Category: Marketing

Friday, 5.48am

Sheffield, U.K.

But above all, in order to be, never try to seem. – Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1951

How do you create a business that is authentic – something that is consistent with your values and approach to life and the world?

This is actually quite a difficult question to answer, because we’re so wrapped up in layers of learning and expectation and beliefs that it’s hard to find anything that’s truly “our view”.

We may have to start by looking at people who live in the way we would like to live – find people to model.

What do we do once we find them?

Acting the life you want to lead

The first step is to recognise just how little we know about everyone else and how little they know about us.

It’s like a sea of darkness, the pitch black of ignorance – of a lack of knowledge.

You start to understand others by what you see and hear on the surface – your senses can only take in surface impressions.

For example, someone may act in a certain way, tell you about themselves, make certain decisions – and you have to infer their motives and capability from these surface impressions.

Are they telling you something because they truly believe it or because they know that’s what you to hear?

How do you tell the difference between someone who is authentic and someone who isn’t, someone who has something of value and someone who is serving reheated, stale ideas?

Telling good from bad

The good news is that you have more information available to you now than there has ever been in the past.

If someone is selling you their programme or course or package you’ll probably have someone, somewhere who’s actually experienced it and can tell you about it.

If you go through enough of their material you can start to tell how much of it is sizzle and how much is steak, what you’re going to get for your money.

And, along the way, you’ll start picking up clues for the options you have to be who you want to be.

For example, at one extreme you might have a pony-tailed, long-bearded academic talking about his research and findings and what they mean.

At the other extreme you might have a well-groomed person in an expensive suit talking about his sales training programme.

You might have a writer talking about her journey and interviewing others on her podcast about their approach to building an independent writing career.

And you could have a presenter, with great stage presence who puts out content that is amplified by her personality and approach and appearance – in particular how attractive she is.

Each individual will have a different approach, one suited to their personality and values and preferred ways of acting.

It’s tempting to think that academic content is more robust than that put out by lay people or practitioners but that isn’t always the case.

Academic content is not always practical and usable and content created by practitioners is not always unsubstantiated “common sense”.

The thing to look for in these various examples is elements that you think will work for you – approaches that fit the way you want to position yourself.

If you believe that lighting, makeup and clothes are critical for the impression you want to make then that needs to be part of the capability you put in place for your business.

If you think that you can go with the content you have and it makes no difference whether you wear a suit or not – then that’s ok too.

The first step to being authentic is acting in a way that is consistent with the kind of values and behaviours you want to model yourself, having seen how others model them.

Choosing an approach that works for you

What’s important is selecting ways to act that are consistent with the way in which you want to come across.

For example, I prefer the kinds of material created by presenters who focus on the content rather than on the packaging.

I have been looking at video production for a few weeks now and trying to work out what kind of approach would work for me.

Is it a screencast, an overhead camera, a mix of direct presentation and cuts to content?

There are many examples, from exquisitely crafted segments with high quality DSLRs and extensive editing to one-take videos where you press record, do your thing, press stop and you’re done.

I’ve tried different approaches and the one that’s resonated with me most strongly is the one-take video strategy.

It’s simple, direct and focuses on the content and message.

It’s consistent with my approach to drawing and writing, which is to keep things simple, direct and frugal.

In that sense, I feel like that approach would be more “authentic” than if I tried to add more complexity or production quality to the content.

That decision will turn off some people and attract others – but you shouldn’t do things just to appeal to a market segment.

You can’t fake emotion or values – you can just use actions to get across your intent and leave it to people to make up their own minds about you and your material.

And the reason you start by finding people to model is not so you can become like them.

You can’t become someone else – you have to build on who you are and what you believe in.

The purpose of finding people to model is to study the different ways in which people act out their values and beliefs and give you ideas for what you can do yourself.

The reflective process

Once you have a go and act the way you think you should – then you have to take time to study and reflect on the result.

For example, if you want to write, then you start by reading a lot, and then sitting down and writing.

Then you look back at what you’ve written, reflecting on what works, what doesn’t work and where you can improve.

That simple process is the key to improving how you do what you do and becoming more authentic in the way you do it.

It’s the same process whether you’re creating a course, video content, a new business model.

Act, reflect, act, reflect.

It’s all about making that surface level visible, making it as easy as possible for someone to look at you, see what you’re about and decide whether to do business with you.

It’s about making it easy for them – and that’s what we’ll cover next.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 5.50am

Sheffield, U.K.

