Build on What Your Clients Would Miss

Imagine a personal trainer named Tobias Lind who trains 18 clients in his own small studio. Most of them come at six or seven in the morning, before work. In February, a fitness studio opens nearby with a smoothie bar and an app. The app logs every set and sends each member a chart of their progress on Sunday nights.

Two of Tobias’s clients mention the new studio. He worries that they will leave, so he signs up for a similar app at $90 a month. He starts logging each set on a tablet during sessions, and he sends charts every Sunday.

The logging takes longer than he expected. Sessions that used to end at five to seven now end at five past. Leila Okafor, a lawyer who catches the 7:12 train, misses it twice in March. Most of the Sunday charts go unopened. In April, Ms. Okafor tells Tobias that she will train at the gym in her office building. That way she is at her desk by eight.

Suppose instead that Tobias asks before he buys anything. At the end of each session that week, he asks his five longest clients one question. “If you stopped training with me, what would you miss?”

Three of them give much the same answer. “You start at six on the dot, and I make the 7:12 every time,” Ms. Okafor says. Another client says that his plan is always ready when he walks in, so he never stands around. A third says that when she texts to move a session, she hears back within the hour.

Tobias writes their answers down as one sentence. “My clients never wait for me, and they are out by five to seven.” He skips the app. He writes each client’s plan the night before. He ends every session at five to seven, so clients have time to shower. When a new client books, he tells them, “We start on the minute, and you’ll be out by five to seven.”

Ms. Okafor stays. In June, a colleague who takes the same train asks about her trainer. “He has never once made me wait,” Ms. Okafor says. The colleague books Tobias that week.

Tobias had the same clients and the same studio both times. In the first version, he built on what a competitor offered, and the logging cost his clients the minutes they valued most. In the second, he built on what his own clients said they would miss. Ms. Okafor had something to tell her colleague, and it was about him.

So shape the experience of working with you around what your own clients would miss. Here is why a competitor’s extras do not carry over, and how two professionals found what to build on.

A competitor’s extras were chosen for that competitor’s clients

From outside, you can see what a competitor offers. It might be an app, a smoothie bar, or a gift at the end of a job. You cannot see why their clients stay, or whether the extras have anything to do with it.

Here is the course’s view of what goes wrong when you copy them. An extra you copy was chosen for someone else’s clients. Your clients did not ask for it, and it can get in the way of what they did come for. Tobias’s app cost Ms. Okafor her train.

A copied extra also tells a client nothing about you. Once a few businesses offer it, it becomes a gesture every business in your field makes. The course’s standard for the experience is whether the client tells someone about you. A client tells a friend how working with you felt. Nobody tells a friend about an app they could get at the studio down the road.

So the place to start is your own clients, and what they would miss.

A strength coach assumed clients valued his expertise, and an agent named something else

Eric Cressey is the president of Cressey Sports Performance, which has facilities in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and Hudson, Massachusetts. The firm works with professional baseball players, and their agents often refer players to it. In 2014, Cressey wrote on his site about a conversation with one of those agents. The agent said in passing, “The thing I appreciate about you guys the most is your accessibility.”

“I was really surprised,” Cressey wrote. He had always assumed that people valued the firm’s baseball expertise first. What mattered most to the agent was Cressey “returning phone calls, emails, and text messages promptly.” The reason made sense to Cressey. When he was slow to answer, the agent was slow getting back to his own client. That made the agent look bad.

Cressey drew a lesson for other trainers from it. “There are likely reasons they keep coming back of which you’re not aware,” he wrote. He also gave an example of building on one of those reasons. His athletes loved “the sense of family and community” at the facility. So when the firm opened a new facility in 2012, it added a lounge. The lounge got a TV, a couch, a ping pong table, and a counter for eating.

Cressey knew his business from the inside. He still guessed wrong about what one of the agents who send him players valued. A competitor looking in from outside might have guessed the expertise too, or the equipment. “Chances are that your clients don’t care that you can name all 17 muscles that attach to the scapula,” Cressey wrote. So the answer has to come from the people who work with you. Cressey’s answer came in a remark made in passing, so listen for those too.

