Mountains of Arizona
Sunny 67 Degrees
6:40 a.m.
As a copywriter, I think a lot about what clients and customers want. What is the real thing they’re buying when they say they want your product or service?
So many business owners never get to that answer. But that’s really just the beginning of the questions…
Because as you “grow up” and mature, your field of vision extends beyond the actual purchase into the days, weeks and years after. You start to realize there’s a lot more to it.
When I’m working with clients to design selling systems, actually having the sale happen somewhere is important. But it’s only part of it.
I’m just as interested in the sale happening as how the buyer feels AFTER the sale happens.
It’s important to care about what they buy AND how they feel after they buy.
This is why I’ve never been too interested in asking people to buy six more things after they buy the first one. I know plenty of people do this. I know a lot of people think it’s smart when they do this.
Well, I suppose it is “smart,” if you’re thinking about money. But really, there are far more important things in business. Trust is just one of them.
Upsell take rate, average order value, customer lifetime value, earnings per click, blah, blah blah.
This is the vocabulary of a business person, for sure. You can whip out words like this and people think you’re intelligent.
But I gave up caring what others think. I’m more interested in the transformation I help people make. And that has do to with delivering the thing to them that best moves them forward.
It has nothing to do with selling them as much as they will allow.
The sale is not the goal. The sale facilitates the achievement of the goal, which is some noticeable and transformational benefit to their life.
So I don’t think it’s smart at all to sell your customers and clients as much as they will take.
If you could be an empathic fly on the wall when your prospect does this, you’d feel that something is actually LOST by the end of that sale.
You lost big and you don’t even know it.
It’s much smarter to leave something on the table, not to drain the well dry.
So I guess we’re going to need a new word for what we do in the world of the Incomparable Expert because I’m more concerned about how John, Kathy, Susie, Tom, Bob and James FEEL rather than what they buy at any one moment.
I was recording an advisory response yesterday highlighting how important the media platform is for helping this to happen over the long term.
This is the communication channel you build that provides learning to you, value to your reader/listener and a consistent flow of information from one party to the other.
There is little more valuable than the insights this flow brings to you over time.
The big opportunity we have is not only to deliver an “incomparable” product or service into the life of our clients but also deliver an “incomparable” feeling they can’t get anywhere else.