Give the customer what they want. Not what you want. You’ll get hired more often.

One of the things I learned over my years as a business owner was no two customers are going to be the same.

I’m not saying that there won’t be similarities between them. In fact many customers will share very similar goals and objectives.

After all in the majority of accounts we are there to clean offices, bathrooms, foyers and hallways. Most of that is pretty straight-forward. But each account usually has at least one a unique feature that makes it different.

For instance some may have a media room with projectors or rows of T.V.’s, a production floor where items are put together, assembly areas for large groups, elevators, stairwells, outdoor eating areas or even rooms that are highly secured where classified data is poured over.

Each of those items listed above were situations that I ran across in my career. There were many more too. Data centers, labs and even a giant call center with hundreds of people working while we were there cleaning. I saw a lot of different environments.

If there was one thing I was good at it was ADAPTING to UNIQUE SITUATIONS. And that approach is what got me hired to clean some pretty interesting jobs. Ones that were both challenging and high paying.

But to be honest, you don’t have to adapt. You could just say “NO, I don’t do those type areas”. But if you RESIST cleaning certain areas you really RESTRICT your growth. You restrict it because the customer will LOOK ELSEWHERE.

At the end of the day you have to give the customer what they want. It’s THEIR MONEY. They get to say what they want done. You can’t give them only what you want. Not if you want the account anyway.

FEAR is what normally drives people to turn down a challenge. The fear of the unknown. The fear of change. The fear of added responsibility. When not that it’s just that some people only want to do the simple stuff. Nothing complicated. I get that, but it will limit your growth big time.

So the moral of today’s story if to ADAPT. Be FLEXIBLE. View customers as INDIVIDUALS that have UNIQUE NEEDS. And above all, listen to what they want then come up with a plan that GIVES THEM WHAT THEY WANT.