands to that which time is given. So you know, if you give yourself 10 minutes to do something, it's going to take you 10 minutes. If you give yourself an hour to do something, it's going to take you an hour to do that thing. Same goes. It goes all walks of life or walks of business, but same goes, definitely in business.

Shannon Stone:

Say you, every single month you complete a client report. You know you do reports for your clients. How long does that actually take to do? There's kind of like two parts to tasks. Sometimes it's like the time it takes to actually do the task and then second part is the time it takes, or the time it's taking up in your head thinking about doing the task, and I can't stand things hovering around in my mind. I rather just get the task done.

Shannon Stone:

But I love this Parkinson's law. Would I call it a skill? Sure, it's a skill, but it's definitely something I've been flexing a lot more recently that I encourage you to do. It'll be an action step for today to give yourself or challenge yourself to minimize the time you're giving certain tasks. So maybe you're doing this client report for a client. If really realistically, it takes 30 minutes to do it, I want you to have 30 minutes in your calendar to do that client report and like as if a timer is, and put a timer on if that's what it takes, but a timer is about to go off and that is all you are spending on that particular task. And if it's a client report that you do every single month, you would probably have a template which is very similar to the report you sent last month, so you've already got an upper hand on getting this thing done.

Shannon Stone:

But I definitely suggest that you reduce the time or minimize the time you spend on certain tasks. Maybe you've got a presentation coming up instead of saying, okay, I'm going to spend half the day working on that, and maybe it does take half the day. Maybe that is realistic. It takes three hours. I know that's not half a day, but maybe it takes three hours to put together a presentation. You schedule that time into your calendar and it's the best of what you can create in that time. So time expands to that which time is given.

Shannon Stone:

It's a brilliant concept and I think it's one that really applies to over-servicing clients. So if you apply it to certain client tasks that you're doing, give it the time and let that be the time that you do it. Don't let it drag on. Don't let it drag on beyond and you will also know this yourself when you've got a really good list of like here's like six things I'm going to do and I'm just going to do them back to back, you will just get in there and you will get it done. But if you've got one thing on your calendar of like oh, today I really got to get that client report done. One, it's going to take up all that headspace, but you're extending and overextending the time it's going to take because you've added one thing to your task list. So I think we can flex your own muscles of getting things done by applying some of these principles. I know we can do so much if we set ourselves up for it in a really beautiful way.

Shannon Stone:

Okay, last thing, I guess to summarize or to really drive this home, because the topic of today is over-servicing clients in the way of your business growth. For a lot of people it definitely is, but if you rein in some of that time and that over-servicing of clients, it's only going to mean something if you reallocate that time that you get back wisely. Two ways to do this the actual time, the numbers of time you actually get back. You need to use that wisely. So things on business development, lead generation, marketing, getting reviews from your clients, case studies We've covered a lot of client generating ideas on the podcast, so definitely check out a lot of those.

Shannon Stone:

But also on reallocating your time wisely is the order in which you do things. So if growing your business is your number one priority. That's got to happen on any single day of the week. That's what's got to come first. The priority, the focus, the order in which you work on those activities needs to be number one. That is part of reallocating your time wisely.

Shannon Stone:

The last last thing that I will say on this is don't make the mistake, because when you do this, when you start to prioritize your business growth first, second is your client-orientated activities, and still all being done to an amazing high-quality standard that you're known for. If you do it in that order, you're going to start to take on more clients. You're going to get even more busy. What people can do especially because a lot of this is very behavior we're changing the behaviors you have in business. What most people will do is, when they get busy, they will drop their marketing, they will drop their lead generation, they will drop asking clients for reviews. So we want to change the behavior. We want your business to keep on growing month on month, year on year. So we need to find a way where you maintain this priority. So your stuff comes first, client stuff comes second. Time isn't spilling over into other areas as well. So I want you to remember that as you get busy other areas as well. So I want you to remember that as you get busy, your business still needs to come first.

Shannon Stone:

A lot of people will jump into the tools. Especially if you've got a team, you'll start to kind of lift the heavy load, which you can do. Obviously, it's business. Sometimes you need to do that, but you also need to focus on growing systems and strengthening or growing your team as well. We can grow in a lot of ways. We can get a lot of things done, not just by getting on the tools and doing the work and being an employee, but by building those systems, building the efficiency.

Shannon Stone:

There's a really good podcast episode which I will link, where I talked about how I grow a team. Number one is we get organized. Number two is we get productive. And number three is when we start to enhance some of the activities that we do within the business. Part of that is reallocating your time wisely, but getting organized and then getting productive. You will receive so much time back when you can do that. But that's a brilliant episode as well. So that is what I have for you today Action steps from today.

Shannon Stone:

Number one I want you to start challenging yourself to minimize the time you're giving tasks, so is there a particular task or multiple tasks that you do and you do on a regular basis or maybe even ad hocly. Maybe you don't give presentations all the time, but you do sometimes reduce the time you're going to give to finish that task. That is action step number one. Action step number two if you found this useful and you find the podcast useful and you're a service-based business, I would love to invite you to join the waitlist for the Service Business Boardroom. It's an online remote program that I've created to help businesses under $2 million in revenue to really help their business to become more profitable and more sustainable. So we're not just looking at growing your business from lead generation and clients perspective, but also putting the right systems and processes in place. How can we improve your sales process? How can we start to deploy some systems in your business? It's a very holistic way of growing your business from a two-folded perspective. It's that lead generation side, but it's also the other foundations that help to strengthen your business.

Shannon Stone:

A lot of the things that we just don't spend time time. Funny enough, we don't spend time to do them. So if you would like to join that waitlist, there is a link in the description. Otherwise, pop me a message on LinkedIn and I will send you the link for that. That is what I have for you today. If you have any questions, as always, do reach out, but I hope you have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle-moving episodes to help you and your friends.

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