Business Brainstorm, Customer Perspective Process
One of my responsibilities in managing my old Borders store was overseeing merchandising. Each month or so, we’d receive a giant binder full of displays and sign changes to execute. Each display would come with a list of titles we could pull from our store inventory to create the arrangement.
Pulling titles and arranging them was a boring and never-ending process. Luckily, much of the store was merchandised according to the store’s preferences. We could create displays based on local events, timely trends, or staff interests. Those were displays I took real pleasure in dreaming up and managing.
I encouraged my staff to pay attention to the questions people asked and patterns in interest. We took those ideas and applied them to inventory requests and then fresh, store-driven displays. Our goal was to turn the pulse of our customer base into relevant and useful store displays.
It seems needless to say but those displays consistently outsold the merchandising suggestions of our corporate merchandising team. They also reduced our workload by countless hours since they preemptively answered common customer questions.
Merchandising was a key factor in both sales and operations.
So what is merchandising? Despite my experience, I’m no expert. But this is what it means to me:
- Making products visually appealing to the customer.
- Putting like objects together to relate a bigger story or to tie into a trend.
- Creating experiences that naturally lead you towards buying the products involved.
Merchandising is, sadly, a lost art in digital business. What’s truly sad about the lack of merchandising in digital business is that it reflects a lack of true understanding of the customers businesses are serving.
You see, merchandising is all about perspective.
It’s being able to see how other see, feel how others feel, take interest in what others take an interest in.
Merchandising is how you say to your customers, “See, we get it!” It creates a context that connects the customer to her desire.
Merchandising doesn’t just apply to physical products. Merchandising your ideas–especially bold or innovative ideas–can help you gain buy-in (and lead to “buy now!”) much faster than would otherwise be possible.
Faster buy-in means more subscribers, more sales, and less time answering email.
Chris Brogan & Julien Smith write about the importance of using emotion to create connections between your customers and your big ideas in The Impact Equation. Being able to hone in on the emotion your idea generates allows you to use that emotion to create a context around your idea that contrasts your idea from competitive ideas. That’s how you make a bigger impact.
“The goal is to build a bridge between the emotion you want them to experience and how your idea serves that emotion.”
— Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, The Impact Equation
What does merchandising an idea look like?
First, for the sake of this post, we’re going to talk about ideas in a very broad sense. It could be an innovative product that challenges the status quo, it could be a movement you’re leading, it could be a new discovery in your niche, it could be a brand-new formula for success.
1.) Identify the emotional context behind your idea. How do you want people to feel when the encounter your idea (i.e. project, product, movement, discovery, formula)? What other ideas or stories foster that emotion? What’s the “before” emotion, in other words, how do people feel without your idea?
2.) Focus on the visual element of your idea. Do particular colors or images portray the emotion or story around your idea? What environment (home, the great outdoors, fancy restaurant, crunchy coffee shop, etc…) would your customer associate with that emotion or story? Who are the other characters in the story?
3.) Gather related ideas. What ideas inspired you in this new idea? Are you playing with a trend or cultural zeitgeist? What well-known ideas or projects will help people connect with your new idea?
Once you understand the emotional context, visual elements, and related concepts of your idea, you have a loose story that you can create an experience from. That experience could be a well-styled photograph. It could be a reimagining of your brand or personal image. It could be a free event. It might just be the story of your idea told in its full context.
When Seth Godin created The Domino Project, the name he chose was part of the way he merchandised this brave new idea. He wanted to create & publish books that were inherently shareable. He wanted to spread tough questions and fresh ideas the way well-placed dominos cause each other fall in a neat line: effortlessly. The Domino Project was a well-merchandised idea.
When Lululemon created it’s Right as Rain jacket, it chose to harness the story of its Vancouver origins to create a cultural buy in. They identified with the Pacific Northwest dweller who just wanted to stay dry on a daily basis because they lived it. So they used that story to merchandise the idea of the perfect raincoat.
