When was the last time that you made a decision to work on your professional or personal development?
You might want to build your body, learn to play the piano, speak a new language, or even increase your self-confidence. You might choose to learn through self-study, or better still, by getting help from an expert (it does not matter if it is an advisor, mentor, coach or consultant).
As a human, we all want to attain our desired results. We define a goal, make a plan and start working on our plan. However, most of the time we lose our motivation, get overwhelmed and stop continuing our journey as we cannot see any progress or satisfactory level of development that we expect in our work.
When we look at the definition of the word progress in the dictionary, it is defined as “forward or onward movement towards a destination”.
If you are in the world of running a service-based business, especially if you offer transformational services, it does not matter you are an advisor, consultant, coach, or mentor, the progress of your work is an important factor that you should take very seriously.
Your customers (or as we prefer to use the term clients here) expect two things when they work with you:
1) To see their progress.
2) To know how they are progressing.
Seeing and knowing the progress of your clients’ work are two key things that you MUST cover in your services. This enables people to have a good feeling about their journey and more importantly, about the way that you take care of them.
These elements are not optional things in your services. These are essential, because if you cannot cover them properly through your services, your clients will soon be dissatisfied, and they will never come back to use your service again. Not only that, they will not refer you to others, and in worse cases, they will fire you!
Yes, you read it right. They will fire you!
Let’s look at the two clients’ expectations in relation to the progress of their work.
Helping them to see their progress means that you enable them to move forward. You should let them feel, see, and/or touch their progress during the time that they are working with you.
On the other hand, knowing about their progress means that you must keep your clients posted about how they are progressing. There are different tactics on how to achieve this, but the point is that your clients should have a crystal clear view of their situations.
We have worked with many coaches, consultants, and advisors who did not know why their clients were not replying to their emails, or not coming back to continue working with them. When we reviewed their services together, we found that a lack of keeping their clients up to date about their progress was one of the major problems found. I, therefore, helped them to redesign their services in a way that would fix this challenge.
We have seen many businesses that have been hurt because of a lack of helping their clients see and be fully informed about the progress of their work with them. You should remember that it is not something that you should do as a favour to your clients, instead, it is like a type of insurance that covers your business growth and success for a long time.
Therefore, do your best to cover the concept of progress in your services. Yes, it needs some effort, but it is totally worth it.