This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life)

by Seth Godin

You can choose your customers, and train and reward the ones you’d like to keep. By rewarding some behaviors over others, by keeping some promises but not making others, by having standards, you get the audience you deserve. Some things you can train customers to do: • Be respectful (or rude) • Be patient (or selfish) • Keep their satisfaction to themselves (or share it with others) • Demand personal service • Be impatient for the next revision • Be cheap (or generous) • Expect pampering (or be grateful for whatever they get) • Demand free (or seek luxury) • Be eager to switch brands to save a buck (or be loyal) • Be skeptical (or trust your judgment) The customers you pay attention to—and those you fire—change the way you spend your days (if you’re not firing customers, you’re surrendering your future to whoever walks in the door). You can identify and reward the customers you’d like to spend your days with. You have the freedom and power to do this if you choose. It’s not easy to persuade someone to want what you want. It’s much more productive to find people who already want to go where you’d like to take them.