Are your customers Armadillos?
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Are your customers Armadillos?
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Last weekend I got attacked by an armadillo.
He was a vicious, six-year-old, blonde haired armadillo
who–earlier in the night–had claimed to be a werewolf. He had
howled and screeched and pounced and gnashed his werewolf teeth and
then howled and howled some more.
But now he was an armadillo. And a tough one at that. He balled
himself up tight, pulled his limbs in and tucked his head into an
invulnerable armadillo ball. He was pillow-proof, this armadillo,
laughing off puffy strikes from other kids and adult guests alike
as his tough nine-banded armadillo hide kept him safe and sound and
. . .err. . . portable.
Because, you see, this kid was so committed to his
armadillo-ness–so committed to keeping himself safe and
tough–that he stayed in his little ball even as I tucked him
football-like under my arm and ran an end run over to his smirking
and bemused mom.
To one degree or another, your customers are like armadillos. (And
sometimes they’re like six-year-old kids who pretend to be
armadillos too.)
You see every customer has a soft underbelly. An emotional core
that marketing folks, salesmen, mother-in-laws and schoolyard
bullies are all too eager to take advantage of.
And so customers all learn to armor up, toughen their hearts and
get just a wee bit cynical.
It’s like a strange little tremor sense. As soon as most folks see
a plaid salesman’s coat, a string of 17 exclamation points or a
smiling moon-faced girl on a corner with a clipboard, they go into
armadillo mode.
They curl up. They scritch and scratch their claws. And they get
ready to say “NO NO NO” to whatever outlandish offer or outrageous
smarmy deal is about to come their way.
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But Chris, as ethical marketers with honest-to-goodness good
products and services to sell, how do we get customers . . . err. .
. unball?
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Good question. Here’s the deal. Every day, every single one of your
customers is bombarded by a million zillion sales messages.
Billboards, Spam, TV ads, Magazine spreads, Myspace smarm, Banners,
Beggars, Sheisters and more all desperately trying to separate them
from their hard-earned cash.
So how do you cut through the haze and get your customers to let
you get in close?
Easy.
Be Honest.
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Huzzuhwazzuhuh?
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Yea, yea, I know. Honesty in marketing is like fiscal
responsibility in the military.
But being honest with your customers–telling them that you want to
sell them something, showing them all the pros and *even some of
the cons* of what you’ve got to offer and talking like an honest to
god human being–is the surest and quickest path to getting your
customers to lower their shields and start an actual conversation.
And when you’re honest (maybe even brutally so) you earn a customer
who you can sell to again and again and again.
Chris Haddad is a direct response copywriter and marketing wonk living and working in Seattle, Washington. You can learn more about Chris by visiting http://www.haddadink.com
December 14th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Great post Chris. As a related aside, we just added an easy to find “cancel my account” button on every Biznik members account page, pretty much for the reasons you outlined - it’s just more honest and forthright. If it’s easy to join, it should be easy to leave. It’s like saying, hey, give it a try, we think you’ll love it, but if you don’t, you can leave any time, and we’ll make it easy for you.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Honesty in marketing???
What are you smoking??? Haha.
I agree with you entirely Chris. I am often annoyed by businesses that use false information in marketing. It is usually a huge turn-off for me and I feel really sorry everytime I find a consumer who has been abused by yet another unethical marketer.
+Dan- you may want to put a thirty day hold on the delete function for a profile like LiveJournal and several other services do. That way if someone has an account hacked they just have to appeal to the mercy of the admin team to re-instate the profile.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:33 am
Yeah it’s not hard to reinstate accounts because we keep backups of everything for cases such as the type you describe.
December 15th, 2006 at 9:07 am
You are absolutely right! The one thing our patients eventually get is that we really do care about them and their interests. Once they do get that, making a recommendation for them to do something or buy something or not do something or buy something becomes easy… on that level. But honesty also has to come with discernment: there is always the unspoken (sometimes spoken) awareness of how much we are ready for or willing to accept.
One challenge is that we all develop such hyper-sensitive defenses against the constant onslaught of marketing pitches, that we can easily miss offerings of great value to us. They usually all look very much the same.
I think one of the great values of blogging is that our personalities come through. Then people - our niche customers - self select themselves to become associated with us.
A great example happened this week. While many of the marketing types who have something to sell me suggest that my web presence needs work, there have been a steady and increasing number of people finding me and wanting to associate. Specifically, these people say they like to read what the marketers refer to as “wasted real estate” on my office website. And when they read my blog, weak as it is, they at least get a sense of who they are dealing with. And those that make the call and show up are - more and more - just the people I want to attract.
These people show up pre-conditioned. They are receptive. And… big surprise, they are usually easy and fun to help.
When just the opposite type of patient shows up, usually it’s clear that it is against their will. I recall a investigative reporter type from one of the media outlets who came in with some pain. He could barely hide the scorn, didn’t buy a word I said about what was going on with his condition, what I was going to do about it, and how it should turn out. His preconceived ideas were all confirmed for him (or what they call in Landmark Education, his already already listening). Not surprisingly, he didn’t do all that well and discontinued care after a very few visits (usually with these patients, who I still do not usually reject without trying, you get only one or maybe to visits to create a miracle).
It would not have done me or him any good for me to be too honest about how his mindset (or my mindset about his mindset for that matter) would be working against us before we even got started. In the end, his views toward what I do are probably the same, but he - I’m sure - ended up where he felt more comfortable. And perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad as he thought it would be and when he gets another opportunity to open his mind a little he may be more receptive, and the result may be even better.
DD
December 26th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
I’d like to suggest a whole new armadillo paradigm: The dead armadillo. Texas political guru Jim Hightower is fond of saying “There’s nothing in the middle of the road except yellow stripes and dead armadillos.”
He means it in a political sense, but I use this paradigm to describe individuals who can’t align their outcome expectations (one side of the road) with their behavior and resources (the other side of the road). As a result, they get stuck in the middle. And, like the armadillos, they get squashed.
Sometimes, of course, I’m the armadillo — committing to more projects than I can accomplish, allowing myself to be seduced by the money or prestige of a project with the Client from Hell, etc.
When your mission and passion are aligned with your reality, you’re gassed up and on your way. When they get out of alignment…it’s painful and ugly. Even rolling up in a ball (Chris’ armadillo) isn’t much help.
Resolution for 2007: Don’t be an armadillo, and don’t take them on as clients. It’s too messy.