Quality means fitness for purpose. So no matter what you produce – a good or a service – it must be fit for its purpose. To be fit for purpose, every good and service must have the right features to satisfy customer needs and must be delivered with few failures. It must be effective to meet the customer requirements and efficient for superior business performance. – Juran’s Quality Handbook, 6th Edition

Thinking for too long can be a problem.

Sometimes you just have to get out there and find out what people need so that you can build something that they want.

Something that helps them achieve their purpose.

Building something fit for purpose

The idea of quality seems simple but it’s a word that can get complicated very quickly.

After all, what does quality mean to you?

For some of us quality is found in the aesthetics, the design, the look and feel.

I know people who are turned off instantly if what they see is ugly.

Other’s couldn’t care less about the surface impression – they’re interested in the numbers, the detail.

Other’s think about the philosophy, the values, the intent of the producers.

And it can get quite complicated to unravel very quickly.

Take the iPhone, for example.

The iPhone is designed to be beautiful, to be eye catching – to be the best phone, to be a symbol of prestige.

It’s certainly an indicator of wealth.

It turns out that you can map where the rich people are by mapping the density of iPhones – the more iPhones, the wealthier the neighbourhood.

Then again, if you just want a phone, some apps and a camera there are cheaper options, there are second-hand options.

It depends on whether you care about having the latest model.

And then, for me personally, I haven’t bought an iPhone for a while because the philosophy of Apple irritates me – the focus on keeping control and trying to imprison you in their ecosystem.

They make it hard to use their phones with any non-Apple systems and that lack of interoperability just makes it too hard to trust their machines – I’d rather use something else than deal with all that.

The point I’m making is that what is obviously a great quality product to one person may be seen very differently by someone else.

Your job as a professional is to work out what quality looks like to the person you’re trying to provide a product or service to.

And that starts by understanding their purpose – what are they trying to do and what are their constraints.

When you understand that you can build something that helps them achieve their purpose within their constraints.

Something that is fit for purpose.

But first you have to understand what all that looks like from their point of view.

Letting the prospect talk

A good sales process starts not with answers but with questions.

Why does the person need a professional like you, what are they trying to do in the first place?

You’re not going to think your way to the answer there, you need to start listening to what people have to say.

For example, let’s say you have a software development firm and a prospect comes to you – most people will launch into a pitch about what they do and the features and benefits of their product.

Not many will let the prospect talk about their situation, their problems and the reasons why they are looking for a solution.

But that’s where you really should start – by understanding the situation they are in, the problems they are facing and what that means for them – the impact that it has.

And you can’t find out any of that without letting them talk and asking questions that illuminate their situation.

When you do that you start to get a feel for why they are in the market for a product of service.

Are they looking at the value of time – they haven’t got time internally or their time is busy doing other work – so they’re looking to buy some time from someone who can do the work.

Do they realise that they haven’t got the skills they need so they’re looking for someone who can provide those complementary capabilities.

Or perhaps what they need is a restricted capability – something only a lawyer or accountant can provide – or they have to do it in order to comply with a rule or regulation.

Perhaps they don’t know what they’re looking for exactly – but they do know they’re trying to solve a problem that’s been around for a while.

It’s only when they recognise the unique shape and size of what they want and see that there is a need for it that they’re going to take the next step of working with someone like you.

Think of it like a puzzle – one with a strange shape that they don’t yet recognise.

They just know there is a hole.

If you can help them understand and articulate the shape that will fill that space, that’s a start – now they know what they need.

If you can show them that you can do it with quality – build something that’s fit for purpose then you’re in with a good chance of getting that project – now they know they can get it from you.

If you can show them that going with you is the best alternative – because you both now know what needs to be done you can do it at the best possible quality and the lowest possible cost – they now know you’re the best choice.

Bringing it all together

Once you’ve listened to what the prospect has to say and asked questions and helped them to understand what they need and how you can help you now need to put it all together in a proposal they can approve.

That actually becomes quite a simple task.

Because you know what they want you can simply list out what you’re going to do to give them what they want.

One of the things I’ve learned is that short proposals work if you put in the time to understand what people need.

When you don’t know you throw in everything you have – you try and explain everything you do hoping that something will stick and attract their attention and interest.

But if you know what they need you can cut out everything that isn’t relevant – you can create something short and to the point.

Just add costs, preferably costs that you’ve already established work within their budgets and you’re done.

Now, what’s the value you’re brought here?

It’s showing the difference between doing it yourself and hiring a professional.

