YOU Choose Your Customers

Hi Warriors,

Ok, the other thread about feeling sorry for WSO sellers is closed, but I still wanted to comment:

YOU choose your customers. Period.

I really "get" what the others were saying about rude, demanding, unreasonable customers with an entitlement mentality. I've done call center customer service work for 10 years and have dealt with these types of customers on a daily basis for all of those 10 years. (It's been a LONG 10 years. )

Unfortunately, as an employee, I had no choice but to deal with them, however rude, unreasonable, demanding, etc. they were. It's left a very bad taste in my mouth and little (VERY little) respect for customers in general. (The customer is NOT always right. But that's another story...) My pet peeves are customers who treat me like I'm incompetent at my job and customers who flat out lie to me.

All of the complaints, comments, etc. about WSO buyers are exactly why I refuse to sell to Warriors in general. If someone finds me OFF of the Warrior forum and is willing to treat their business like a business (and pay normal prices without complaint), then I'll deal with them. Otherwise, forget it.

So when I created my business, I deliberately structured it in a way to avoid almost all of the headaches people were mentioning in that thread. The biggest choice I made was my choice of customer. I won't deal with Warriors in general or people like them (Average Joe Beerbelly) who are trying to figure out how to make money online from their jammies but have NO CLUE what it really takes to run a business (and aren't willing to learn).

1. I deliberately chose OFFLINE clients with already established businesses who need online marketing help. Even if they're really just getting started, they understand they must invest in their business.

Except for my $20 book, my lowest-ticket item is $200 and it's an easy sale. Everything else is higher than that. (Believe me, $200 is NOTHING in the scheme of actually building a business.)

2. That $200 product (a membership) is a combination of physical and digital products. While someone COULD post the digital portion of the membership on other sites illegally, it's not very likely given my target market. And quite frankly, even if they do, it's not worth my time to worry about it. 1): Those digital products are only half of the membership and are incomplete without the rest of the membership package. 2): Those digital products are a small portion of all of my offerings. The rest is a combination of physical products and services.

3. Like any good business person, I know how important good customer service is and that some refunds are just a part of doing business. I don't have a problem with that. Frankly, in the beginning stages of my business, I'm less worried about losing the money in a refund than about they fact that they didn't like/weren't satisfied with what I offered.

I've taken a long-term view of my business and even though every penny counts, I'm really less concerned with the actual $200 of my base product than about the fact that my customers like it and are satisfied with it and want to stick around.

4. I will NOT tolerate a rude, demanding customer/member/client with an entitlement mentality. I've dealt with it way too much in my customer service day jobs and will NOT tolerate it in my business. I've suffered a LOT of abuse as a customer service rep and won't put up with it in my biz.

As someone else mentioned, customers are important to our businesses. It's why we're in business in the first place. But I don't need any ONE single customer. The instant a customer/member/client gets rude and demanding, I'll refund them and ban them, period. I won't be too quick to do it, but I will NOT be abused.

5. Different businesses require different customer expectations and support. A software product will require more support than say, an information course that's a notebook and some CDs and DVDs.

I deliberately chose a business model that requires very little hand holding at the base level, which is virtually NO customer support required other than to see that they got their initial membership package in the mail.

My next steps in the funnel are information products (which require minimal customer service support) and then coaching/consulting at the bottom, which obviously requires more support, but I can charge accordingly.

Bottom line: Choose your business wisely and set boundaries!

Know what you're getting into (as much as possible anyway) and clearly set boundaries and expectations from the beginning. This will go a LONG way towards avoiding difficult customers and excessive refund demands.

Paul Meyers, Kindsvater, etc. were spot on in their comments.

Cory Greer is dead wrong in his comments about being available all the time to his customers. Although actually, I think this is more of a miscommunication issue than anything else. Customers and clients WILL run you ragged with unreasonable demands if you let them. I saw it all the time my in my customer service day jobs. Clients/customers WILL expect service on Christmas Day, same-day service, unlimited help/support 24/7 for free, etc. if you don't set boundaries from the beginning.

Boundaries are important.

I've signed contracts (for $7K and $1500 respectively) with my mentor which specified that no refunds would be given for any reason. She's not cheap, but she offers some of the best stuff out there. And the clients she attracts (my colleagues) are some of the finest business women I know. We've all paid multiple thousands of dollars to her and I simply cannot imagine any of them demanding a refund unless it was a dire "my-house-burned-down-and-my-hubby's-in-the-hospital" kind of reason.

As Dan Kennedy says to business owners who complain about their customers, "Who brought them there?"

Point well taken.

Warriors like to complain about "gurus" and often trash their applications, claims to need to "work with only a select few", etc. Too many think it's just another sales gimmick or scam.

It's not. The need to screen your clients or take only certain clients is very real, as many have discovered.

Michelle