The Number One Ingredient for Riches
How well you understand your marketplace and your core business is the number one determinant of how rich you'll become.
The more you know about your customers -- especially what they've bought from you before, or what they're buying from you right now, or buying from your most successful competitors -- the better.
You also need to be vividly aware of their problems, their frustration, their pains, their hopes and their dreams, fears, failures, and frustrations.
The more you truly understand them at an intimate level, and how your product, service, or company can offer them a solution to their biggest problems, the more effective you'll be in selling to them -- and the more you'll maximize your profits.
Now, that sounds like common sense, and of course it is.
But there are some very important things that I intend to discuss in this article, and one of the most important is that not everyone is your customer.
That's crucial, because so many people don't get this point.
They think everyone in the world is their customer...
and so they target no one in particular.
That's a huge mistake.
Several years ago, my wife and I opened a new pet boutique.
Our ultimate goal is to franchise the business, to have stores in every city in the country.
We want to sell hundreds of these pet boutiques.
Most people have pets, and they love to treat them well.
One of the key things we're selling is premium pet food, and we'd like to get people to keep coming back repeatedly to buy it.
We're starting in a town of about 15,000 people, so let's say that 40% of those people are pet owners; so now we've got about 7,000 prospective buyers.
But not all of those people can be our customers! Out of those 7,000, there may only be 1,000 or 2,000 who would come in and spend the money we want them to spend.
Just because somebody owns a pet and could potentially come into our store and buy what we're selling doesn't mean they will.
And even if they come in once, it doesn't mean they're going to come in once a month, which is what we're looking for.
Nobody's in business just to have somebody come in and do business with them once.
You're looking for people that you want to come back repeatedly.
So you must start with an understanding, as in this example, that there are only so many prime prospects in your market.
Most people don't consider that; they think anybody can be their customers.
They don't have a clear enough idea of the type of person they're looking for.
And sometimes, you can't really know who that person is until you do the advertising necessary to pre-qualify them.
In all cases, psychology is involved: you're sincerely trying to understand why people buy what you're offering, and what they're really looking for.
What are their problems? What are their hopes? What emotional elements cause them to habitually re-buy the kinds of things you sell? Once you start getting a handle on that, you're looking for commonalities within your customer base, ways you can communicate to them so it feels like you're speaking to them at a personal level.
Part of this comes from getting to know them personally.
One of the reasons we do a lot of seminars and workshops with our parent company is to stay close to the customers.
We want to understand them at an intimate level, so we spend some time with them, talk to them, get inside their heads and hearts.
The whole time, we treat them like royalty, doing our best to roll out the red carpet for them and give them the respect they deserve.
Simultaneously, we're like psychiatrists, trying to probe the depths of their psyches, trying to get behind their eyeballs, trying to think like they think.
And we're always asking ourselves why.
Why do they buy what they buy? What are they really looking for? One of the things you have to realize from the beginning is that all selling is emotional.
While some of the questions we ask are logic-based, most of the answers we're looking for have more to do with emotions.
Some niche markets are more emotional than others; for instance, this pet boutique.
We're looking for people who have money and will spend it on their companion animals, because they're passionate about their pets.
Passionate people keep buying.
Even in recessionary periods, they continue to spend money -- and by the way, the pet market is an almost recession-proof business.
Number one, out of necessity: people have to feed their animals.
But number two, because the emotional element causes certain people to spend a lot of money on their pets, no matter what.
We have special events once a month.
One of the purposes of our events is to have our customers bond with us.
Even if most never attend, at least they know we care, because we keep inviting them.
And, of course, we get inside the heads and hearts of those who do show up.
We need to spend time with them, and the whole time we're friendly with them.
We ask them all kinds of pointed questions, ideally ones that will go below their radar so they won't be able to tell what we're doing.
It all boils down to psychology.
Just as a good psychiatrist probes their patient to try to get through to the core issues that brought that patient to them in the first place, we're trying to ask probing questions to get people to open up.
We're trying to listen carefully to what they're saying, but also to what they're not saying, in order to try to understand them at an emotional level.
That's where the power comes in.
Our intimate knowledge of who we sell to has been the one secret that's made us millions of dollars over the past 25 years.
So, if all this sounds simple to you, you're right.
It is simple.
The degree that you get inside the hearts and the heads of the people you do business with is the degree that you make money from them.
You have to understand them at an emotional level even more than they understand themselves...
because most dedicated buyers don't know why they buy so much...
because they're caught up in the emotional aspect of it.
They're motivated by strong emotional forces that cause them to do what they do.
It's up to you to discover what those are, and then to develop more and more of what they want.
That's the key to upselling them.
