I think I may have stumbled onto the perfect description of what everybody wants.
Imagine hiring a personal trainer who says:
“I’ll do the sit-ups. You get the six-pack.”
Sign me up. :)
The more I think about it, the more I realize this has been one of the biggest lessons of my last 30 years.
People want the outcome.
They don’t necessarily want the activity required to create the outcome.
That’s an important distinction.
Especially if you’re in the business of helping people get results.
Most of us naturally start by thinking about everything our clients could do.
They could write a newsletter.
They could send postcards.
They could call their past clients.
They could create videos.
They could orchestrate referrals.
They could build an elaborate follow-up system.
And we’re right.
They could.
But will they?
That’s a much more interesting question.
I’ve found that the closer you can get to doing the sit-ups for them, the more likely they are to actually get the result.
That’s the thinking behind our World’s Most Interesting Postcard.
I want someone to get a better Return on Relationship from the 150 people who already know them, like them, and trust them.
There are dozens of things I could teach them to do.
Instead, I ask them to do one thing:
Give us the names.
That’s it.
We create the postcard.
We write the interesting content on the front.
We write the referral-oriented message on the back.
We print it.
We address it.
We mail it.
And then we do it again next month.
And the next.
Everybody they know is never more than 30 days away from physically having their name and contact information in their hands.
They don’t have to remember.
They don’t have to write anything.
They don’t have to add “send postcards” to their to-do list.
We do the sit-ups.
They get the six-pack.
So here’s an interesting question to ask about your business:
What result do your clients really want… and how much of the work required to get it could you remove from them?
The breakthrough isn’t creating a better system for your clients to follow.
It’s creating a system they barely have to participate in at all.
That’s when things get interesting.