The Benefits of Firing Yourself: Transforming the Rainmaker's Dilemma
If you find that your customers prefer to speak with you directly rather than your employees, then you may want to rethink your structure for the sake of adding value to your business.
A business that can thrive without its owner at the center of its operations is more valuable because processes can run smoothly with or without him. In a nutshell, if you're too stuck in the weeds, you'll have a hard time improving or evolving - and your employees won't have the opportunity to grow.
Your business will be more valuable if you allow your staff to take the lead and you quietly disappear into the background. Below are five ways to make customers less inclined to contact you:
1. Re-rank
On your website, reorder the staff bios so that they are in alphabetical order rather than hierarchical order.
2. Re-brand
If your company name includes your surname, you might want to rebrand. There is nothing that makes a customer more inclined to deal with the owner than seeing his or her surname in the company name.
3. Hire a President
When you give someone the title of president, you are saying they have real authority to solve customer problems.
4. Use an email auto-responder
Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4 Hour Work Week and other books, popularized the email auto-responder. If someone sends you an email, setup a response automatically explaining that you are on a trip or working on a strategic project and can't answer their questions right away. Rather, instruct your customers to direct their questions to the person most suited to answering them.
A word of caution using this strategy: If you continue to answer customer emails after setting up an auto-responder, it's going to become transparent that you're just trying to hide behind your autoresponder, which could diminish your credibility. If you set one up, you need to be ready to let others step in.
5. Play hookey
If you have a business where customers come in person, set up a home office so that you can spend more time away from the office.
It can be difficult for hard-charging, A-type entrepreneurs to follow the steps above, and it may seem counterintuitive. You may even see a short-term impact on your company's sales, but once your customers are trained to go to your team, you'll be able to scale up even further and ultimately maximize the value of your business.
"Rainmaker" Business Owners are exceptional at rapidly accelerating business growth, but our data suggests they eventually hit a ceiling. Revenue stagnates and business value plateaus, forcing owners to confront the Rainmaker’s Dilemma.
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