The Revenue Growth Habit: The Simple Art of Growing Your Business by 15% in 15 Minutes Per Day

14Marinating in PositivityThe Magic of Proactive Customer Conversations

The easiest and fastest way to change your mindset is to listen to your customers describe your company, products, services, and value. If, as we established in the last chapter, your customers speak more emotionally, compellingly, and effectively about your firm than you do, then we need to spend time absorbing their thoughts and feelings.

Customer Complaints Find Us

Unhappy customers bring their concerns to us automatically. We don't need to ask for the negative stuff. It finds us on its own. This is human nature. It's why we are quick to call the restaurant manager over when the waiter hasn't brought us our drinks or food in a timely fashion. (In your customers' world: “It was late! I can't keep waiting for this. My guys are standing around!”) But when the waiter is meeting our expectations, we almost never call the manager over to compliment his staff member.

We are wired to complain but say little when things are as we expect them to be.

The problem with this is that the customers with problems (who are the minority) become the squeaky wheels, but the customers who are pleased (the great majority) tend to be invisible. So we spend our weeks hearing from, and servicing, the unhappy customers. We naturally marinate in negativity.

But We Have to Go Get the Good Stuff

When we talk with happy customers we are exposed to the great positivity with which most of our customers think about us. It serves to ...