When I created Kick Start Labs, I chose to hone in on the thrill and childlike anticipation of experimenting with a chemistry set and tied it to the traditionally less thrilling idea of experimenting in your business. My goal was to reframe business learning by merchandising in relation to seeing what happens when you combine some volatile chemicals. Safety first, of course.
No doubt, you’re already working at merchandising your ideas. But bringing attention to the full process might mean that your idea goes from being spread at a snail’s pace to setting the world on fire.
Leave a comment to tell me one thing you could do today to improve how your ideas are merchandised.
–PS–
Want more on seeing the world through your customer’s perspective? I’ve got a whole process for that. But first, check out these other posts.
Art of Growth, Business Brainstorm, Customer Perspective Process
Last week, I did an Insight Intensive with Nancy Sherr–a gorgeous and dynamic coach guiding women through transitions and towards a zestful life. I read the copy on her site, I watched her introductory video. I could tell she knew her customer. And suddenly, I did too.
I could imagine all the women who had put so much energy into being the perfect wives to their influential and powerful husbands only to have their 20 year marriages end in divorce. I could see all the women who had put their whole hearts into being perfect mothers only to wonder what to do with their whole hearts when the kids left the nest empty. I could picture all the women who had set aside every shred of their femininity to compete in a masculine world only to feel cold & distant upon retirement or layoff.
Nancy’s work naturally picks up where these transitions leave off. It’s the clearest opportunity and the one that most easily lends itself to an offer. But that’s only one opportunity for her to serve her best clients. She could imagine only serving them at this juncture in time. She could see her clients as static.
Or she could choose to imagine the lives ahead of them. She could choose to hold a vision for her clients as they pursue their zestful lives. And she could choose to create products that serve that growing & evolving vision.
Much of the problem with the way most businesses have chosen to see their ideal client is that it stops at “now.”
You can have one distinct ideal client profile. But that profile doesn’t have to only exist at the point of pain, frustration, or need. No, that profile–that person–has a history. She has unique experiences that have shaped who she is at this moment. She also has a future. She has hopes, dreams, and the day-by-day reality of moving through time.
Innovative businesses hold a vision for their customers. Innovative businesses use their unique insight into their customers’ day-to-day lives to see what tomorrow will look like and create the solutions that meet them at tomorrow and beyond.
“What business a company is in depends, in large part, not on existing customers but who tomorrow’s customers will—and should—be.”
— Michael Schrage, Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?
That is not to say that who your customer is changes. But it is to say that your customers are changing. You have the opportunity to continue to serve them as they progress.
Or you can take a myopic perspective and only sell to them “now.”
Consider the newspapers. Newspaper companies think they’re in the “newspaper” business. So it’s difficult for them to innovate outside the product that people have always wanted from them. They think their customers buy newspapers.
But that’s not at all what their customers buy. Their customers buy “news.” That’s a fundamentally different way to look at the value provided.
So their customers have become people who seldom read things on recycled wood pulp anymore. News customers engage smartphones, tablets, laptops, social media platforms, and countless other sources of news.
The “newspaper” business might be dying but the “news” business–at least the market and demand for news–has never been greater. If newspaper companies forgot the paper part, what innovative solutions could they come up with to not only meet their customers with the reality of today but to lead them to the promise of tomorrow?
What about your industry? Do people actually buy “coaching?” What do they buy instead? Are people actually buying “website design?” What solution are they really seeking? Do your customers care that you’re a wellness coach? What personal change are they willing to put money on?
Knowing the business that you’re really in helps you to see how your customers grow and change beyond the 1-point product or service you’re selling now.
Your customers’ needs change. Their desires evolve. The way they want to interact with you and your community transforms. The way they want to be communicated with shifts.
This can be scary. But it’s really an opportunity.
As your understanding of your customer-through-time evolves, you will see that there are truly countless opportunities for you to meet their changing needs. There are desires & needs that naturally rise to the surface as the people you serve grow. Those desires & needs translate to offers & opportunities, each with its own set of constraints and objectives.
