Customers are the lifeblood of a business. You’re delivering value to someone, and in return they pay you for that value.

So why do so many companies make it hard for an interested person to connect? It’s almost as if they don’t really want the business.

Sure, customers can be a pain sometimes. They … want stuff. They’d rather have it their way than the way you currently do it. But I assume you’d rather have customers than not. Right?

Do any of these sound familiar?

  • The contact information on your website is hard to find.
  • Your LinkedIn or Facebook details are out of date because you set them up years ago.
  • Contact emails are getting sent to your spam folder – or nowhere – because … who knows?
  • Potential customers who walk in the door are ignored because your people are “busy” with more important things.
  • Replying to your newsletter gives no indication at all whether anybody even saw the message.
  • Calling you on the phone goes to a voice message tree that just wears people down.
  • Your website tells me who you are (or were a few years ago when you set it up) but is really vague about what you’re selling.
  • Your marketing materials speak in a language that assumes I’m up to speed on all the industry buzzwords and initials.
  • It seems impossible to connect with an Actual Human Being™ rather than just sending messages into the void.

I have no doubt that you’ve experienced every one of these frustrations, as I have. So how many of them are experienced by YOUR potential and existing customers?

I understand how many of these are done in the pursuit of efficiency. But they’re being done at the cost of gaining new customers and keeping your current ones.