If you’re a self-employed tradesman and you find yourself saying “yes” to all sorts of requests in your business, sometimes they actually cost you money.
Let me tell you how to handle that:
There's a big difference between being an accommodator and being a connector.
An accommodator is somebody who says yes to a client, says yes to a supplier, and yes to a staff member anytime they’re asked for something.
If you’re doing a big job and a client asks you to do something very small, and it’s not really your area of expertise, but you find yourself just doing it so that the client doesn’t have to go somewhere else. You’re just doing it just to keep the client happy.
That’s called being an accommodator and you think it’s helping you in your business, but I absolutely guarantee you it’s not. Even if you’re making a little bit of money by accommodating those requests, I can tell you that in the long run, they’re costing you money because they’re taking you away from your A game.
The opposite of being an accommodator is being a connector. A connector is when someone comes to you and they ask you a question like “Can you get this done?”, you give them a number. “There you go”. And you give them the number and they ring someone else to get the job done. The person who they ring to get the job done is known to you, it’s someone you trust, and therefore the client is likely to trust them because you recommended them.
So when you find yourself being a connector, what happens is that people will know that you’re a good person to know. They know that if they need anything done, either you can do it for them, or that you can connect them with someone who can do it for them.
It will elevate your position in the eyes of the client if they feel they can come to you and that you can connect them with absolutely anybody who they need to be connected with.
It will also elevate you in the eyes of your peers, who know that you are consistently sending work down to them.
So the next time you find somebody asking you to do something that’s not within your core area of expertise, or is not within your core area of specialist service, rather than trying to accommodate the client by being nice to them by saying “yes”, simply connect them to somebody who you know and you trust.
The bottom line is that you must stop being an accommodator if you want to move onto the next level in your business.
I made a short YouTube video about this.
You can check it out using the link below