Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

THE THIRD CUSTOMER

This book discusses two types of customers: the external customer and the internal customer (your employees). But there’s a third kind: you. You are a customer too.

If I may, I’d like to encourage you to think about ways you can flip the funnel for yourself. You don’t need to be dramatic or quit your day job. You can continue the path you’re currently on, but perhaps you can accelerate your progress just a little by focusing on yourself as the customer. Take an existential position and put yourself at the center of the universe. You’re in the middle, and everything ripples out from you. Only now, instead of all roads leading away from you, they’re leading to you.

Just as we are nothing without our customers, the world is nothing without us. So how can we—and you—make a difference? How can you change the way business has always been done to leave your mark? How can you change a life or make this world a better place?

It can be done. Perhaps it’s one YouTube video, like Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s incredible wedding procession (www.jkweddingdance.com). Perhaps it’s starting an inspirational blog that connects parents with other parents, cancer survivors with cancer sufferers, or fighters with lovers. (See www.blamedrewscancer.com)

Put the funnel to your eye. Use it as a spyglass or a telescope. See the world for what it is, but more important, for what it can become.