This intimate understanding of the marketplace is the number one secret ingredient to success, because your business is more than just the product you sell.
It's more than your office or your storefront.
It's more than the inventory on your shelves.
It's more than your website.
Those are just things.
The relationship with the client is what's important.
Sadly, people don't communicate personally anymore.
But 50 or 100 years ago, you had your Main Street gas station and your Main Street grocery store, and people went in all the time.
They knew the owner, who thanked them for being in the store.
There was a genuine relationship there, developed over time.
People didn't move as much as they do these days, so probably the grocery store owner was the same person from the time you were a kid until the time you retired.
Since everybody and everything stayed more or less the same, business owners knew their customers well.
To be successful in business today, you have to get to know what's in your customers' make-up -- even if you don't know all your customers by name.
You have to acquire a deep understanding of who they are.
In our business, we've worked with hundreds of thousands of people.
There's no way we could know all of our customers by name.
If they buy something from us by mail and never contact us for support, we have no personal interaction with them at all.
But in the aggregate, we know what they're interested in, and we know that by studying their buying patterns.
We're constantly monitoring that information.
Whether you have a storefront, whether you do business by mail or on the Internet, you've got to do things to build relationships with your clients, based on that knowledge of the general marketplace you serve.
So rather than focusing on what your product or service is, start by focusing on your marketplace.
Focus on their problems, their frustrations, their pains, their hopes, their dreams, their goals, what they're looking to get out of life, what challenges they face, and then use that information to figure out how your company can offer them an alternate solution.
They're in pain.
They've got some sort of a challenge or problem, and if things don't go differently somehow, they're going continue down that path.
So offer them a Plan B -- an alternate ending to their story.
Frame it like that in your marketing.
It's like they're standing in a fork in the road.
They've received your offer, and now they've got a choice to make: Choice A, to continue down the path they're on and get the same results, continue to experience that same old suffering -- or Choice B, to take the fork in the road and try your solution.
You've got a product that alleviates their pain, but they have to choose the right path.
You've got to understand their problem in depth before you can offer a solution.
The more you understand your specific marketplace, the more effective your solutions will be.
Knowing more about your customers lets you make the most money by providing the ideal products, services, and solutions to them -- again, common sense.
Yet some people are taking it to a whole deeper level than others.
They go beyond the surface and start digging deeper, because they know that that's where the power is: the point where you begin to understand your customers better than they understand themselves, and can sell to them more effectively.
The more you know about your customers -- especially what they've bought from you before, or what they're buying from you right now, or buying from your most successful competitors -- the better.
You also need to be vividly aware of their problems, their frustration, their pains, their hopes and their dreams, fears, failures, and frustrations.
The more you truly understand them at an intimate level, and how your product, service, or company can offer them a solution to their biggest problems, the more effective you'll be in selling to them -- and the more you'll maximize your profits.
Now, that sounds like common sense, and of course it is.
But there are some very important things that I intend to discuss in this article, and one of the most important is that not everyone is your customer.
That's crucial, because so many people don't get this point.
They think everyone in the world is their customer...
and so they target no one in particular.
That's a huge mistake.
Several years ago, my wife and I opened a new pet boutique.
Our ultimate goal is to franchise the business, to have stores in every city in the country.
We want to sell hundreds of these pet boutiques.
Most people have pets, and they love to treat them well.
One of the key things we're selling is premium pet food, and we'd like to get people to keep coming back repeatedly to buy it.
We're starting in a town of about 15,000 people, so let's say that 40% of those people are pet owners; so now we've got about 7,000 prospective buyers.
But not all of those people can be our customers! Out of those 7,000, there may only be 1,000 or 2,000 who would come in and spend the money we want them to spend.
Just because somebody owns a pet and could potentially come into our store and buy what we're selling doesn't mean they will.
And even if they come in once, it doesn't mean they're going to come in once a month, which is what we're looking for.
Nobody's in business just to have somebody come in and do business with them once.
You're looking for people that you want to come back repeatedly.
So you must start with an understanding, as in this example, that there are only so many prime prospects in your market.
Most people don't consider that; they think anybody can be their customers.
They don't have a clear enough idea of the type of person they're looking for.
And sometimes, you can't really know who that person is until you do the advertising necessary to pre-qualify them.
In all cases, psychology is involved: you're sincerely trying to understand why people buy what you're offering, and what they're really looking for.
What are their problems? What are their hopes? What emotional elements cause them to habitually re-buy the kinds of things you sell? Once you start getting a handle on that, you're looking for commonalities within your customer base, ways you can communicate to them so it feels like you're speaking to them at a personal level.
Part of this comes from getting to know them personally.
One of the reasons we do a lot of seminars and workshops with our parent company is to stay close to the customers.