Each time you identify one of these needs, you have the opportunity to layer the messaging, community, and revenue for that new offer on top of your existing offers. And that can lead to big returns in each department.
Seeing your ideal customer as a living, breathing, growing human being means you can see your business as a living, growing, thriving organism instead of a one-trick pony.
***
Ready to chart the course for your customer’s journey and a path of growth for your business?
Understanding how your customers grow & change, as well as the ups & downs they’ll have along the way, is a big part of The Customer Perspective Process. You’ll learn to apply your customer’s journey to your business model development, content strategy, and strategic partnership strategy.
Click here to learn about The Customer Perspective Process virtual boot camp from Kick Start Labs.
Business Brainstorm
There are three kinds of work you do a regular basis.
First, there’s work that gets immediate results. It might be actually delivering the service you provide or creating the product you sell. It could be writing on your blog or updating product descriptions. It could be ordering supplies or promoting your work.
Second, there’s work that should be done by someone else. This varies depending on your business and your strengths within that business. It could be fiddling with your website, sending out emails, or scheduling clients. It could be writing copy or creating advertisements. It could be shipping packages or bookkeeping.
Third, there’s the work that contributes to long-term growth. Often this is work that requires your expertise but that isn’t the hands-on work that you sell. It’s systems work. It’s process work. It’s relationship building. It’s working on the vision (and the byproducts of it).
You probably do a lot of the first and second kind of work. You are constantly after immediate results (they feel good, right?) because immediate results are better than no results. And you do a lot of work that you really have no business doing because you have chosen not to invest the time or money in having someone else do it.
That means that the work that contributes to long-term growth gets the short shrift. When you don’t work towards the future, you leave yourself in the hamster wheel of constant hustling. Sound familiar?
…while you’re doing it, doing it, doing it, there’s something much more important that isn’t getting done. And it’s the work you’re not doing, the strategic work, the entrepreneurial work, that will lead your business forward, that will give you the life you’ve not yet known.
— Michael E Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
If you’re beginning to lose faith in the dream of having a business that takes care of you (instead of you taking care of it), then it’s probably because you find yourself doing so much of the first two categories of work. When that type of work is disproportionate to the results you see, frustration is the natural byproduct.
When you exercise your responsibility to long-term growth work, even if you’re not seeing immediate results, you can better weather the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. If a particular idea doesn’t work out, you have the systems or relationships in place to get you through. Or you have the comfort of knowing your next idea or opportunity is already in the works.
If you’re ready to do more long-term growth work and less of the rest, you need to schedule it. Put it on the calendar. Honor it like it was a client appointment or a project deadline. This is the work that will keep your business in business – respect it.
Once you’ve got that kind of work on the calendar, make sure that you’re creating systems that reduce the amount of other work you’re doing. Use your scheduled time to create a training or on-boarding process for an assistant or business manager. Also use that time to plan for new products or services that require less effort or active time from you. Plan to shift your business model to one that leverages your time & talents.
Bottom line: how would you spend your time if doing work that contributed to long-term business growth was your primary responsibility?
‘Cause it is.
— PS —
Kick Start Labs designed a brand-new Lab to help you get out of this rut and into strategic product development. It’s call Product Development 101. It’s available for a limited time on its own or as part of a Kick Start Labs membership. Click here for more info.
Business Brainstorm
It’s a personality brand, not a personality business.
Running a business that incorporates some level of personality branding is like driving a car. You put yourself in the driver’s seat but you turn the steering wheel, not the car wheels themselves. You step on the gas pedal and a hundred tiny reactions make the motor whir & the wheels spin.
You are not the car.
The car still functions whether it’s you in the driver’s seat or your best friend.
There are two real dangers of personality business – as opposed to personality branding:
- You risk being the only engine of growth for your business.
- You risk creating a customer base of sycophants.
