3
Like Attracts Like:
Whom Do You Like?
Pay any price to stay
in the presence of
extraordinary people.
Mike Murdock
The Leadership Secrets
of Jesus
VINCE LOMBARDI once said, “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.” That is, like attracts like—confidence attracts confident customers. The power of attraction lies in this principle of reciprocity. When we value ourselves and our business, potential customers are also able to see the value.
For your business to be its most attractive to others, start believing in yourself. When you believe in yourself, you will attract more people who also believe in you. These are the ones who are happy with your hours of operation, who find that you charge a fair price in exchange for full value, who bring others to your Web site. In short, when you feel good about you, then you will attract customers who appreciate you. Imagine your business consisting of only these types of customers. Imagine how easy it would be to serve them, no matter how their numbers might multiply. They would all be happy with your hours, your prices, and your policies and procedures, and their suggestions for improvement would only make your job easier.
If this sounds like a pipe dream, then keep reading. Part II gives specific instruction on how to create a Strategic Attraction Plan that will bring in customers who are perfect for you. This also applies to attracting perfect employees and other perfect stakeholders.
Do You Like Your Business?
We learned firsthand the importance of fully valuing our business so that others can value it, too. We decided to provide a complimentary service to our clients by creating an on-line bulletin board where they could post announcements every week to promote their businesses around the world. The guidelines for posting were very simple:Write the announcement as you wish it to appear, use proper grammar, keep it to two paragraphs in length, and submit it by Wednesday for Friday posting. However, over the course of a few months we noticed that the guidelines were being disregarded. Announcements were arriving after the Wednesday deadline, and they were sent with typos and poor grammar. Lengthy announcements were sent as attachments with a request for us to edit them. Our enjoyment for providing this service was diminishing quickly. We were ready to stop providing it, yet we were getting great satisfaction from facilitating these global connections between Synchronicity Strategists.
It suddenly occurred to us that our frustration came from the impression that our subscribers, in their carelessness, were indicating a lack of appreciation for this service.
Since we believe that how each of us views others is simply a reflection of our own behavior, we realized that we were not fully valuing our own service. We had let it become a chore instead of a labor of love. We were not treating the bulletin board like a precious commodity. And when we started taking our efforts for granted, so did those we wanted to serve. The minute we began spending time and energy to upgrade the look and features of the bulletin board to make it visually more appealing, we began attracting an abundance of announcements. Once again, the announcements began arriving on time. They were well written. And the subscribers followed our editorial format, so despite the increase in volume, the bulletin board took less time to manage.
Consider where in your business you might be taking yourself, your products, or your services for granted. Where do you feel that others are not fully appreciative of what you have to offer?
What did you enjoy doing in the past that now feels like a chore? Why does it feel like that? When did it start to feel like a chore?
Once you have answered these questions, ask yourself how you could increase your appreciation of yourself and your business. What changes, upgrades, or revisions could you make that would improve this area and make it more attractive to you and to others? Perhaps a service should be discontinued. If you were to decide to discontinue this service, how would that make your business more attractive? Where would you prefer to put the extra time, energy, and resources?
By clearly recognizing the tangible value of your services and your company, you automatically increase your capacity to attract perfect customers, employees, investors, vendors, and other stakeholders.
Perfection Is in the Eye of the Beholder
You are the same today that you are going to be
five years from now except for two things: the people
with whom you associate and the books you read.
—Charles Jones
You always have a choice as to whom you bring into your life. You can always, at any time, define who is most fitting for you to have in your business, in your social settings, in your life.
The principle behind the concept of a perfect customer or perfect employee lies in asking,What is a perfect match for me? Said another way,Whom do I deserve to have in my life?
Each of us gets to say who or what is a perfect match for ourselves. What is perfect for one person is not necessarily perfect for another. You are the only one who knows what is perfect for you.
