In the Art of War, ancient Chinese strategist and general Sun Zi teaches, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
To be successful, you have to understand your customer, be able to tell stories they want to hear. You’ll want to really speak their language. But, doing that can sometimes feel easier said than done. Here are 3 simple tips that you can start using today to really understand your customer.
Talk with Your Customer
To really understand your customer, you’ve got to talk with them. Steve Blank, the father of Lean startup methodology says a major success indicator for a business is their ability to GET OUT OF THE BUILDING. What he means is that you’ve got to get out of your office and talk to the people you think need your product to make progress in their life. Talking to them doesn’t mean shooting the breeze either. You are looking for context and contrast.
Value & Meaning
In his book, “Demand Side Sales 101”, Bob Moesta talks about the things that you are actually trying to get out of your customer. The major thing is context. Moesta likes to say “context creates meaning”, and he’s right! Think about it. People are weird man. We do dumb, crazy things like spontaneously getting a tattoo. But, at that moment they felt that the time and pain of the tattoo were justified. That context gives you a window into the real progress they were trying to make.
Bob also says “contrast creates value.” Contrast allows people to find the underlying motivations for their decisions, and that’s the goal of talking to them. When talking to a customer, someone chooses to buy pizza because of real tradeoffs that they are making in their brain. They just aren’t able to articulate it until you ask them “so, why pizza? Why didn’t you choose burgers instead?” That’s when they start thinking about the tradeoffs they had to make, and the reason why pizza could do the job better than burgers.
If you want to really begin to understand your customer, then take the time to talk with them, get them to contextualize why they chose you over your competition, and the contrasting tradeoffs you and your competition present. You’ll find where you should be focusing your messaging to close more sales.
Find Your Customers “Struggling Moments”
Struggling moments open doors. Simply put, struggling moments are the circumstances that make your customer say “hey, I need a change.” It can be something as simple as “I don’t like these socks” or something as complex as “my marketing team just isn’t hitting our lead generation targets and so our sales are suffering. We need a change.” If you can identify common patterns in customer struggling moments and circumstances then you can change your messaging to open the door you need to show your customer they need you.
“Atticus Finch” Them
In her 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee shares a great bit of wisdom through her character Atticus Finch. He says “you never know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk about in them.” If you want to know your customer then put yourself in their place. Try to understand the circumstances that are causing them pain, or that make them want to change. If you can “Atticus Finch” them, then you can really start to understand why your product or service would be appealing to them, or not. And, you can learn what to do about it.
Get Out of “The Box”
Since its publication in 2000, the Arbinger Institute’s “Leadership and Self Deception” has sold millions of copies worldwide and changed people’s lives. The main premise of the book is simple: we all have a problem – we are in “the box”. And the box causes us to objectify, vilify, and under-appreciate others while exaggerating our own virtues. Being in the box is dangerous.
If you are in the box, you are objectifying your customers or potential customers and they can sense it. They feel you put a dollar sign over your head and practically see the dollar signs in your eyes. So, what do you do to get out of the box? It’s simple: stop seeing them as a means to an end, and start seeing them as people whose thoughts and feelings matter as much as yours.
Conclusions
If you really want to grow your business then you’ve got to understand your customer. To understand your customer then you should talk with them. Get them to contextualize their decisions and highlight the underlying motivations for them. Atticus Finch them. Walk around in their shoes so you can experience the pains that are motivating them to change. And stop objectifying them. Treat them like real people with real problems. Because they really are. Doing these simple things will give you a leg up on much of your competition. You’ll actually be able help your customers make progress. And when they make progress, you’ll find success.
Don’t Give Up the Ship!
