Customer Perspective Process
“Most of us are slaves of the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves about our lives. Freedom begins the moment we become conscious of the plot line we are living and, with this insight, recognize that we can step into another story altogether.”
— Carol S. Pearson, The Hero Within
I came across this quote through the brilliant Sarah Peck. I have told myself many stories in my life and I have slowly released myself from their snare. A recent story I uncovered was that I am a “misfit” and that most people just put up with me in social situations.
This is a story that’s haunted me since I was very small. It’s not that I believed myself to be quirky or misunderstood. This story was much closer to believing that I was “unlovable” or, at the least, “unfriendable.” Despite the mounting evidence to the contrary–I have brilliant, loving, and supportive friends–in recent years, I continued to tell myself this story as I acclimated to a new community and new relationships.
When I became aware of this story, I was able to live a different plot line. I’m no pariah and I don’t need to act like one. That doesn’t make me any less shy or introverted but it does fundamentally change the way I act in relationships.
What does this have to do with your business? Simple. You tell yourself stories about your customers. And most likely, those are limiting stories:
- They won’t pay enough for this.
- They want fast & dirty.
- They like the flash & sparkle of my competition more.
- They will only buy this a certain way.
Are you a slave to the stories you tell yourself about your customers?
Click to tweet.
Often, I work with my clients to bring attention to these stories and the effect they have on the decisions they make in their businesses. A story about their customers not valuing the product or service they receive leads to an artificially low price. A story about the way customers are used to buying can stymie innovation.
This quote from Frederick Buechner appears in Anne Lamott’s classic book on writing, Bird by Bird:
“You avoid forcing your characters to march too steadily to the drumbeat of your artistic purpose. You leave some measure of real freedom for your characters to be themselves. And if minor characters show an inclination to become major characters, as they’re apt to do, you at least give them a shot at it, because in the world of fiction it may take many pages before find out who the major characters really are.”
I used to use this idea to prod my group coaching participants to drop old stories about their customers and allow those customers to grow, evolve, and change.
Our customers are integral characters in the stories of our businesses. In many ways, they are the main characters with our businesses operating more as settings or worldviews and us, as business owners, acting as semi-omniscient narrators.
The stories we tell are the stories of the people we serve. But all too often we pay more attention to parroted beliefs and limiting thoughts than the actual, expansive stories that are playing out in front of us, with us.
When you bring attention to and question the stories you tell yourself about your customers, those same customers–your characters–can help you co-create new stories that take your business in all sorts of new directions.
Truly getting to know those customers, not just the stories you tell yourself about them when you’re frustrated or feeling doubtful, is the key.
Art of Growth, Customer Perspective Process
At some point in starting your business, you were instructed to consider what your “target market” is. You might have thought about your right people or your ideal clients. You might have even constructed a customer avatar.
You welcome everyone who might match your target market in at the opening of your sales funnel. That could be the home page of your website, an event, or the opt-in for your email list. Then you create filters through content and offers that narrows the scope of the customers you are dealing with at the core of your business.
That’s all solid advice.
And… I think there’s a better way. Our brains don’t do generalizations well. And generalizations are exactly what you need to conceive of the wide end of your funnel in the traditional approach.
When we generalize, we miss a lot of details. Those details are often the secret to unlocking a new level of creativity and effectiveness in product development, messaging, and sales.
To boot, your customers don’t want to align with generalizations. They want to feel like what your business has created was made especially for them. While mass solutions may have had traction in the industrial era, the social era demands a new level of attention to detail and specialization.
So how do you ensure that you capture those details?
In a traditional sales funnel, the details are all at the bottom. They’re processed later. And they’re rarely designed into the business as a whole.
What if you flipped it?
What if you started with the narrow end? What if you started with a single customer, user, client?
By beginning with a real person who has real needs that your skills, talents, and passion make you uniquely equipped to serve or create for, you don’t miss the details. You see her experience, you understand her process, you discover both acute and deep needs.
Once you’ve worked the narrow end of the funnel–by the way, funnel here is just a visual, I like to think of sales cycles more than funnels–by examining several individuals, ahem, individually, you can work to attract more clients just like them. Instead of needing to weed out the not-quite-right clients, you’re actively building a business based on the perfect individuals.
Of course, there will always be people who are interested in the value you offer who aren’t “just right,” but they won’t be your concern. You’ll be focused on the multitudes who found your business because you took the time to get the details right one person at a time.
Your business will be building towards scale based on specificity and precise service instead of just casting a wider net and hoping to get lucky.
What does this mean for you today?
You and your business have a treasure trove of information at your fingertips. The work you’ve been doing with individual clients and customers translates into a wealth of insight that can lead to identifying the products that truly scale.
This is exactly the process we undergo in The Customer Perspective Process. I’m leading a virtual boot camp May 20-23. Here’s what Amanda Blake, founder of embright, had to say about the last session:
“…blows the familiar ‘ideal customer’ approach out of the water. The CPP boot camp immediately revolutionized the way I approach product development, marketing, and even writing my book. It also makes me more of the kind of business owner I want to be: friendly, empathetic, and connected.”