A professional can help you do a quality job – quality in the sense of doing what’s needed to the standard needed, free of failures.

And you can only be a professional if you can provide a quality service – something which you have spent time developing and which is the best use of your time.

That’s something to explore next.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Sunday, 5.26am

Sheffield, U.K.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does. – Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

We’re nearly at the end of the second section of the Getting Started book project.

In the first section we talked about understanding where you are right now.

In this second section we’ve been looking back, at what you’ve done and the foundations you have to build on.

And we’ve come to the point where you have something to offer to the world and you now need to start getting leads, you need to talk to prospective customers.

I was going to have a few pages on technology but I’ve decided not to do that here – because the technology doesn’t matter.

A focus on the technology, in fact, can detract from the substance – from the thing you have to do in the first place.

Technology can help scale something good, but it can’t turn something bad into something good.

So let’s talk about what good lead generation strategies look like.

How to open a conversation with a prospect

How many ways can you think of to reach a prospect – to start that first conversation?

Let’s look at four ways that come up pretty often.

The first is reaching out to them directly, either getting in touch or making yourself discoverable so they can find you easily.

The second is to be introduced by someone who knows you and trusts you – a friend, someone you have already helped.

The third is to be introduced by a connector, someone who the prospect knows and trusts and who is willing to “engineer” an introduction, usually in return for a payment.

The fourth route is to be introduced by your prospect’s customer, someone who sees what you do as a way to help their supply chain.

If you’re just getting started, then, how can you implement these strategies?

Direct marketing

Reaching out directly to a prospect is a difficult business, one summed up nicely in the famous McGraw Hill ad that shows a grumpy man sitting in a chair.

My version of this is shown in the image below.

It’s very easy to reach people these days – you can connect with them on LinkedIn, you can send an email, everyone has contact details listed on their websites.

And, as a result, everyone gets contacted through a variety of media all the time – it’s an incessant barrage of connection requests and adverts.

That doesn’t mean you can’t stand out.

The people who I know that do this successfully seem to share certain traits.

They are identified by their business, their profession, their passion.

When you’re the CEO of a company, the Managing Director, a seasoned professional or you really care about the topic – that comes across in your content.

Think about your social media feed – aren’t you looking for useful stuff from people that you feel you can trust.

It’s very easy to spot inauthentic content, stuff that’s posted to try and get a reaction, where someone is using a strategy to build “relationships” with others.

I think that in today’s environment nothing has changed from yesterday’s environment other than the medium we use.

If you care about what you do and tell the world about it honestly and passionately then the people who can benefit from what you do will take an interest.

But it will take time, time to build credibility, time for them to see what you put out there and get to know you, and eventually trust you.

Direct marketing is not a quick route – so start building your brand and message well before you need to.

Eventually, it will become the biggest part of your lead generation strategy if you do it consistently over time, but in the beginning you will also need quicker routes.

Who do you know that knows you and trusts you?

This is where you turn to the people you know, your friends and the people you’ve worked with already.

What you’re asking them to do is help introduce you to prospects that know and trust them.

You’re asking them for a recommendation, for an endorsement.

This is a powerful approach – you’re much more likely to get time from a prospect if you’re referred by someone they know and trust than if you go in directly without any history.

So, who do you know that can help you out?

And how can you ask for help without damaging the fragile web of trust that holds everyone together?

Even your friends aren’t going to help you out if they’re not sure that you can do what you say, that you won’t put them in the embarrassing position of having to apologise for having introduced you.

You have a responsibility to do the best work you can do and provide an unconditional guarantee to the prospect – you need to protect your friend’s position whatever happens or you’ll lose that friendship.

A favour can help you out initially and get you started with the first few conversations but if you need more conversations you need to invest in creating those conversations.

Which is where connectors come in.

Paying for introductions

There’s no shortage of people who will help you get in front of your prospective customers in exchange for a payment.

Some of them will charge you up front while others will be willing to introduce you for a percentage of the business you generate.

The main thing here is having a budget for advertising – because that’s what this is.

You’ll also exhaust any one person’s list pretty quickly – once you’ve reached out to their database a couple of times the people who are interested will have responded already – so you’re now trying to target the less interested rest.

You might be better switching your investment to another person and their list when that happens.

When you’re getting started this can be an expensive and high-risk strategy – because you’re committing to paying for something without a guarantee of results.

A commission based approach reduces that risk – but you need to find people willing to work with you on that basis.

You can make that easier by giving them a larger share of your first sale if you can make subsequent sales to the same prospect.

