This post is an excerpt from my latest book – The Ultimate Marketing Engine – 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth – order your copy today and start revolutionizing how you think about marketing. 

Back in the 80s, there was a brand that became a cultural hit called Members Only. Yes, I had a Members Only jacket, there, I admit it. The tagline for the companies’ line of apparel was, “When you put it on, something happens.” (First off, if you’re too young to remember this fad, you can do a search and still find fan sites, and, if like me you had one, please reply to this, and we can be team members.)

Here’s my point today – what if you could come to think about your customer or clients or patients or whatever you call them – as members.

Now, I’m not merely suggesting you create a membership aspect to your business. However, that might be a great model for you; I’m suggesting that you think this way about them.

If you did, it might change how you innovate, iterate, and support every aspect of your business.

In a stable membership relationship, your goal is to help every member get the transformation they are seeking. So, naturally, you would care more about them getting a result than you getting a transaction.

If that were so, you would have to ask yourself much harder (or at least different) questions.

Then you might start analyzing your customer journey more like a customer success journey.

So, here are a few things to ponder.

1) Where are our customers now in terms of the results they want?

Think stages – we use three stages to talk about our small business customers and their marketing – Build, Grow, and Ignite.

2) What are the characteristics of customers in each of these stages?

For us, we might analyze their online presence, marketing message, and lead generation activity to characterize what they are thinking, feeling, and doing during each stage.

3) What milestones must they achieve to move to the next stage?

Again, for us, it might be a website that generates email sign-ups or phone calls, all the way through creating a robust referral generation system.

Milestones are a pretty great way to think about activity because you can create a yes or no question – do they have this – yes/no are the only answers.

4) What activities or action steps must they take to achieve each milestone?

This becomes the project plan to move through the stages or take the success journey you map out for them.

And, this is a biggie, this becomes the roadmap for every system you need to create in your business, so you provide an incredible journey for every single customer no matter the stage of their journey.

5) What systems must we create to ensure passage through the stages of the success journey?

The beauty of this approach is that it keeps both you and your customers on the same path – a path this is based on transformation, a path that can be accurately measured, a path that is all about results.