The Customer Perspective Process boot camp is offered through Kick Start Labs, my microbusiness community & accelerator. Click here to learn more.
Business Brainstorm, Customer Perspective Process
One of the chief mistakes I see vision-driven entrepreneurs (that’s you, right?) making as they try to build businesses, market their products or services, and grow a community of loyal customers is that they confuse “buy in” and “buy now.”
Knowing the difference–and when to use each–is key and your business requires both to truly thrive.
What is “buy in?”
“Buy in” is how you engage your clients around your vision and purpose. It gives them a big picture taste of the what’s-in-it-for-me and it often points to how they are connected to other customers and community members. “Buy in” excites, motivates, and catalyzes. It brings people together. It rallies a small army to work toward a single goal.
Narratives are the stories that infuse our life with meaning. The narrative of business matters greatly, not only to the business community, but to every human being alive.
— John Mackey, Conscious Capitalism
The “buy in” for your business creates meaning and ties a community together:
- What stories give your business meaning?
- What ideas or mission will your customers want to buy into?
- What vision drives you as a creator and your customers as consumers?
“Buy in” gets people on board but it won’t get them to “buy now.”
What is “buy now?”
“Buy now” is a small step that brings your customers and stakeholders closer to making your vision–the “buy in”– reality. It’s a task to be completed, a milestone achieved, a question answered. It’s the job to be done and the result of its accomplishment. It’s concrete.
“Buy now” represents a marker on the journey between the present and the promised future. It delivers stick-to-your-ribs value to an acute need. It’s not “quick fix” but it’s not so big & dreamy that your customer can’t realize why she needs it now instead of later.
It’s the “buy now” that so often my clients get stuck on. In an effort to make their businesses appear as benevolent as possible, they spend all their time and energy–and their customers’ attention–on the “buy in.” That creates amazing amounts of goodwill, a chorus of well wishes, and many pats on the back but it doesn’t create much in the way of dollars and cents.
Your “buy now” must address a real & present need, desire, or question that your customers are already thinking about:
- What are your customers googling today?
- What do they discuss with colleagues or friends?
- What would they like to be easier, more convenient, less expensive, or more effective… right now?
Use “buy in” when you’re gathering people to your movement or when you’re trying to get your base excited about an idea. You might do this in blog posts, videos, or emails between launches or at the beginning of a launch cycle when you’re actively trying to garner attention.
Use “buy now” when you’re writing sales copy or calls to action. Use it in content towards the end of a launch cycle to prove your product or service can deliver results. Use it as you develop new products & services.
Your business needs a healthy dose of both “buy now” and “buy in” to get the results you want: more impact and more sales. But is it getting the most bang for its buck?
Customer Perspective Process
Customer surveys are an under-appreciated art form. If being successful in business was as easy as rounding up a group of prospects and asking them what they wanted your business to create, what features they’d like it to have, and when they’d like to buy it, everyone would be successful.
But it’s not.
Here’s a customer survey primer to help you get the information you need to create offers that sell easily.
First, remember that there are two distinct perspectives that make a business successful: the business’ perspective and the customer’s perspective. When creating a survey, you want to detach yourself as much as possible from your business’ perspective. Your ultimate goal is to gather the customer perspective information you need to leverage your business perspective.
1) Ask questions that allow you to understand your customers’ experiences.
From your customer’s perspective, your products and services simply don’t factor. They have a full range of experiences, desires, and frustrations on a daily basis that probably don’t seem related to you or your business at all. Always phrase your questions in terms of their experience and seek, through gathering answers, to learn more about it.
2) Seek to prove a hypothesis.
If you’ve been in business any length of time, you know a lot more about your customers than you think. It’s trapped in your brain as social information–for instance, you’d use it if you were having a glass of wine together at the bar–and, when you unlock it, you might discover some surprising things that lead to a bold hypothesis. When you’ve got that hypothesis, use a survey to discover if you’re right and to learn more about your big idea.
3) Provide a control question.
Unless you’re super selective about who you’re surveying, you need a control question. A filter question is one that will allow you to separate your Most Valued Customers from those more on the periphery of your business. I try to select a piece of information I know about my best customers and use it as a control. Then when I sort the information I receive, I can look specifically at the group that answered the control question positively.
Surveying your customers is a powerful tool, but it’s not a cure all. A survey won’t get you the information you need to create a produce with stick-to-your-ribs value but it can provide context and nuance to your understanding of your customers’ experiences, desires, and questions.
And that’s valuable.
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Free Business Support Call Just For Coaches!
Coaches: Join me for a telejam with Kate Swoboda, founder of Your Courageous Life and creator of The Coaching Blueprint, for real-time business support. We’ll be talking “coach speak,” discovering stick-to-your-ribs value, and digital strategy. Free. Click here to register.
Art of Growth, Customer Perspective Process
Perhaps you’ve heard it said before, “Sell them what they want. Give them what they need.” And maybe you didn’t quite know what that meant. Or, worse, maybe you thought that sounded a little slimy.