For example, if your average project value is $2,000 then a 10% commission of $200 will not excite too many people.

But if you’re going to typically make ten sales over the time you have the customer, then the lifetime value is $20,000.

In that case, you could afford to give away 50%, even 100% of the first sale – $1,000, $2,000 – because you’re still going to make $18-19,000 over time.

And your introducer will be much more excited about getting a four figure sum for making a phone call on your behalf.

Your prospect’s customer

The fourth strategy here is to understand and reach out to your prospect’s customer.

For example, if you offer a cost-optimisation service and you’ve worked with an organisation and delivered results, then they will probably be open to introducing you to their supply chain, the people that serve them.

That kind of introduction will often get you a first meeting, from which you can develop the conversation.

Create a network of partners

It’s worth taking the time to reach out and try to build that network of partners who can help you grow their business, especially if you can also help grow their businesses.

But don’t spend all your time networking and pitching to partners – they can suck up your time as well as they work out what’s in it for them.

Create a simple model to show partners what you do and how you can share value and then get on with the job of delivering value to the customers you have right now.

Happy customers are the best source of new referrals – and also the ones that can bring down your business if they’re dissatisfied with what you do.

Moving on

It’s time now to look at what to do next, how you’re going to prepare yourself to build your business or project over the next two to ten years.

It’s time to look at what tomorrow might bring – and move into the last stage of this book project.

We’re at 46,000 words so far.

Not long to go now.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 5.48am

Sheffield, U.K.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own. – John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous

There is just one thing I have to say about marketing.

Tell your story

All you have to do when you want to get started with a new project – building a business, moving your career on – is tell your story.

If you’re not used to doing this, be warned, it’s going to take some time until you feel like you’re getting it right.

So start telling stories five, ten years before you think you’re going to be ready.

Because every good story is about your life, and it starts, “Once upon a time,”

Why marketing yourself comes down to stories

Think back to a few hundred thousand years ago, when our ancestors first huddled around a fire in a cave.

Imagine a hunter, standing at the cave wall, putting the final touches on a drawing of the day’s hunt – the animals, the chase, the trap, the kill.

One image – there’s no Powerpoint, no fancy visuals – just the scene.

Imagine the story of the hunt, told by the hunter, perhaps with a few embellishments – perhaps the buffalo are a little larger than in real life, perhaps the snakes a little more vicious.

But it’s the story of their life, their day, the animals, the chase, the trap, the kill.

And the audience listened, with rapt attention, lit by flickering firelight, to the story, learning and being entertained.

We’re not really that different from those people – a few hundred thousand years doesn’t make that much of a difference in our genetic makeup.

Flickering firelight, or the mobile screen, will draw us in every time.

What will keep us there is story.

So what’s your story?

The story mountain

Let’s go back to the first year of school where you learned about story mountains.

You go up and down the story mountain, starting with an inciting event – an introduction, and then build up the story until you reach the top – the problem. Then you have a resolution to the problem and an ending.

It sounds really dull when you put it that way – and it’s even worse when you apply it to your business as in the image above.

Your story starts with an opening, an introduction to you. You move on to make an assertion and build up to an example that sets out the problem or problems your clients typically face. You then talk about how you solve that problem – showing the result you get and providing proof and then you move on to the next step.

You’ll see this pattern in almost every YouTube advert out there, except people will normally start with the assertion (I’m going to show you how easy it is to make money on Amazon) and then do a build up including an intro (Hello, I’m Jane Bloggs, and I started with nothing).

Now, the thing to remember about things like story mountains is that they are an artefact – something created after the fact.

First lots of people told stories and then someone said, “Hey, look at this, it looks like there is a pattern here that all the good stories follow.”

And for your business the most important element of the pattern is that when you say something – make an assertion – back it up with an example.

For example, if you’re a video production company, then when you say something like “We specialise in videos showcasing manufacturing processes,” you follow up with, “For example, here’s one we did for ABC manufacturing that helps you understand how their complex machinery works.”

You probably already do this naturally, if you’ve spent any time already in a sales role.

If you haven’t, the idea is not to do this mechanically, but to start doing it intentionally.

Start being intentional about following your assertions with a proof point, something that helps to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.

When you do that you’ve created a mini story, something that the listener can follow along with – and what happens when a listener hears your story is that they recreate it inside their own heads – they make it their own.

Now you are a part of their story, and you’ve just marketed your way in there.

Next steps

I can’t tell you what tools and methods to use in your particular situation – I don’t know enough about you.

