If you want to make more progress towards goals that really matter to you, we have a somewhat different approach that may help you…
It all emerged in a conversation with a business owner whose business is doing very well. He’s in a good place.
But he’s hungry. Wants more. And he has some big targets to hit this year in terms of new customers.
He has lots of marketing bases covered, but one area he’s weak in is referrals. He has lots of customers - but gets very few referrals.
So we started talking about how he could get 100 referrals per year.
That ought to be very doable for a business his size, based on the number of customers he serves.
Our conversation started by focusing on his desired outcome; just like most people would, we sat down and started to plan out what steps he’d need to take to generate those 100 referrals in the next year.
That’s sensible, right?
Well, yes it is. BUT… it might not be the best way to formulate a plan.
Truth is we were finding it a bit tricky to pin down the specific actions.
So we inverted the conversation.
Instead of asking what steps he needed to take to generate 100 more referrals per year, we pretended that he was already generating them and that our job is to make sure none of his customers ever send him a referral ever again.
It was liberating.
In twenty minutes we had a massive list of how he’d destroy his referral machine.
…you get the idea.
Now, all he had to do was the opposite of those things and he’ll build a powerful referral machine.
It seems counterintuitive, but it works incredibly well.
(And, by the way, this ‘Reverse’ approach can help solve various business and personal life problems as well!)
Maybe give it a try on something you’re working on – especially if it’s a difficult problem that you’re not sure how to solve.
Hope it helps.
