Your customers are probably measuring their success the wrong way

Do any of these statements sound familiar to you?

“We expected your product to be able to do that with the click of a button. If you don’t have this feature we may need to look for another solution.”

“Your competitor is able to display our data as line charts and bar charts. Why can’t you do that too?”

These of course are fictitious examples but the pain that you may be experiencing may be similar. Your customers may have expectations that your solution is supposed to have certain features or work in a certain way and if it doesn’t, it’s broken. For the most part, I don’t blame the customer in these situations as most likely there were incorrect expectations that were set along the way. The problem is that much of this is out of your control for the following reasons:

* The client felt they were promised certain features during the sales cycle that you had nothing to do with.

* You have a limited ability to modify your product roadmap let alone the timeframe that your customer may be asking for in regards to these new features.

* Lastly, your various client stakeholders have different agendas and objectives and both the people and the priorities change over time. This makes it challenging to balance what different people want and to ensure they are receiving value.

Regardless of the situation, you, as the customer representative, have to sort out this mess. One way to try and get things on a better track is to leverage the concept by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy called “The GAP and the GAIN”. Let’s dive into what this is all about.

Mind the GAP

Sullivan and Hardy used this concept of “the GAP and the GAIN” to explain why some people have such a hard time being happy. These people are always measuring themselves against an ideal that they have pictured in their minds. For example, they may expect to be making 7 figures by the time they are thirty and have a home and two kids. Not attaining that high salary or that house in the suburbs could send them spiraling out of control. Even when they may have actually accomplished their goals they may be unhappy with the size of their home or the job title they have. It never ends as they are in a constant “pursuit of happiness” (thanks Thomas Jefferson). This is called being in the GAP and it affects a large number of people.

If you feel that I may be describing some of your traits, you are not alone. I’m someone whose #1 strength as part of the CliftonStrengths is “achiever” and I’ve lived too much of my life in the GAP. My 12-year-old may have finished his homework and done his chores but I’ll scold him for leaving his dirty plate on the dinner table by mistake. I can be a real jerk at times as I’m focused too much on the GAP and not the GAIN.

A GAP mindset can really hold you back in life. In contrast to living in the GAP, living in the GAIN is measuring yourself against a starting point rather than against a future ideal. It’s about appreciating what you and others have accomplished rather than agonizing over what didn’t happen (or that it didn’t happen as you expected it to). How do you apply this concept to your customers?

Focus on the GAIN

The feature request that was mentioned at the beginning is a clear example of your client being in the GAP. How do you move the conversation from the GAP to the GAIN? Your goal should be to get your