We want to understand them at an intimate level, so we spend some time with them, talk to them, get inside their heads and hearts.
The whole time, we treat them like royalty, doing our best to roll out the red carpet for them and give them the respect they deserve.
Simultaneously, we're like psychiatrists, trying to probe the depths of their psyches, trying to get behind their eyeballs, trying to think like they think.
And we're always asking ourselves why.
Why do they buy what they buy? What are they really looking for? One of the things you have to realize from the beginning is that all selling is emotional.
While some of the questions we ask are logic-based, most of the answers we're looking for have more to do with emotions.
Some niche markets are more emotional than others; for instance, this pet boutique.
We're looking for people who have money and will spend it on their companion animals, because they're passionate about their pets.
Passionate people keep buying.
Even in recessionary periods, they continue to spend money -- and by the way, the pet market is an almost recession-proof business.
Number one, out of necessity: people have to feed their animals.
But number two, because the emotional element causes certain people to spend a lot of money on their pets, no matter what.
We have special events once a month.
One of the purposes of our events is to have our customers bond with us.
Even if most never attend, at least they know we care, because we keep inviting them.
And, of course, we get inside the heads and hearts of those who do show up.
We need to spend time with them, and the whole time we're friendly with them.
We ask them all kinds of pointed questions, ideally ones that will go below their radar so they won't be able to tell what we're doing.
It all boils down to psychology.
Just as a good psychiatrist probes their patient to try to get through to the core issues that brought that patient to them in the first place, we're trying to ask probing questions to get people to open up.
We're trying to listen carefully to what they're saying, but also to what they're not saying, in order to try to understand them at an emotional level.
That's where the power comes in.
Our intimate knowledge of who we sell to has been the one secret that's made us millions of dollars over the past 25 years.
So, if all this sounds simple to you, you're right.
It is simple.
The degree that you get inside the hearts and the heads of the people you do business with is the degree that you make money from them.
You have to understand them at an emotional level even more than they understand themselves...
because most dedicated buyers don't know why they buy so much...
because they're caught up in the emotional aspect of it.
They're motivated by strong emotional forces that cause them to do what they do.
It's up to you to discover what those are, and then to develop more and more of what they want.
That's the key to upselling them.
This intimate understanding of the marketplace is the number one secret ingredient to success, because your business is more than just the product you sell.
It's more than your office or your storefront.
It's more than the inventory on your shelves.
It's more than your website.
Those are just things.
The relationship with the client is what's important.
Sadly, people don't communicate personally anymore.
But 50 or 100 years ago, you had your Main Street gas station and your Main Street grocery store, and people went in all the time.
They knew the owner, who thanked them for being in the store.
There was a genuine relationship there, developed over time.
People didn't move as much as they do these days, so probably the grocery store owner was the same person from the time you were a kid until the time you retired.
Since everybody and everything stayed more or less the same, business owners knew their customers well.
To be successful in business today, you have to get to know what's in your customers' make-up -- even if you don't know all your customers by name.
You have to acquire a deep understanding of who they are.
In our business, we've worked with hundreds of thousands of people.
There's no way we could know all of our customers by name.
If they buy something from us by mail and never contact us for support, we have no personal interaction with them at all.
But in the aggregate, we know what they're interested in, and we know that by studying their buying patterns.
We're constantly monitoring that information.
Whether you have a storefront, whether you do business by mail or on the Internet, you've got to do things to build relationships with your clients, based on that knowledge of the general marketplace you serve.
So rather than focusing on what your product or service is, start by focusing on your marketplace.
Focus on their problems, their frustrations, their pains, their hopes, their dreams, their goals, what they're looking to get out of life, what challenges they face, and then use that information to figure out how your company can offer them an alternate solution.
They're in pain.
They've got some sort of a challenge or problem, and if things don't go differently somehow, they're going continue down that path.
So offer them a Plan B -- an alternate ending to their story.
Frame it like that in your marketing.
It's like they're standing in a fork in the road.
They've received your offer, and now they've got a choice to make: Choice A, to continue down the path they're on and get the same results, continue to experience that same old suffering -- or Choice B, to take the fork in the road and try your solution.
You've got a product that alleviates their pain, but they have to choose the right path.
You've got to understand their problem in depth before you can offer a solution.
The more you understand your specific marketplace, the more effective your solutions will be.
Knowing more about your customers lets you make the most money by providing the ideal products, services, and solutions to them -- again, common sense.
Yet some people are taking it to a whole deeper level than others.
They go beyond the surface and start digging deeper, because they know that that's where the power is: the point where you begin to understand your customers better than they understand themselves, and can sell to them more effectively.
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