Frogs, Toads, and Turning Clients into Fans

If you zoom out far enough, there’s a single strategy that can (among other things) turn your ideal clients into raving fans.

I’m going to tell you what that strategy is in a bit.

But first I need to tell you a story about a frog and a toad.

The story comes from an old children’s book, and revolves around the attempt of the two main characters, Frog and Toad, to fly a kite.

Frog, ever the optimist, paints a picture of their kite soaring to the top of the sky. 

Toad, who’s easily influenced, buys into the vision, lifts the kite over his head, and with Frog letting out the string, runs as fast as he can down into a meadow. 

But the kite flops and crashes into the ground—at which point three robins start to laugh and suggest they give up. 

Toad returns to Frog, saying maybe they should just give up, but Frog, determined, suggests a different strategy. 

They try again and again, but the kite keeps falling down, the robins keep suggesting they give up, and Toad keeps returning to tell Frog that they should probably do what the robins say.

In the end, however, they discover what works and the kite, as Frog envisioned at the start, soars to the very top of the sky.

Wait a minute, how exactly is this story related to turning clients into fans?

It’s actually about much more than that. 

It’s about the path or strategy to doing anything truly great. 

And the steps, no matter what area you want to apply them to, are:

1.   Know what you want

You have to first be able to see what you want to happen, or what type of service you want to provide.

And the more clearly you can say what you want or picture it, the better. 

For a local company like Sugar Donuts, that might mean to offer handmade gourmet donuts so delicious that people rave about them to friends.

For another local company, such as Black Powder Coffee, it might be to provide a cup of premium coffee so packed with interesting flavors that people look forward to it with excitement each morning.

Either way, make sure you know exactly what you’re aiming for, because you’re not likely to hit a target that you can’t even see.

2.   Give it your best shot

When you’ve envisioned the outcome that you want and thought about the best course of action to accomplish it, you simply have to put in the work.

At this point, as Maya Angelou said, “Ain’t nothing to it but to do it.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed on your first try. 

If only!

Whether making handmade donuts from scratch or trying to find the perfect blend of beans for the flavor profile you’ve imagined, some experimentation—a lot of experimentation—is pretty much a necessity.

It does mean, though, that you either get the outcome you want or you learn something new.

And this, in turn, means you’re that much closer to what you envisioned.

3.   Keep on keepin’ on

In the story, whenever the robins say something like, “That kite is junk; throw it away and go home,” Toad would run back to Frog and say, “This kite is junk; I think we should throw it away and go home.”

It’s easy to be discouraged when you don’t immediately achieve what you set out to, even though each attempt brings you closer to your goal.

But don’t be like Toad, who’s easily discouraged; be like Frog, who always responds to Toad by saying, “We need one more try.”

4.   Iterate

When you want to turn passersby into clients and clients into fans, you have to continually improve your knowledge and your process.

You need to collect information on what your ideal clients need and want.

You need to make connections between what you know about them and what you know about your specialty to come up with something new that they’ll love.

You need to share those things and the values underlying them so that they become, like you, captivated by a vision, a mission, a way of doing things that’s unique.

And then, like Frog and Toad, you need to do it again and again, until you discard more and more of what doesn’t work and discover more and more of what does. 

All that said, I know what you may be thinking:

The real world isn’t as easy as a children’s book.

Which is true. 

Nor is it as simple! 

Zooming out, this strategy is what people use to achieve what they want, But, when you zoom in, things get messier.

There are questions of how to assemble and manage a team, how to gain expertise in your specialty, and how to position your brand or market what you provide.

It can take a long time to get these things right, it’s often as hard as it is valuable, and it’s especially difficult to do without some help. 

This, by the way, is where we enter the story.

We’ve spent decades building up expertise in how to position and amplify a business’s brand, how to create effective marketing campaigns, how to share what you do in a way that will resonate with all the different clients you serve. 

It’s what we think about as the garage door opens each morning, what we think about at stop lights, and what we think about at work.

 So, if you have a business that you want to take to the next level, let’s talk about how we can help you do just that!