Meet Your Customers Where They Are

For the first couple of years I was in business with my own company, I had an idea of where I wanted my customers to be. I had created a scenario, just like I was taught in business school, that was perfectly aligned with my perfectly perfect client.

I spent many hours selling my company’s services, trying to convince my customers to think this perfect way so they would be ready to say yes to my perfect services because it MADE PERFECT SENSE, duh.

I sweat just thinking about it. Man, I liked to make things hard for myself. I see a lot of the business owners that come to me, frustrated about their stagnant sales, doing the same thing.

They have crafted a model that really SHOULD work. It’s all logical and makes perfect sense. If those customers would just LISTEN to the whole story, they would get it and say yes.

Except they don’t. Because they are frustratingly farther behind, caught up in some issue that these business owners don’t want them to be stuck on cause it’s the WRONG issue. Can’t they see that?

No, they can’t. They can’t because right now, before they have been educated that there is another answer, they call their problem X. It doesn’t matter that you can see that it’s Y. They have an immediate pain and that’s what they are focused on right now.

So go there. Go to them. Speak their language and name their problem. Let them see you right now, in association with that problem that they say they need help with in this moment. Be right there, where they are at this very second. Not across the other side of the field, yelling as loud as you can, hoping they will hear.

Stand beside them and hold their hand. Make them feel like you understand where they are right this second. Then take them on a journey to where you really want them to be, where they are going to find the perfect answers.

Listen to how they talk. Speak like they do. Use their words. Associate with their problems. Figure out what they say would make their life shine right now.

Not when they are perfect for you. Where they are right now.

It’s your job to walk them to the light. But you need to be close enough to take their hand.

Tell me in the comments…

Do you have enough wiggle room in your business plan to work with customers who may not identify their problem in the same way you would? Are you able to meet them where they are in order to help them become your ideal customer?