Edition 9 – Is Low Hanging Fruit Lazy Business?

We’ve all heard the term “low hanging fruit”. It’s the concept of stepping out in business and approaching those prospects or opportunities that seem to be the easiest to grab hold of.

As the term suggests, low hanging fruit refers to the fruit in the tree that is within easy reach. Easy to pick. Usually ripe. Often plump and delicious.

Of course, the easiest fruit is the no hanging fruit – the produce that has already hit the ground. Still easy to pick. Most likely over ripe. It might be still plump, but not necessarily delicious.

But I digress!

I challenge you to stop aiming for the low hanging fruit. Why not reach higher up in the tree? Do you even know what that fruit looks like? Or tastes like? Or whether it has other appeal?

A great client of ours adopted this strategy a couple of years ago. Not that they realised it at the time. Not that it delivered results at the time. But, it is starting to pay dividends now.

Let me explain.

Our client is in the building industry. They were approached to consider working on a marquee construction project in Sydney. For the owners of the business, it was a challenging opportunity. If they won the job, it would vault them much higher up into the construction industry. There was a lot of upside.

They invested significantly in the project. Late nights. The development of intellectual property. Overseas trips to meet key players in the project.

In spite of their best efforts, our client missed out on the project. They were deflated at the time. They had emotionally invested in winning the tender and lost out.

Fast forward two years and the builder has returned to the table. Different project. They approached our client this time about partnering with them. One of the reasons I’m sure our clients were approached was their “out of the box” thinking on the project they lost out on two years ago.

They aimed higher in the tree first time around and missed out. However, second time around, they had a higher ladder and have won on a new opportunity.

What are the opportunities that you have today in your family business and have you thought about:

1. How difficult a task was it to win your most valuable client or prospect over to your family business?
2. What you did that was above and beyond what you do for other customers that secured that special relationship?
3. What risks you took to reach out to that client or prospect?
4. Have you always won? And if you didn’t, what did you learn from the experience?
5. If you didn’t win the first time around, how you tweaked your strategy the second time around to achieve success.
6. What the value is of the client relationship that was higher up in the tree as opposed to some of your client relationships that are low hanging fruit?
7. Whether your higher level clients generate more referrals and more powerful testimonials for your Family Business?

This Week’s Tip

Is your Family Business becoming lazy by aiming for low hanging fruit? Are you doing the same old, same old for your clients and expecting them to pay more? What’s the risk to your Family Business of aiming higher up in the tree? And, what are the potential rewards?