Choosing Your Service Providers

What inspired my blog entry today was Seth Godin’s (marketing expert/guru) blog to businesses about “choosing your customers.” He makes the point that savvy businesses get to choose their customers, not the other way around. They choose them with their pricing, content, promotion, outreach and product line.

Well, both sides can take the same approach. Savvy consumers get to choose their service providers, not the other way around. When choosing, ask yourself:

How much do I need this type of business?

How difficult is this sort of business to find?

How valuable is a relationship with this particular business?

Does the business make it easy for me to deal with them?

Godin makes the point to businesses: “It’s not a matter of who can benefit from what you sell. It’s about choosing the customers you’d like to have.” So let’s turn that around for us. It’s not a matter of who can benefit from what you buy. It’s about choosing businesses, service professionals of all kinds that you’d like to have.