Here's How To Unlock A Steady Stream Of Happy Customers.
Realize your birds will fly to the next feeder with more attractive food faster than a buttered bullet.
Ever consider what you actually own?
The reality is that you own nothing. Everything is on loan. Your wife, your car and your business. They’re all temporary. You are merely a steward. Harsh words they are. But when we own that truth a certain clarity emerges. Hence, becoming a magnet for what we want is the more fruitful route.
Your home life is better when your wife wants you. Your business is better when your customers seek you. Your material possessions stop owning you when you take the view that you can enjoy them but don’t need them. Your freedom gets magnified exponentially.
In business the difference is polar. Tesla’s unique technology built the most highly valued car company in record time with a years-long waiting line. GM continues to claw for volume. People drool on Ferrari F40s and spit on Ford Pintos. Of course the preferred path is having customers thirsty for your products.
Believing you own your customer base is flawed thinking. Your birds will fly to the next feeder with more attractive food faster than a buttered bullet. Your birds will remain your birds as long as you are the best option, as they define it.
How do you keep your bird feeder buzzing?
Continuing to reinvent yourself is key. Apple has mastered this. A consistent conveyor belt of new products and life enhancing technology has a global crowd salivating over the next anticipated gadget. And they make the experience rewarding. They set a standard for in-store appeal. Their packing has become a YouTube unboxing sensation. Their customer service people actually answer a phone call or respond digitally if you prefer. It’s a seamless experience in the pursuit of perfection. They may not always get it right, but the intent to do so is pure.
Realizing your customers can fly away should instill the desire to do better. Better at solving customer problems, better at creating experiences speeding up open wallets. I do business with a couple of service providers run by people I don’t really like. But their service is tops and they solve problems with peerless speed leaving competitors fighting in the dust for a distant second place. I’m a bird with no reason to leave their feeder.
Elisha Otis once said to himself, “I have a lot of stuff here on the second floor I’d really like to have on the third floor. But these elevation contraptions literally kill people. There’s got to be a better way.”
There was no reliable, easy or safe way to move items from one floor to another in multi-story buildings in the 1800s. Stories of people killed in plunging rickety elevator riggings were too common. Cables and ropes supporting elevators were the weak link. Insufficiently strong cable materials, excessive wear and difficult inspections were main contributors to failed elevators.
Born in 1811, Otis was a problem solver his entire life. A constant tinkerer, the scope of his solutions and patents encompassed the rail, baking, power and transport industries. Among his most noteworthy accomplishments are a safety brake for trains and an automatic bread baking oven, both patented.
Initially a wagon driver in Troy, NY, Otis designed and built a grist mill. It failed so he turned it into a sawmill. Also failed. He transitioned the sawmill and successfully started building wagons in the 1830s. Later, upon the death of his wife, he struck out for Albany, NY for a fresh start with his 2 young sons, one an infant.
Otis applied his talents widely. As a doll maker frustrated by a production rate of only 12 dolls per day he invented and patented a robot turner, increasing his output to about 50 toys per day.
While cleaning an abandoned sawmill in preparation for a bedstead factory, Otis was hesitant to use a precarious lifting platform to move debris from one level to another. Unwilling to take the risk, Otis and his sons Charles and Norton designed a “safety elevator”. Successful testing proved their technology prevented plunging elevators if a cable broke. Inspired, Otis formed the Union Elevator Works, later becoming Otis Brothers & Co.
Needing a sales boost, Otis capitalized on the crowds attending the 1853 New York World’s Fair at the New York Crystal Palace. Standing above an enormous horde on an open elevator platform, Otis asked his axeman assistant to cut the single rope holding up the platform. Before the platform could drop with a potentially life-ending result, Otis’ new technology sprung into action holding the platform in place.
At that moment, Otis forever changed the way people and their gear move vertically in buildings. Upon refining his products, Otis elevators would become the elevator standard with customers rushing to buy his products. Today, across the planet, tens of millions of people will safely ascend and descend in elevators and escalators with Otis technology.
You don’t need to invent a new elevator today. But you can change the way people see you and your products. You can become the leader in your segment in terms of service, timeliness, imagery, product satisfaction…. Your objective is to attract customers in meaningful ways. Meanwhile, let the rest of the world beg for orders and howl into the night. Being a magnet for business looking for you is easier than dumping dollars in sales and marketing to yell into oblivion.
Ask yourself:
Are we selling products or supplying what people want to buy?
Do we make it easier than competitors to buy our products?
Is our marketing developed from the customer’s perspective?
Take aim on your success. The right answers to these questions become the keys to unlocking a steady stream of customers.