A monkey can destroy in 30 seconds what it took an expert a lifetime to build. And the monkeys are everywhere.
Sure, feedback and input from caring, knowledgeable people who have your best interest at heart and/or are proven experts that you have retained is fine.
But if you can insulate yourself from hearing from every critic, complainer, and/or troll who slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night for the rest of your life, you'll have a good business and a great life.
But Wes...But Wes...we need to hear the feedback from our customers.
It's how we keep our finger on the pulse.
The customer is always right.
We can't grow without them telling us how we're doing.
We need to be open and transparent and check our egos at the door and have an open door policy and invite input from our customers.
We love the unsolicited advice from entitled people who think just because they gave us $10 or $100 or $1,000 that they know how to run our company."
Of course hearing from good customers with valid issues is vital to the health of your business as is providing great support after the sale. (See the part about "D" in The A.B.C.D.E. Sales & Marketing System™ overview.)
But not every customer has your best interest at heart.
Not every customer wants you to succeed, let alone thrive.
Not every customer knows what they bought or why they bought it or how to correctly use what they bought so they want to take it out on you.
Hell, not everyone who complains is even a customer!
They're simply piling on because their favorite aunt with the bad hip back in Buffalo shared a story her sister in Des Moines shared about her neighbor's hair-dresser's horrible experience of using a space heater in the bathtub while washing her support gerbil on vacation and why the hotel, the heater manufacturer, and the government should all be sued for killing her little Hairy.
That's why you need to succeed so you can create that barrier, insert that layer — or two or three — between you and the rest of the unwashed masses. (Said with love and affection, of course.)
And in much the same way I have the Process Before Login strategy when I help my clients sort through the myriad of CRMs and marketing automation tools littering the landscape today, you need a process for handling, routing, replying, deleting, and blocking the trolls because...
You cannot please everyone.
Yes, your marketing needs to be magnetic so you attract the right people to you, but there's a downside to magnetic marketing...
Magnets repel just as powerfully as they attract.
And as Dan Kennedy, the founder of Magnetic Marketing, has espoused for years,...
If you don't piss someone off by noon you're not marketing."
So include in your workflows the procedure for refunding and blocking the perennial whiners and complainers so you can go about you business of helping those who want and need and will pay for and praise your work.
Sometimes you will fall down and screw up and get it wrong and you need a way to be notified when that happens so you can fix, repair, and improve your offerings...but you need an assistant to help make that happen.
You should not be the first line of defense.
Remember, our loving, caring, all-knowing government leaders in their infinite wisdom have placed trolls on the endangered species list and are fanatical about the enforcement of their "catch and release" policy.
So in the unfortunate instance where you find one has snuck into your computer or place of business, hit the delete button/show them the door so they can be set free.
Need some inspiration on how to defeat these screwballs and naysayers?
Now go sell something.