Let’s examine the first risk.
When you are the only engine of growth for your business, you can’t maximize your effort-to-results ratio. In other words, to get results, you need to put in a comparable amount of work. You don’t move forward unless you’re putting in the effort.
Your goal is find your sweet spot (click here for a guide to finding your sweet spot) such that all you need to do is flick a switch here or there to create big rewards for both yourself and your customers.
- Do you have a product (program, blog, service, project, etc…) that generates new sales without advertising? That spreads exponentially through word-of-mouth from delighted soul to delighted soul?
- Do you have systems or applications that automate as much of your workflow as possible?
- Are your offerings progressive? Do they grow with your customers to generate additional revenue?
Now, the second risk.
This is an altogether more controversial statement. But one that needs to be made. There are too many businesses in this space that are driven by the desire of the customer to be more like the business owner. Are your customers working towards their own version of success or they working on being more like you?
- Are they out to please you in anyway they can? Or are they willing to push back when they have a new need or a question about your vision?
- Do they engage you in meaningful conversation or just want to be “doing things right?”
- Do they apply your teaching, product, or solution? Or do they just keep coming back for more?
And in fact, these risks are interrelated. In an effort to launch a relationship-based, personality brand, many business owners – and rightly so – offer their services 1:1. Then, due to a marketing misunderstanding, they position the offer as essentially “spend some time with me” instead of “get xyz results.”
If your business is positioned to be about just spending time with you, it’s near impossible to not be the sole engine of growth. If all you’re selling is access to your world, you’ll be forced to create & recreate that world… and all the logistics that go along with it. It’s a slippery slope of of too much work, too much frustration, and too much energy drained.
You can be a role model without creating an atmosphere of “I wanna be just like you!” You can create offerings that sell your ideas instead of yourself. You can create a brand is driven by your unique talents, experience, and perspective without being a slave to a business that requires your 24/7 supervision.
Here’s a 3 point plan:
1. Sever the emotional attachment you have to your business. Yes, I believe in work/life integration. But I also believe that your business cannot thrive if you allow it to control your sense of self-worth or self-knowledge.
Just like being a mother or father doesn’t wholly define you, being your business can’t define you either. Personality brands blur this line but they don’t erase it. Understand where you stop and your business begins. Hat tip to Adam on this one.
2. Separate your work from your technique or ideas. Your ideas and your technique exist separate from the work you put into your business. Others can (and should) run with your ideas. Others can (and should) execute your techniques.
It’s easy to get caught up and assuming you are a necessary part of the equation. You are not. Unless you’re prepared to helicopter-parent your business (gosh, I sure hope you’re not), build a business that’s based on scaling your ideas or technique.
3. Save yourself from over-sharing. Some business owners like to leak their own gossip in the name of “authenticity.” It’s all out front because there’s little in the way of strategy on the back end.
Authenticity isn’t an excuse or a demand to air your dirty laundry. Authenticity is an opportunity ask potential customers to align with your values, the value you provide to them, and the vision you have for who they’re becoming as human beings. Hat tip to Ali Shapiro on this one.
The illusion of personality branding is that you’re selling yourself. The risk is that you find yourself sold to a business model that crashes into a tree.
Make your goal to be the confident, in-control driver of your business. Not the commodity being sold.
— PS —
Kick Start Labs is about to release a brand new resource on the basics of product development. If you’ve found yourself little more than a commodity in your business, it’s time to take a serious look at how you can develop a product or service that liberates you. Keep your eyes peeled – registration opens Friday.
Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm
Here’s a dirty little secret about business in the digital age: people aren’t as financially successful as you think they are.
I’m not saying anyone is lying about their earnings. If someone tells you how much they’re producing, I would trust it. What I mean is that you perceive the people you admire, many of the business owners who seem to be “crushing it,” to be more financially successful than they are.
This isn’t an exposé on others lack of success; it’s an exposé on the thought patterns and assumptions that keep you struggling when you should be thriving.
