What Do Your Clients Want More Than Money?

This is a question every business has to answer on some level. The greatest opportunities for business growth lie in the areas where price is no object. Here, selling becomes much easier and competition becomes irrelevant. There is a kind of wealth people are seeking today that is about more than just money — a new wealth, which the most successful companies will make it their business to enhance for all their clientele.

New Measures For Wealth.

More people around the world are materially wealthy than ever before. The desire to acquire goods and gather money may always be part of the fundamental human survival instinct, carried over from our early days as hunter-gatherers. But more and more individuals are discovering that their love affair with objects is one that will never be truly fulfilling. Things are a disappointment. What really moves them are experiences in which they are able to expand themselves, to increase their capabilities and, as Harvard Business School professor Shoshanna Zuboff puts it, achieve “psychological self-determination.”

This self-expansion is the “New Wealth” — a different measure of prosperity for a different age. Understanding this fundamental desire is key to providing what people truly want, what they will find most rewarding, and what they will be willing to pay for.

The Experience of New Wealth.

What, then, does this New Wealth entail? What is it that people want most in this age? Here are 12 qualities that make up the experience of New Wealth:

Meaning:
They feel that they are at the forefront of economic, political, cultural, and social progress.

Purpose:
They feel that they are demonstrating through their activities and achievements how life can be for everyone else.

Capability:
They feel that the new tools and systems provided by microtechnology lead to ever increasing powers of creativity, productivity, and cooperation.

Opportunity:
They feel that things will always get bigger and better, and that their future is only limited by their imagination.

Independence:
They feel that they are in control of the forces and factors that make their future bigger and better.

Influence: They feel that they are important people within their society — respected and admired.

Significance:
They feel that what they contribute to others is greater than what they receive — and that their success is justified by the value they create.

Health:
They feel that age is an attitude, and that being perpetually young is a function of being motivated, productive, and useful.

Enjoyment:
They feel that the contribution they make to society entitles them to the best that society offers in the way of luxury, entertainment, recreation, and learning.

Ease:
They feel that their personally-generated success entitles them to be supported and served by the best abilities of other people.

Income:
They feel that their ability to make money is constantly growing, and that the opportunities for doing so are always increasing.

Assets:
They feel that they will always have more money than they need, and that this surplus is a growing source of confidence, creativity, and capability.

“Haves” and “Have-nots.”

The disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in our world is vast. But never before has the veil between them been more permeable. Many “haves” who inherited their status or counted on a bureaucracy to provide for them for the rest of their lives have been abandoned. Their bureaucratic thinking and skills prove to be of no help to them in this new economy.

At the same time, many people who would be considered “have-nots” have developed a fluency with microtechnology, developed new forms of value, and crossed over into prosperity. They’re not motivated by status, but by growth and learning, so their future is unlimited.

The next century belongs to those who can acquire the characteristics of the New Wealth — then help others acquire them. Where bureaucracies foster dependence on them, successful entrepreneurial organizations will thrive by fostering empowerment in the individual. The experience this creates is incredibly rewarding, both for those who provide it and those who receive it. If you are a source of increased freedom and ability in some aspect of another’s life, price will never be an issue, because they will always perceive you as “worth it” for the transformation you provide


© 2007 The Strategic Coach
The Strategic Coach