Business Lessons From Politicians

The key to attracting and keeping clients and achieving long-term success in business is to be known, liked and trusted by your target market.

The same goes for political success, of course – but you’d never know that from observing how they’ve been acting lately.

As every American can plainly see (and the public opinion polls clearly show), they’re all doing practically everything they can to be DIS-liked and DIS-trusted.

We can thank our 435 Representatives, 100 Senators and 1 President for providing some excellent examples of what NOT to do, if you want to be successful.

Here are just a few…

Fatal Error #1: Over-promising and under-delivering – How many times did President Obama and his administration repeatedly insist that the rollout of Obamacare was completely on track for a timely and proper launch?

Lesson For Business Owners: Be honest with your prospects and customers. If you’ve been promoting something and there’s any chance at all that it won’t be ready to go when promised, delay it. Sure, people will be disappointed – but that won’t be nearly as devastating as if you went ahead and launched when you’re not ready and things start to go wrong.

I’ve had all kinds of things go wrong myself – some my fault and some out of my control – and there’s no doubt something will get messed up in the future. So I don’t see any readon to ramp up the odds of failure by launching anything before I know it’s totally ready.

It’s often tempting to over-promise in order to secure a sale, but the victory in such a case is short-lived once the customer’s experience fails to live up to what you promised. It can be hard to do, especially when your competition is over-promising – but you must have the self-control to lose some sales in the short-term in order to keep customers long-term.

Fatal Error #2: Being selfish – Every politician says that they always think about and act in the interest of “what’s best for America,” but it’s overwhelmingly obvious that they’re actually acting in their own interests and to carry out their own personal agenda.

Lesson For Business Owners: So many business owners and sales professionals make the crucial mistake of thinking “How can I squeeze more money out of my prospects and customers?” and “How can I get people to buy my stuff?” Instead, you need to wake up every morning thinking, “What can I do today to deliver more value to my prospects and clients?”

If you are constantly focused on your clients’ desires and how you can deliver more value to them, they will reward you by doing business with you, staying loyal to you and referring others to you.

Fatal Error #3: Lack of Openness – We’ve gotten a steady dose of the same old partisan politics, secret closed-door meetings and general stonewalling that we’ve come to expect from Washington.

Lesson For Business Owners: President Obama campaigned and won – twice – on the promise of unprecedented transparency. Regardless of the fact that he hasn’t delivered on that promise, it’s clear that that’s what Americans want from our government. Your prospects and clients want it from you, too, and they’ll reward you as you become more and more honest with them.

Fatal Error #4: Disconnection from their audience – Washington politicians are given special treatment in virtually every area of their lives, and they routinely appear to be grossly out of touch with most Americans.

Lesson for business owners: Make sure to do all you can to know everything about the members of your target market – especially their psychographics (values, attitudes, interests, etc.), and remember the advice of the great Robert Collier to “enter the conversation already going on in your customer’s mind.”

Fatal Error #5: Failure to build confidence – There’s been tremendous uncertainty about the American economy for years, and that’s as true as ever these days.

Lesson for business owners: People gravitate to leaders who give them confidence and certainty. If you have a product or service that genuinely helps solve a problem for your target market, make sure to state it boldly and in no uncertain terms in all of your marketing and sales messages, and make sure to deliver it consistently.

Fatal Error #6: No long-term plan: Our federal government continues to be very poor at long-term planning, jumping from crisis to crisis while enacting only temporary solutions.

Lesson for business owners: To paraphrase Ralph Fuller, “That’s no way to run a country – or a business.” You started your business to achieve personal freedom. Having a long-term vision and plan is the key to escaping a life of constant stress and struggle.

Fatal Error #7: Making Enemies: Not only are our politicians constantly battling each other and engaging in personal attacks and name-calling, but every single elected official has to govern over at least some people who totally disagree with their viewpoint, agenda and actions.

Lesson for business owners: Unlike elected officials, we get to choose our target market! You don’t have to serve anyone who doesn’t like you or your solutions. Furthermore, as I wrote here, you’ll grow a bigger and better business the more you figure out how to work with people and companies that you may previously have thought of as your “competitors.”

Here’s the bottom line…

If you want to put up with the possibility of being out of business every 2, 4 or 6 years, and being wildly disliked, distrusted and unpopular along the way, then go ahead and act like a politician.

But if you want to build a solid, successful, long-term business, make sure you learn some valuable lessons from watching the selfish, stupid actions of our nation’s more-unpopular-than-ever politicians.