When you stare at your Twitter stream or the fancy websites of your colleagues, your mind plays tricks on you. You confuse the shiny veneer with deep success. I do too. It’s an easy mistake to make.
When you see a highly organized, well-executed launch, you associate it with a small team of gifted marketers and lots of sales. What you don’t see is the one-woman show, the sleepless nights, the endless “hustle,” the working-too-hard-for-too-little routine.
When you see an ebook or a program or an affiliate campaign, you associate it with waking up every day to hundreds of dollars more in the bank. What you don’t see is the lack of sales or the constant work required to move a small amount of inventory.
When you see a business with a wait list, you associate it with a calendar full of exciting clients and a bank account full of service fees. What you don’t see is the unpaid bills, the anxiety of asking for payment, and nagging feeling that there’s a better way to be spending time. What you don’t hear is the quiet whisper of, “Who am I to want anything different than this? I should feel blessed to be this busy.”
This might even be you now. You’ve executed the launch, you’ve created an opportunity for leveraged income, or you’ve sold out your calendar. People tell you that you’re successful. And you believe them. But again, you’re left with the nagging thought, “I didn’t think that success would feel like this.”
Look, I’m not trying to be a downer. I’m an optimist – but I’m also a realist. And I woke up with a strong desire to let you in on this secret. The reality is that I know all this because these business owners – the ones you associate with big launches, profitable products, and sold out service calendars – they come to me when they’ve had enough. And I’m generally as surprised to hear from them as you’d be! They open up and tell me they want to make more money, work less, and structure the business differently.
What I’ve discovered is that the source of their frustration is the engine of their business, the thing that keeps it motoring down the road. What’s the engine? It’s them!
When you’re trying to be the engine of your own business it can manifest in many ways:
- pushing out tons of free stuff to try to gain traction
- doing “the work” at the expense of building the business
- saying “yes” to every opportunity for exposure or joint venture
- changing surface-level tactics and hoping for a different result
I recently wrote that after the sparkly follow-your-passion dreams wear off and the reality of hard work sets in, it’s easy to confuse busyness with business. When you are the engine of your business growth, busyness seems like the answer. If only you put in more hours, if only you checked more things off the list, you could get the business where you want it to be.
It’s the truly successful people who realize their business is run by something greater than their sheer effort.
The business grows because it’s built to grow. The model provides for growth through clear channels of customer acquisition, products that build on previous successes, and systems that eliminate busywork while replicating results.
It’s a mindset shift. And a drastic one, at that.
It requires you accepting that more work, harder work, or sheer will is not the key to getting ahead.
And it requires that you have faith in your ability to step back from the work far enough to see how the business could succeed without your constant interference.
Business Brainstorm
The road from follow-your-passion to thriving business can be a bumpy one. Once you realize “if you build it, they will come” isn’t a business strategy, it’s tempting to spend every waking hour tweaking, writing, emailing, networking, and trying to push through.
“…while you’re doing it, doing it, doing it, there’s something much more important that isn’t getting done.”
— Michael E Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
Busyness isn’t business.
Don’t confuse the two. You can work until you’re blue in the face and still not succeed. That’s not to say that hard work doesn’t or won’t pay off. But is what you’re spending your day doing really getting you one (or better, a few) steps ahead? Are your daily actions tuned to the goal you’ve set in front of you?
Check yourself.
Your goal can’t be to work yourself to the bone. The sense of accomplishment you’ve been missing won’t come from just checking tasks off a list.
What you’re missing is progress, the sense that what you’re doing matters in the larger scheme of things.
Being busy doesn’t level the learning curve. Being busy doesn’t create ease. Being busy doesn’t create satisfaction.
Know where you want to go and create a plan to get there. Remove any and all unnecessary tasks and busy work. Take time off, explore, enjoy.
Have faith that your plan will take time and that doesn’t mean that you have to fill it with work that is meaningless.