Here’s what I know about you:
You’re extremely good at what you do. Like woah. You work from a place of mastery, mastery that is constantly evolving, growing, and chasing your curiosity. The clients you work with are blown away by the results you achieve for them. The customers who purchase your work are floored by its quality.
And you’re ready for more.
It’s a been a select few who have actually bought. Where are the teeming masses clamoring for your genius?
I’ll tell you: it requires a bit of a bait & switch. It’s a bait & switch, though, that’s in everyone’s best interests. When you know exactly who your customer is, what she’s thinking, and why she’s looking to buy, you can present an offer that resonates with her–and 1000s like her–for the purpose of giving her the value she really needs.
The goal is to frame your offer in a way that helps her to realize that her goals are possible. Your next goal is to help her reach those goals in the best way you know how.
That’s why you need to operate from both your expert’s perspective and from your customer’s perspective. It’s a dance. Combining the two allows your client to experience the most value–transformation, knowledge, success, fun–possible.
So what are your clients really looking for?
What are your customers truly trying to accomplish?
How do they feel? What are they thinking? How do they talk about their frustrations with their friends?
These are they keys to massive market impact. These are the keys to scale.
If exercising your genius is what you want to be doing, if that’s the key to massive success for your clients, unlocking this information is the key to doing just that for as many people as possible.
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The Customer Perspective Process guides you through unlocking this information. After completing the process, you will know how to:
Art of Growth, Customer Perspective Process
Steve Jobs famously created Apple’s most revolutionary products without customer involvement. He was happy to ignore what people asked for in favor of offering them something they couldn’t dream of.
Henry Ford had a similar view of innovation. He said, “If I would have asked what people wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Though, whether he actually said this is a subject of debate.
These great innovators may not have asked their customers what they wanted–you shouldn’t either–but they were masters of understanding needs, desires, and the potential meaning new products could have for the customers that made them wealthy beyond imagining.
Steve Jobs real innovation wasn’t the product–mp3 players were around before the iPod hit the scene–and it wasn’t the design either. He might have made great design mainstream but aesthetes were already purchasing products that looked as good as they functioned. Steve Jobs real innovation was that of meaning, as powerful a marketing device as any ever crafted. What new meaning would the iPod have in the lives of its owners?
Simple: Jobs suggested to customers that they could carry 1,000 songs in their pockets. He knew that, beyond better ways to buy music, better ways to store CDs, or better ways to listen to tunes, listeners would love the idea of having their music, on demand, wherever they went.
Jobs could easily have been a genius who died in obscurity instead of the founder and figurehead of the richest company in the world. The answer to this question–and the others he asked like it–was the foundation of his ability to create raving hoards of fans (and money-spending customers).
He took a clear understanding of the current conversation (because markets are really conversations), assessed it from his expert point of view, and shifted a small idea in a market-dominating product.
Ford, similarly, didn’t invent the automobile. Rather, he created the processes by which it could become a product that the vast majority of people in the 1st world must own by understanding, from his customer’s perspective, what was important. He made the automobile easier to drive and easier to produce. He streamlined the array of vehicles being offered.
Those small changes have changed the way we live, work, and play. That’s massive market impact.
Now, you’ve got a lot in common with Steve Jobs and Henry Ford. First off, you’re smart. And you’re incredibly skilled at what you do. You may lack confidence in marketing, pricing, or sales, but you know when you’re creating value for your customers you are masterful.
Second, you’re good at asking questions. You’re curious.
Third, you’ve got an exciting vision for your customers and the world.
All in all, this is a recipe for success. But something is getting in the way, isn’t it?
You might even find yourself asking, “My clients are some of the happiest, most satisfied clients in my industry because I deliver. So why can’t I find more of them?”
Here’s what gets in the way: you think with your expert’s brain 100% of the time. Why? Because it’s fun! It’s fun to feel masterful, it’s exciting to feel on top of your game, it’s energizing to challenge yourself and to be challenged. It’s not that you don’t care about your customers, you really, really do–and I believe Steve Jobs and Henry Ford did too.
What happens if you tune your curiosity to your customer’s perspective?
Click to tweet!
What happens if you see the world through their eyes?
What could you create if you understood why they express the needs they do?
Or if you knew what thoughts motivated their actions?
You could use your expert’s brain–just like Jobs & Ford–to create something truly impactful. It would take the best of your expert understanding and fuse it with the deep desires of your most valued customers.
Your product would suddenly speak the language your customer needs to hear to “get it” and at the same time be better than they could have imagined.
That’s what Henry Ford and Steve Jobs did. That’s the Customer Perspective Process.
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The Customer Perspective Process is my signature framework for turning small ideas into massive market impact. It’s the key to creating business models that are both profitable and social.
Join me for The Customer Perspective Process boot camp. Upon completion, you will know how to:
- Identify opportunities based on your customers’ needs & desires in a way that leads to massive impact
- Evaluate your marketing, sales copy, and offers from your customers’ point of view to ensure success
- Communicate in a way that allows your message to spread rapidly and easily
- Apply your learning to content strategy, strategic partnerships, and your business model to create sustainable business growth
Learn more about this process: click here.