A wedding photographer starts from the feeling and plans the job backward

Julie Comfort is a wedding photographer turned experience designer. She photographed more than 300 weddings, then moved to Berlin and rebuilt from zero. In a February 2026 interview on the PhotoBizX podcast, she described how her way of working changed.

“I flipped my creative process from hoping something lands emotionally to starting with the emotion and designing backwards from there,” she said. Before, she planned the work and hoped the feeling would follow. Now she names the feeling first, and she plans each part of the job to give the client that feeling.

She also gives an order for that planning. “Before you add wow, remove friction,” she said. A part of the job that works against the feeling gets fixed before anything new is added.

Comfort’s order fits what Tobias found. In the first version, the app was the extra, and it added friction. Sessions ran until five past seven. In the second, Tobias started from the feeling his clients named, which was that they never wait for him. Then he removed what could make them wait, such as a plan that was not ready when they walked in.

Why summing up the answer in your own words goes wrong

Imagine a dog walker named Marnie Cole who asks her six longest clients what they would miss. Four give much the same answer. After every walk, she texts the owner a photo of the dog and a short note. So the owners know at their desks that the dog is fine.

Marnie is busy, so she sums up the answers in her own words. She writes “Reliable, caring dog walking” at the top of her website, and on the notes she gives new walkers. In the spring, she hires two walkers to cover more dogs. Nothing they are given mentions the photo, so they skip it.

In May, Mrs. Whitlock texts Marnie at three in the afternoon. “Did Juno get out today?” By June, two of the four households that named the photo have hired another walker.

Marnie heard the right answer. Her mistake was turning it into praise of herself. “Reliable” and “caring” describe almost any walker, and they did not tell the new walkers what to do. The version that works keeps the clients’ own words, about something the client sees. “Owners know their dog had a good walk, because a photo and a note reach them after every walk.” Marnie gives that sentence to every walker she hires, and no walk ends without the photo.

Asking what a client would miss is not fishing for praise

Asking a client what they would miss can feel like asking them for a compliment. Many professionals would rather not ask at all.

The question is about the work, and the answers are usually plain. Ms. Okafor talked about her train. Cressey’s agent did not praise the firm’s expertise. He said that Cressey called back. So ask it in the course of the work, the way you would ask about a date or a room. Then write down what the client says.

When a client answers with praise, such as “You’re just great,” ask for the detail. For example, you can say, “Thank you. What would you notice first if I stopped?” The detail is the part you can build on.

How to build on what your clients would miss

1. Ask at least three of the clients who have worked with you longest one question. “If you stopped working with me, what would you miss?” More than one answer lets you see what the answers share. Write down each answer in the client’s own words. For example, a private chef can ask each family at the end of a Friday dinner.
2. Look for what the answers share. Write it as one sentence, in your clients’ words, about something a client can see. For example, an event planner might write, “My clients spend the whole party with their guests, because every question on the night comes to me.”
3. Go through each part of the job, from the first message to the end. First fix any part that works against your sentence, before you add anything new. For example, a home organizer whose sentence is “Clients never come home to a half-finished room” might stop splitting a room across two days. She books each room as one full day instead.
4. Before you copy an extra that a competitor offers, check it against your sentence. If it makes the sentence truer, add it. If not, leave it. For example, a specialist realtor whose sentence is “Sellers hear from me every Friday by five, even when there is no news” might pass on a rival’s glossy brochure. He keeps the Friday call.
5. Give your sentence to anyone who works for you, and tell them what it means on a normal day. For example, a caterer can tell her servers, “Our clients never have to go into the kitchen. If they ask for anything, you bring it to them.”
6. Write down any remark a client makes in passing about working with you, the way Cressey heard about returned calls. Check it against your sentence. If the remarks keep naming something the sentence leaves out, rewrite the sentence. For example, a tutor might hear two parents mention that their sons now start homework on their own. He can add it to his sentence.

Next: You will see why a client who keeps coming back may be staying from habit. Then you will see how to keep giving them a reason.