What Role Do You Have With Your Customers? Order Taker or Strategic Player

Hey everybody, it's Tara, Bryan, and you are listening to the Course Building Secrets® podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business? If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hey, everybody, welcome to today's episode, I am thrilled that you are here listening today. Alright, so today's episode is really an important one. And for those of you who are working for other people, right, either you have customers or clients, you are working in some capacity. There's a really core concept that I want to talk about today, that really applies to any kind of business that you're in. And there is a difference between being an order taker

and a consultant. And I'm going to walk you through each one of these and why you need to move more into the consulting role with your clients, regardless of what it is you're helping them with. Alright, so there is a book called The Challenger sale, which I love. Because what it does is it really puts you in a position to lead the conversation to ask the right questions, and really be able to help people either see, or uncover things about their business that they just can't see. One of my favorite quotes is that you can't read the label from within the bottle. And this is so so true. When you're too close to your business, your product, your course, your program, whatever it is that you are out in the marketplace selling.

And this happens to every single business owner, and is something that's super important. And it is honestly one of the reasons why you hire someone else to help you right, you may hire somebody, or look for somebody or become somebody's

you know, person, because you need an extra pair of hands, right, you need somebody to just do the work and execute on the plans that you've created.

And that's great, there's a need for that for sure. However, most of the time, what you need is somebody who can give you the big picture who can help you with the strategy to help uncover the pieces and parts that make your job easier. And actually see the things that maybe you're not seeing in your business. So this is also super important when you show up as a as a service provider, as a product provider to your people is what role do you want to play in the relationship? Do you want to be an extra pair of hands? Do you want to be the company, the owner who's just making things happen, right, taking the list and just checking the list off and doing the things? Or do you also want to be their partner and a consultant, which is actually helping them, look at the big picture, look at the strategy, see things that they may be missing, and play a role in helping them look beyond where they are today. And ask critical questions or solve problems or just really look at things be able to look at things from a different perspective for your clients. And it's super important to really be honest with yourself about where you want to fall, you know, in either camp, and and then once you do that, then you know how you can show up and serve your customers. So there's not a mismatch in expectations. I was talking to a client the other day and she was super frustrated because she was working with an agency and they were doing a lot of activities. But they weren't really helping her get to the next level. Right? They weren't really helping her understand how to grow her business, how to take what she was doing and actually make it better so she could get more sales, get more customers. And she was super frustrated with that because she felt like that should be part of the relationship.

And so there's a mismatch right there right that the company itself was just it

implementing based on what she was asking them to do. And she was looking to them to provide that expertise to help give her that roadmap for how to move forward. And, and so it's a super big issue on both sides of the fence in terms of meeting expectations.

Here's the other thing, if you are a service provider or selling a product, and you find yourself in an order taking role, then you really can only execute, right, you can only do what they ask, versus really being able to provide solutions, or really help them uncover some some challenges that you know, could help them right. So, a lot of times, if you're working with different customers, you can see different patterns or different things that are working or not working or, or whatever else. And you are in a unique position to be able to show them how things could be better how things could work differently.

And so really being able to establish yourself as the expert as the strategist that can help them will set you apart. And I'm telling you, you actually will get paid a lot more, if you become that strategic partner for them, if you're offering solutions, if you are, you know, sort of showing them the map for how you know things could be.

So I want to challenge you today, you know, regardless of where you are, are you on the customer client side and you're looking or maybe frustrated with a current partner you have, because they're just doing the things that you're asking them to do, but they're not actually providing you that next level of value? It is because they are an order taker or an implementer. And not actually working as a strategist or consultant in your business? Or are you in the business of helping customers and clients and are frustrated with the fact that you feel like you're doing things that don't necessarily make sense, or they don't feel like they're the right things.

Or you have some ideas that you want to give to your clients, it's really being able to position yourself differently than just being an order taker take meaning you just take their order and and give them what they have asked for. If you find yourself in that position, then it's time to step into the role of a consultant or strategist. And let me give you an example I have, I have another client right now who is using an approach that maybe worked when they were trying to sell one on one services or speaking engagements. But because they've, they've packaged their program, and are selling it online. They're struggling with how to focus their attention on attracting the right people, and then putting them into the program, their whole goal was to simplify what they were doing. But instead, they've just made it much more complicated because they keep adding pieces and parts that don't lead back to their initial strategy. And so we've been working with them to try and unravel some of that thinking, to put them in the right sort of place to be able to grow and scale what they have, versus adding more complexity to something that doesn't need to have that level of complexity. If we were an order taker agency, we would just say, yep, we'll go ahead and and, you know, fulfill on that request, regardless if it made sense, or if it was too expensive, or was something that just didn't match anything that we were

working on with the rest of our clients, but we're not. And so therefore our goal is to help them reach their goals. Sometimes the activities that clients do are in direct opposition of their of their goals, right? You've seen that over and over again, if you've worked with clients. And so for us, it's a matter of stepping into that role of being the consultant or being the strategist, even if it means having those hard conversations. So I wanted to bring this up today as a big tip because I think when people are first getting into, you know, one on one work service or product based businesses, they tend to, to show up as order takers. And that gets you started gives you sort of some information about what

If you know what is happening out there in the market, but very clearly, and very quickly, you find that either the relationship falls short the results fall short or something else falls short because you're not able to lead that relationship in the best way that you know, based on your experience. And so if you need it, here's your permission today to step into the role of a consultants in your relationships with your clients. If you are looking to figure out how do you do that, how do you position yourself differently to show up in a way that puts you in a leadership position

in that relationship, reach out, leave a comment or reach out to us. We're happy to help you through this particular challenge. Because this is when you start to see the ball moving. You have clients that come back over and over and over again and refer and become your raving fans. Because at the end of the day, people want to be successful, not necessarily right. So you know, use that as you are moving forward. Alright, there you go. That is my course-building tip for today.