But I can give you a prescription to take, which goes as follows:

1. Understand yourself, your idea, your business
2. Apply your understanding, learn through practice on the job or with projects
3. Condense what you’re learning, find the nuggets that matter.
4. Explain that condensed version – to yourself, to anyone who will listen to you face to face

Then, when you’re ready to face the world and market yourself:

1. Select a medium you like communicating in – writing, audio, video.
2. Make something every day.
3. Look back at what you’ve made, reflect on it – see what you did well and what you can improve.
4. Revise it in light of that reflection, if you can.
5. Publish it.

But, you ask, what about quality, finish, polish, sound, video, editing, music?

That’s up to you – but remember that every additional thing you do makes it harder for you to get your marketing message out.

If you can do it by firelight using a cave wall then do it.

If you need to spend ten hours on fancy animation – then do it – but accept that you will probably be able to do less.

Quantity often leads to quality over time, but a focus on quality at the beginning can be paralysing because of the amount of effort you need to put in.

So start simple, start with what you already have, start with the simplest possible setup and technology.

But start.

The good news is that the vast majority of people will not do the doing – the minute you start intentionally working on telling your story you’ll start to set yourself apart.

And when you have this story to tell, in the early days, you will need some help getting it out into the world.

That’s where your friends and other complementary organisations come into the picture.

We’ll talk about them next.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 5.37am

Sheffield, U.K.

Here’s my whole marketing idea: treat people the way you want to be treated. – Garth Brooks

What comes to mind when you think about the word “marketing”?

Do you think social media ads, brochures and flyers, the video ads you see on TV and YouTube?

Is it your website, the branding, the images, the logo, the customer service, the technology, the network?

And it is all of those things, but what are we trying to do, what’s the essential purpose of all this activity?

Isn’t it to have a conversation with someone else?

Starting a conversation

When you first start marketing something new it’s a little like speaking in a dark room – trying to find out if there is anyone out there listening.

Conversely, it can be like entering a very busy and noisy room and trying to get someone’s attention.

Some people are naturally gifted at this – they seem to somehow make themselves the centre of attention.

They’re witty, charming, amusing and everyone loves them.

They’re born networkers, connectors, the kind of people who know everybody.

Some of us don’t like crowds, we shy away from large gatherings.

We’re much better at one-on-one conversations, at private reflection and are quite happy being by ourselves.

And there’s a range of people in between these two extremes, all the diversity of humanity, each of us trying to figure out how to have meaningful conversations with others.

Having Authentic Conversations

When you look at every marketing encounter you see around you in terms of a conversation, then which ones do you feel are authentic ones?

“Authentic” can be a tricky word. It’s been made popular, but what does it really mean to be authentic?

It’s not something you are, but something people feel about the way in which you come across to them.

Human beings are smart, they’re the product of a harsh evolutionary history that needed them to be in order to survive.

They can see when you’re being real and when you’re not, even when you use all the tools and technology at your disposal.

For example, there are a number of “laws” of persuasion that you can use to get people to act the way you want – to influence their behaviour.

Much of the history of marketing is littered with these methods, from spam email to pop-up boxes to cold calls to doorstep salespeople.

They work when your goal is to work with numbers, when you want to target a large number of people in a methodical way and you’re looking for a very small conversion rate that makes you your return.

If a few people buy you’re regained your investment.

They also work when your product is the person – like most multilevel marketing programmes.

The basic idea behind these programmes is that you get people to buy the idea that they’re selling a product when in fact the real money is in selling the programme to other people.

That’s not the kind of business this post is aimed at.

The kind of business we’re looking at here is one that is trying to build a customer base that’s going to stay and grow over time.

If you want to be an effective consultant, a good service provider, an innovative product creator, then you need to think about your customers as individuals who are going to work with you over the long term – and they need the real you, the authentic you – the person you can be over that length of time.

Not a person who is always desperately trying to keep a mask on.

Tools and strategies

It’s easy to avoid hard questions like “what do you do, really?” and focus instead on tools and systems and technology.

But tools and systems and technology will not make up for a lack of the core “why”, why should someone be interested in what you have to offer?

To answer that question you first need to understand the questioner, understand what they’re looking for in the world around them.

Then you answer the question.

Your success depends on how well your answer works for them.

No amount of technology will make your response better.

The font in which you write it, the timbre of your audio, the clarity of your video, the dizzying visuals you use – all of these things are decoration but the thing that matters is that answer you give.

