Are you adding substantial value to the life of your customer?
I have been finding new ways (and reinventing old ones) to killing time for more than a couple of decades now. And one of the sureshot ways to kill some time is going on movie marathon. I love a number of movies. I love them so much I can watch them over and over again. I just watched Glengarry Glen Ross again last night. And that’s where this story is coming from. Now this particular movie happens to have one of the most epic monologues ever seen. Alec Baldwin might be cracking people up as Donald Trump (and for sure that is an important thing to do, all things considered), but I, for one, don’t think he will ever donn the hat that will top his performance in this one piece.
[Watch it for yourself, if you haven’t seen it. Best 7 mins you will ever waste. Oh, and if you have already seen it, just see it again. You know what I am talking about here.]
So, Blake goes on a rant about the ABC of sales, and that has found its place in the history of salesmanship.
What you won’t expect is the fact that the ABCs are true for every aspect of the life of an entrepreneur.
Always
Be
Creating
Value
Always Create Value for your consumers.
Make that your mantra. Cram it down. Start any process by asking yourself whether you are creating enough value for your consumers.
Now, just for fun, before we move any further, let me bring up the second part of the ABC rant — AIDA.
ATTENTION
Do I have your attention?
I would think so. I had your attention the second you read the title of the story, and even more on watching the much so familiar image of Drake’s ABC rule.
INTEREST
Are you interested? I know you are because its fuck or you walk. You close or you hit the bricks.
I know you are interested, because your consumers are not engaging with your product as much as you would have wanted them to, and you are, right now, desperately searching for ways to make that change.
DECISION
Have you made your decision, for christ!
What are you going to do about it? Research? Research will get you nowhere. You are not going to find the answer to what you should be doing out there. The answer lies within the engagement (or the absence of it) with your consumers.
And ACTION
Well this one is obvious!
So, Always be creating value. In every aspect of your business, have a consumer centric approach.
- If it is designing a product, don’t build a product for yourself, build one that adds value to your consumers’ lives. Solves a pain-point of theirs. Don’t build a product you THINK they need, build a product they visibly SHOW they need. How do you identify that? Lots of prototyping, even more AB testing, and most importantly, making tweaks based on customers’ engagement with your product and analysing whether that makes things more enriched for them or not.
And yeah. When I said, don’t build a product for yourself, I meant a product that you believe is the right one to solve their pain points. Sorry bud, it doesn’t work that way. - When you are creating a marketing campaign, don’t talk about how great your company or product is, or how pumped up on feature-rich steroids it has been made. Nobody gives a shit. And everybody says the same. Even a guy living out of a box with access to a cellphone and internet connectivity can create a blog that claims to teach people the sureshot ways of becoming a millionaire in a year or less. Doesn’t necessarily make him an expert.
Always talk about the consumers’ pain points. Things they would be able to relate to — on a personal and professional level. Every one cares about improving their lives. They care about saving those hard earned dollars. They care about saving that extra half hour they have to slog at the office every day. You talk about those, and you have their attention.
You always begin and you end with the consumer’s pain-points. How your product fits in like a glove in this regard is the juicy center in between.
The rules will be applicable to any facet of your business. Don’t confuse growth with scale. Don’t try expanding your reach before you have the love of the consumers you already have access to. They are your biggest asset. An unintended sandbox. Iterate and reiterate the product to be the product they come to love. The Scaling up part, after that, gets easier.
Don’t try to get more consumers/leads by increasing your marketing budget. That will just keep on intensifying the problem you already have. First fix the marketing campaigns you are already running. See if you can improve their performance. What worked and what didn’t. Then widen the net.
Baldwin says it takes balls of brass to sell real estate? Well, to make a consumer your patron, it would take something more.
