Skip to content

If my customers ran my practice, they’d probably launch a sales training course.

Clive Griffiths
Clive Griffiths
— 1 min read

If my customers ran my practice, they’d probably launch a sales training course.

I know this because they ask me about it all the time - only to end up buying training elsewhere, since I no longer offer it.

Now, you might think,


The answer lies in a famous insight Steve Jobs once echoed from Henry Ford:

“If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse.’”

In my experience customers say they need training but a deeper conversation reveals the real issues:

⇥ They suffer from poor positioning and weak value propositions
↳ Making it hard for potential clients to find them.

⇥ Their client acquisition systems are unreliable
↳ Leaving them to rely on chance and random leads.

⇥ They worry about coming off as pushy salespeople.
↳ Making them hesitant to lead and close deals.

Training isn’t always the best solution. Yet customers often jump to it as the obvious fix - without fully understanding their underlying problems.

That’s why I don’t let my customers run my practice or dictate my actions.

My role is not to give them what they think they need - it’s to guide them toward actions that deliver the results they want.

And more often than not, they end up thanking me for that later.

LinkedIn PostsLI-2025

Related Posts

Members Public

Proposing value, not activity.

What inspired yesterday’s post about value? Well... I’d just been reading a proposal. Actually it was more like a situation diagnosis report and statement of work with a price at the end. Nothing like the investment business case it needed to be. That's something I’ve

Proposing value, not activity.
Members Public

Structural Tension

What inspired yesterday's post? It's great when your LinkedIn post gets some interaction. People not just saying "attaboy" but adding and deepening the dialogue. Thanks to those who took time and did. Here's some background. Perhaps explaining why it's difficult

Structural Tension
Members Public

The part-time, poor relation.

In the majority of consulting firms the people who do the work are the ones who have to sell it too. That dual role creates an advantage and a tension. The advantages The advantages make consultants attractive to clients. Insights based on experience. The consultant can talk about the reality

The part-time, poor relation.