3 Steps To Being In A League All Your Own
July 22nd, 2021 // 1:37 pm @ Scott Manning
I gave you some great examples of extraordinary companies last week that provide more than products or services but an experience. They take customer culture seriously, not just company culture. It’s not hard to have a company culture. It is harder to live it out day to day and with every action in between, but what’s even more difficult and most often misunderstood or just ignored altogether is customer culture.
This is next level business development and it what makes a business great. I believe it is what drives loyalty and reduces resistance to price as well as creates a dynamic of refer-ability like no other.
First, what are some companies that you admire that you do business with? What lessons have you learned from them? What inspirations can be gained and applied to your business?
I hope you took time last week to think about what is the essence of your “brand” and how you want your business to embody your philosophy and principles with your customers – brought to life with your experience, engagement, marketing, and relationship.
Here’s the easiest way to think about this: you want to give your customers as real as possible sense of belonging. You want them to have pride of being your customer.
You think about this with sports fans or owners of a certain car or even people that vacation at a certain area. The list goes on.
Actually, in every industry and every sector and every genera this exists and you ask yourself why? Is it just because there happens to be a single great business that is birthed out of every concept…
Coffee Shops
Shoes
Athletic Apparel
Eye Glasses
Cookware
Recreational Gear
Sports Cars
Think about it, though you may not have any familiarity of it if it is not something you value or consume, it exists and it serves a segment of the population. There are three principles that everyone of them follow.
They know who they are for. What customer they are designed and built to serve. Not every person with money or who has an x y or z but instead specifically for a person that resonates with their brand identity.
Additionally, they hardly have to sell anything at all because when you know you want it, you want it. You aren’t buying them on price and you aren’t comparing alternatives, you want this and only this.
Now, that doesn’t mean they aren’t positioning and marketing themselves well – in a different way they are selling. Instead, the esteem and exclusivity and the belonging and the pride and the experience – more so than the features of the product and service.
And they don’t stop once someone buys and in fact they do probably more for their customers than they do for their prospective customers and that is a very big lesson.
Most businesses do not do enough to earn people’s business in the first place. They don’t ‘try’ hard enough to sell someone. However, whatever effort is exerted to “get the customer,” absolutely no one does enough to “keep the customer” and more importantly to “develop the customer.”
As I always say, the mission actually begins once you get them as a customer. When you realize this, you are well on your way to doing a great job of reaching the next level of engagement and customer value.
The other thing I would point to and it might actually seem obvious…
They actually do have something unique to brag about that rallies the customer and moves them over the edge in the first place.
Sometimes it is the exact differentiating factor that their customers are buying and sometimes it is just part of the experience. None the less, there is some-thing if not many things that the competition will never copy.
Okay, there you have it.
Three more things to do. Isn’t that what you come here for? You should be coming here looking for ‘things to do’ not just for warm and fuzzy feelings – though they come with the territory. You want to be coming here to actually implement and improve.
So, three principles applied from unique premium experiential businesses that market in a vacuum and create a category of one and an amazing customer following.
First, revisit your ideal customer and who exactly you are for.
Second, do as much if not more after they buy as you do getting them to buy.
Third, make a list and be very clear on what exactly does make you unique and different.
I think I said this to you before but it’s worth saying again – build a business that you can be proud of and you will build a business your customers will love.
What are you doing to help your customers take pride in being your customer?
What are you doing to help your customers celebrate giving you money?
What are you doing to illicit feelings in your customer that attach them more to you?
The more you embody and represent this in every way possible the more you will attract customers to you who have already predetermined and decided in advance to do business with you.
Are you ready for one of the greatest business lessons and what I would consider one of my most valuable secrets and a foundational principle to everything I personally do…
When you commit to treating your prospects more like customers, you’ll create more valuable customers.
And
When you commit to treating your customers more like prospects, you’ll develop more loyal customers.
It’s not just that most don’t do enough, it’s that most take their customers for granted. They are distracted by the “doing” of the business instead of the “experience” of the prospects and customers. They completely miss the point of what attracts people to you, why they stay with you, and what they are actually paying you for.
Remember, they can get what you do any number of other places. That is – until they can’t – and you actually elevate yourself up and become different enough to create your own universe and bring people into it who want to be there.
Whether it’s the businesses I mentioned last week or ones that you thought about – no business is perfect and they can always do more. Chances are they are missing more steps and strategies than they are getting right but they aren’t missing the most important ones and that’s what matters.
As the old saying goes, if you are for everybody you are for nobody. Don’t try to be all things to all people, it’s a futile mission. Instead, be someone important to someone specific and you’ll find that the foundation for a long-sustainable profitable business.
We’ll pick up here next week to talk about missed opportunities of even the most experiential brands. Stay tuned.
Category : Blog