When our customers first hear us speak about this concept, they often say that they don’t know what is perfect for them. Our answer is always the same:We all know what is not perfect for us. For example, it may not be perfect for you to have an employee who comes late to work every day. It may not be perfect for you to have a customer who does not pay in a timely manner for a product or service that you provide. Once you start considering what is not perfect, you will find that you can develop a long list of characteristics.
When you have recognized what is not perfect or is less than perfect, you can determine what is perfect for you by simply identifying the opposites of these characteristics. For example, it is not perfect for us to work with customers past 5:00 P.M.Monday through Thursday. We deserve to complete our work by 5:00 P.M. in order to have healthy, full, and balanced lives. So we declare that perfect clients support us in completing our work by 5:00 P.M. each workday.
Creating a Strategic Attraction Plan
When you make a list of items that you desire and deserve to have in your business and your life, you are starting to create a Strategic Attraction Plan. As we explored in chapter 1, this planning process begins with the alignment of your personal and business missions.
As you develop plans to improve and enhance the quality of each of the relationships in your life, you become more clear and aware of how you deserve to be treated in these relationships. More importantly, you also become more aware of how you want others to expect to be treated and served by you. As Gary Young, the president and CEO of Avela Corporation, writes,“I find it helpful to develop a mission-specific statement as it pertains to a few high-profile clients and let them know how I am developing the future as it pertains to them. My mission for my clients is to grow in ways that serve them and us. One of the first things I ask to know about a potential client is their mission statement to ensure that it is in alignment with mine.”
You, too, have a specific mission to offer a better, more efficient, or more cost-effective product or service to the community. Your business will falter and fail when you forget to stay focused on your particular mission. And you will lose your focus if you take the attitude that you will serve anybody and everybody. Your mission is to serve only those who want what you are best at providing. While good ideas can come from customer requests, the trick is to know if it’s a good idea for you.When a customer asks you to lower your prices, to provide a service that you don’t truly want to provide, or does not appreciate what you have to offer, remember, that is not your perfect customer!
What Do You Desire to Have in Your Business?
Play with the question of what you want in your business by embarking on a treasure hunt. Here are your instructions:
1.Acknowledge that each person you meet today has at least one perfect quality, a quality that you find attractive.
2.Your objective is to find that quality.
3.As soon as you identify the perfect quality, write it down.
At the end of the day, your list may look like this:
Has a nice smile
Gave me a compliment
34 Provided me with a referral
Has a very organized office
Dresses fashionably
Makes great cookies
Said“thank you”
These qualities are your treasures and the beginning of your list of what you desire to have in your life and your business. These are your declarations of what is perfect for you to have and attract. You may wish to play the game again tomorrow. Feel free to play it every day. You are limited only by how much treasure you can stand to amass.
If you play the game more often, you will notice that perfect people will start popping up everywhere. You may find that you have an experience similar to Kit Lutz, an independent beauty consultant with Mary Kay Cosmetics. She reports,“Yesterday at a BNI (Business Network International) meeting, I was drawn to one of our guests. Of all things, she is a chiropractor; she gave me advice on my back, which has been causing me great pain. She told me that she had sold Mary Kay about five years ago, so I asked her to attend our next meeting. She is now a customer of mine and is just exactly the quality of person that I want all of my customers to be. At the meeting, she told my team leader that there was just something about me that drew her to me.”
J. Richard Stanley, president of My Printer, reports a similar experience: “One day after all of my staff had departed, a customer came in to pick up her order. We had not met before, so she did not know that I was the owner of My Printer. She shared how much she appreciated David (our graphic artist) putting forth more effort than what she expected and that the final result was everything she hoped for. I was a bit taken aback. It has been so rare that compliments like hers have been volunteered. The dialogue that followed was warm and unguarded. It was so uplifting! After three days, this heightened sense of enthusiasm is still with me.”
As you create and develop your own Strategic Attraction Plan, you will also experience the ease with which you attract perfect customers, employees, investors, and more. You can attract virtually any type of person that is perfect for you to have in your life and your business—if you are willing to do so and if you believe that you deserve to attract what you desire.