Client Magnets Official Blog

The problem with being driven by needs is that you feel great when those needs are met – and lousy when they aren’t. Anyone who has worked in sales for any length of time has probably experienced the giddy highs and the crashing lows that characterise this arena. This is what happens when the salesperson’s self-worth is attached to their results.

Now you may think that this has nothing to do with you. You may claim that you are far too conscious to be driven by your needs in this way. We’re supposed to pretend we don’t have any needs. Go to a networking event and you’ll meet countless business people who tell you that ‘everything’s great’ but if you tune into the underlying energy you can sense the fear and desperation that drives the majority.

None of us want to feel needy, much less admit that we are, so very few people have learned to express their needs openly. Yet suppressing our needs doesn’t make them go away. If you’ve had any moments of feeling fearful or frantic in relation to your business in the past three months, I will absolutely guarantee that there was a need involved.

Some of the needs may be obvious: the need for financial security is one which prompted many readers to sign up for this newsletter. The need for freedom is what motivates most people to get started in their own business in the first place.

And then there are more subtle needs: the need to succeed; the need for approval; the need for recognition. How much of your desire for more clients is bound up with these needs?

Some of the needs may appear to be ‘healthy needs’: the need for balance. But it’s still a need.

The more I progress along the ‘Client Magnets’ path, the more I rely on my instincts and inspiration. Yet it’s almost impossible to follow your instincts and inspiration if you are being driven by needs. As you become aware of your needs and how they are affecting your business behaviours, it gets easier to discern between true inspiration and needs which are on the rampage demanding that they get met.

Start to separate what’s happening in your business from your intrinsic self worth. Your self-worth is based on who you are, yet most of us fall into the trap of measuring our self-worth by what we have achieved.

I remember the time when I was training a team of supervisors in a call centre who had fallen into the trap of measuring their own contributions in this way. One of their colleagues had recently passed away, and so I asked them what they really missed about him. Funny enough, not one of them mentioned his call statistics, his time-keeping, his conversion rates, his low rates of absenteeism or any of the other typical yardsticks which might be used to measure an individual’s contribution in the workplace.

Instead, they described his warmth, the way he ALWAYS had a friendly greeting and a kind word for his colleagues no matter how stressful a day it had been. Next I asked them to tell each other what they would miss about each other. Once again, work rates didn’t get much of a mention. What did feature strongly were things like a person’s sense of humour, their warmth, their almost psychic ability to know when a colleague needed a listening ear, and when they just needed some space. I could go on and on. I can tell you, there weren’t many dry eyes at the end of that particular exercise. Why was the experience so moving? Because they had all had a glimpse of their true value – their own and their colleagues’. And whilst I think we all have awareness of this deep down, we don’t really make a point of honouring it – in ourselves or others.

So, if you don’t have as many clients as you want – you have value. If your bank account is empty, or even in the red – you have value. If a client complained about you – you have value. If your career hasn’t quite matched up to the dreams you had 10 years ago – you have value.

And lighten up about your needs!