The Power Of Giving
Them What They Want
Twenty years or so ago, when I first started flying on business, before political correctness set in, if you flew first class on a major airline, PLAYBOY was one of the magazines offered to you by the stewardesses. But the first airline to stop putting Playboy on board did so not because of gender sensitivity; they explained that they stopped because everybody was stealing that magazine. This should have been their signal to put more copies on each flight – not to eliminate it altogether. It’s amazing how many businesses (and people) do certain things to attract their customers (relationship partners), then as soon as they get ‘em, they stop doing those things. Find out what they want then don’t give it to them.
The trick is to really, really, really understand what your ideal customer wants, give it to him, and then KEEP ON giving it to him.
And when in doubt, ask. About a year ago, I got kind of jazzed up about going “high tech”, and offering a variety of tech services, like back issues of newsletters on a web site with search-by-topic capability, a product like this on a CD-ROM, and so forth. Fortunately, I surveyed my customers to try and determine their level of interest, and how many used the Net, how many used CD-ROMS, and so on. The results of the survey were clear: only 1% of my good customers had any likelihood of buying these products and services. Bad odds. Soon it may be time to take a fresh look at all this. But at the time I could have plowed ahead, motivated by media hype and assumptions, and peed away a considerable amount of money in a hurry.
Here’s another tip: develop products or services with what your customers really want – not what they SHOULD want – in mind. For years, I adhered to the “give a man a fish, feed him only for a day, but teach a man to fish, feed him for life” idea, and insisted on trying to teach marketing….but my income soared when I adjusted my products to feature “tool kits” with ready-to-use tools rather than just instruction.
