The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

service
; they focus on customer 
acquisition
.
Emerging organizations first need people to know about them, then do
everything they can to make them happy. Remember, customer satisfaction
cannot exist without a customer first.
American corporations have become so obsessed with “customer satisfaction”
that they've lost sight of the first—and most vital—factor: customer acquisition!
“Keep the main thing the main thing,” as they say in the South. Customer
satisfaction shouldn't be an initiative but something so inherent to an
organization that all of its attention is focused on customer acquisition. To garner
the attention of a potential customer or market and then fail to capitalize on
creating a user of your products and services makes no sense and is the most
expensive of mistakes. Yet that is what happens with far too many organizations.
Let's say that a company successfully gets my attention long enough that I
consider its products but then doesn't do enough to earn my business and “shut
me down” (i.e., make me a customer). Not being a customer makes it impossible
for me to become a satisfied customer. I am just saying don't put the cart before
the horse. Notice how executives become concerned about customer satisfaction
and then start initiatives to conduct customer satisfaction surveys of the
individuals who became customers—and completely ignore surveying those who
did not become customers. This is a huge miss and a great example of an “only
practice” (discussed in chapter 10) that will show you immediately how to
acquire more customers. In addition to surveying those you acquired, garnering
input from those who didn't buy will disclose much more to the company about
true customer satisfaction! Don't you want to find out 
why
you didn't acquire the
business? You think you didn't satisfy a customer and therefore never made one?

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Most companies fail not due to lack of quality in their product, service, or their
offering. They fail because they don't take enough strategic actions to acquire the
support—the client—in the first place. That is why I suggest that customer
satisfaction is the wrong target—because you don't even get the opportunity to
“satisfy” someone who never evolves into a customer.
My point here is not to negate customer satisfaction after acquisition but to
shift your attention back to acquisition. Also understand that it is impossible to
somehow completely prevent customer complaints. There are, of course,
measures you can take to improve your product or service. But when dealing
with human beings, you are going to face complaints and dissatisfaction. It's just
that simple. The best you can do is resolve complaints and dissatisfaction when
they emerge (and they will—I promise) and treat them as opportunities to be in
communication with your clients. What you need is more people interacting with
your product or service and the company. Yes, complaints will increase when
dealing with human beings—but so will praise. Increase the number of users of
your product or service through massive action, not through massive initiatives
that cause your people to back off from the acquisition in the first place.
I launched my first company under the naive impression that I would work
with a handful of clients and really concentrate my attention on them (thereby
eliciting great customer satisfaction). I assumed that this would give me an
advantage in the market and allow me to deliver quality service and really make
a difference. And although it was a nice idea, it just didn't work out that way.
First of all, this plan didn't put me on a scale necessary to build a business with a
wide reach to get me attention, and I fell way short of dominance, not to mention
the cash flow necessary to continue to support clients. Just as important, it didn't
allow me to share my information with enough of the successful people.
When I finally got my thinking to the right levels and committed to expanding
my footprint and taking on 10 times more clients, I multiplied my exposure—
tenfold—and increased the number of successful people and companies I had
been avoiding. I shifted my focus to monumental quantities instead of just
serving a handful of clients, which enhanced my ability to spread the word about
myself and my company to a growing number of people. The grumbles I
received did intensify—right along with the compliments I received. In fact, I
enjoyed more successes than I suffered failures because I was exposed to greater
numbers of people using my material. Augmenting the numbers of attendees at
my seminars and workshops amplified the number of quality clients I had—and
expanded the number of individuals who were exposed to my ideas and
techniques. More people were talking about my methodologies among their

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associates, who would then spread the word to people 
they
knew, and so on. The
more people talked about me, the more I was able to expand my footprint, get
more attention, acquire more customers—and 
then
create more customer
satisfaction. Think about it like this: Would Facebook and Google be better off if
they provided their services to only a few people? If they would, I wouldn't even
use them as examples.
The practice of customer satisfaction is not limited to how you treat customers
after
you acquire them; it should also focus on what you do to attain them in the
first place. The quality of the clients you attain will have a direct effect on your
level of customer satisfaction. You will not get to quality without seeking
quantity. Remember as well what we discussed in the previous chapter: that
criticisms and complaints are inevitable indications that you are growing as you
should. So disregard criticism, welcome and handle complaints, and do
everything you can to expand your footprint. The more people you serve, the
better your chances are of interacting with quality customers.
To be clear, you certainly want to deliver—and exceed—on the promises you
make. However, if you focus on delivering exceptional 10X service prior to
acquisition, this part will come naturally after acquisition. I am assuming you
have a great product, service, idea, or investment. Now you need to increase
your support base for it. There are, regrettably, thousands of organizations in
existence that sell inferior products every day. Although I'm certainly not
suggesting you push substandard offerings or sacrifice your product's quality, I
am trying to highlight an unfortunate reality: Domination of market share tends
to trump all other things. Companies that sell poor products make acquisitions
their number one goal—and then handle any problems with their products or
offerings after they get users on board.
No organization in the world has created massive success while limiting its
acquisitions. Apple learned this lesson the hard way for too long. It got killed by
Microsoft for decades—a company any Apple user will claim sold an inferior
product—because while Microsoft made its merchandise available to the masses,
Apple focused on just a small number of people. Notice the shift that Apple has
made in the past few years, making its products appealing to the masses. Three
percent of all households have an iPad, and 63 percent are using an MP3 player,
with Apple getting over 45 percent of that share. Apple is clearly adopting
“massive action” in a big way these days with the goal of dominating with its
footprint!
Remember, even if your product and company deliver perfectly, you are going
to get complaints from customers—because they're human. You can't keep

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everyone happy all the time. It's a mistake to be scared of complaints. Instead,
encourage them, look for them, find them, and then resolve them. Complaints
are your customers' very direct way of telling you exactly how to make your
product better. If you approach every situation wrought with anxiety about
offending a client, then you will never attain dominance in the market.
Let's go back to Apple as an example. This company doesn't worry today
about customer satisfaction so much that it neglects to continue building
products that people are willing to stand in line to get. It recognizes the proper
order of objectives: (1) acquire customers (via an amazing product or service
that you've worked on at 10X levels to create); (2) impress them with how great
you are during the acquisition process; and (3) establish customer loyalty
(through repeat purchases, support, word-of-mouth marketing, etc.). When
you're building a business, your primary target is not customer satisfaction (yet);
it's acquisition, referral, and loyalty and then 
more
acquisition using the
customers you've attained. I want everyone to have my products, not just some
people. I want masses of people—not just a few—to know about me and my
products. I won't be satisfied until 6 billion people do. I want everyone to
purchase from me over and over, and I want to be on their minds so regularly—
and make such an impact on them and their companies—that they never even
think about using anyone else.
This line of thinking differs from concentrating so intensely on customer
satisfaction that members of the sales team worry about upsetting, pressuring,
and pressing hard for fear that doing so may damage their clients' opinion of
them. I know sales teams that are penalized when they receive customer
complaints, which seems odd to me for several reasons. For one, it suggests that
these grievances could be avoided, which they clearly cannot. Even if you could
avoid them, why would you want to? Complaints and problems are opportunities
to do more business and solve more issues—and to give your customers the
chance to spread the word about how great you are at making their problems go
away!
If you truly want to find out what your organization's customer acquisition and
loyalty weaknesses are, then survey the people who you do 
not
acquire. The
sooner you can ask them questions, the better—ideally, as they leave or refuse
the business. And be sure to ask them about the