Even though I intended this to be part of the other six ideas contained in the post How to Be a Strategic Advantage for Your Clients, this idea merited a post of its own. It’s too important to be buried in a longer post.

Your clients (and dream clients) are on the inside. You are on the outside. They know their business, but they don’t know your business. They also don’t easily come into contact with as many different businesses as you do in your role in sales.

You see things that they don’t see. You know things that they don’t know.

If you want to be a strategic advantage for your clients, you need to share with them what you know. You need to bring them ideas.

What Proactive Means

Your clients need you to be proactive. This doesn’t mean that you anticipate their needs, although that is good and necessary, too. What your clients mean by “being proactive” is that they need you to bring them ideas that they can use within their business.

We spend a lot of time diagnosing needs, tailoring our offerings to fit those needs, and selling the solutions that we build together with our clients. That’s all fine and good, but responding to needs that already exist is reactive, not proactive. To be proactive you have to help your client define and address a need that they don’t know that they have.

To be proactive, you need to bring your clients ideas that they can implement in their business, ideas that produce real and tangible results.

You Are in the Fashion Business

What’s next? How do we take it up a notch from here? How do we transform our business and move to our desired future?

Your clients and dream clients are searching for answers to these questions. In order to be a strong strategic partner and a competitive advantage, you have to think of yourself as being in the fashion business. You have to roll out your new line of ideas that can bring your clients better results. Once you have helped your clients produce the results at some level, you have to identify and bring the ideas that take them to the next level.

Your ideas are what will allow you to continue to help your client build their future, and it is what will allow you to grow your business with your clients. More still, your clients are hungry for these ideas.

Know How You Create Value

Your clients may not know what they need next. They may be too busy running their own business to have the time to go and find the next big idea, the idea that will bring them the transformative change they need. You fill this need for them by continually and continuously bringing them new ideas.

You know how you create value for your clients. You know what the newest, latest, and greatest offerings are—or could be. You become a strategic advantage for your clients when you become the pipeline of ideas that help them continue to notch their business up.

Questions

Are you more reactive in solving your client’s problems than you are proactive?

Is it enough to be able to solve your client’s problems after that fact? Or would you be a greater strategic resource by helping them with problems that they don’t yet know that they have.

Do your clients always know what they need next?

Do you move from quarter to quarter with new initiatives for your clients, initiatives that generate new and better results?

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