All too often people think that they can come up with any old idea and then push it to marketing – it’s now their job to package it up and sell it.

But that’s not marketing – that’s the artistry around graphic design and media production and technology integration – they are all the components of a modern, integrated marketing system.

But you don’t need all that to create a message is clear and simple and says why a prospect should be interested enough in what you have to offer to start a conversation with you.

Crafting a message

How do you craft that clear and simple message?

Simple.

You do it, reflect on what you’ve done and work on improving it.

No one comes out with a clear and compelling proposition that works for their entire market the very first time.

Marketing is, like everything else we do, a process of trial and error and progressive refinement.

Start with a message – what you think you do.

Say it – to yourself, to other people.

Study yourself, study their reaction.

Think about what you could change, change it and try again.

It really is that simple – test and learn and refine and try again.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

We all know that writing multiple drafts improves the quality of your writing.

But, once you write it, and format it and it looks so pretty and clean – it’s easy to assume the writing is good as well.

And it gets worse when you have more people involved – and when you get all their “input” and amend your message to include their views you end up with a mishmash of something that insiders are happy with but that means nothing to your prospect.

And that’s where marketing should come in – testing every line, every idea for clarity and conciseness.

Is what you’re saying clear and simple and compelling?

If it is, then we can package it up and send it out using a variety of media – whatever your budget can take.

But if it’s not, no amount of money can fix it.

Start simple, but start

The starting point for most people is to realise that marketing is a process of understanding yourself and your prospective customers so you can have better conversations.

So start by talking into the dark, talk about yourself, speak using media that you’re comfortable with.

If you like face to face, then get out there and meet people, if you like writing, express yourself in text, if you like video, record yourself and share your stuff.

Just get started with telling your story.

At first, you may just need to do that for a while.

Be ready to do that for a couple of years.

That’s how long it takes me anyway.

When I look back at the projects I’ve worked on, projects like this blog and various commercial projects, it’s taken roughly two years to get from an initial idea to something that starts to look like a workable model.

That’s the time when you should be testing and refining your story, not paying for marketing technology or expensive design.

The technology and design come into their own when it’s time to scale something you know works – when you have a compelling message that works when you deliver it in person or using very simple technology.

In the next few posts we’ll look at those elements – crafting your story and starting simple, before moving onto your vision for the future.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 5.26am

Sheffield, U.K.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. – Immanuel kant, Critique of Pure Reason

In my last post we started looking at how to research your prospects, collect data that you can mine for insights into what they need and how you can help.

We’ll carry on with trying to see their world the way they see it – using a sensory map this time.

All information comes through the senses

One of the biggest mistakes we make as human beings is called the curse of knowledge.

We assume that because we know something that means other people know it as well.

And that just isn’t the case – they have to gather knowledge in their own way and that starts with the senses.

However, you can look at the senses from two levels – one is the immediate surface impressions of what they actually see and then there is the question of what they expect to see – and if what they see is different from what they expected to see, there is a clash – something called cognitive dissonance – which can be good or bad.

Let’s see how this works when it comes to them and you.

What do they see?

When someone looks at you or your product, what do they see?

I had an experience recently where someone connected with me on LinkedIn.

It looked like a sales outreach, but as I didn’t want to turn it down without doing some research I connected with the person – because they seemed to have a product that was relevant to my area of interest.

I asked a question in response to their message – but then I also checked their website.

Which turned out to be a couple of pages – a brief description of products, an odd mix of content promoting two types of services and that ignored conventional principles of formatting.

Everything was written in lower case.

This is what people do – what you do – we can now very quickly research the people who get in touch with us and the first things we see form that initial surface impression.

And when someone looks your way is what they see what they expect to see?

And what do you want them to see?

For example, do you believe that it’s important to dress well – that an expensive suit and car demonstrates how successful you are?

When you look at a video on YouTube do you skip over anything that isn’t in high definition, with perfect lighting and sound?

Or do you think that people should see you are you are – that you should be authentic in the way you present yourself – normal rather than extraordinary?

There are rarely clear cut answers to these things – and often strongly held opinions.

I remember watching a show where entrepreneurs went up in front of investors for money and one of the investors asked why a group were there in jeans and t-shirts rather than in a suit and tie.

The group answered that they spent their days working on their business and they wanted to show themselves as real, hard-working people who could get the job done – and the investor said that was the best answer they could have made to that question.

So think about your customers and what they expect to see – do you think they would prefer the “real” you or do you need to present an “image” that is consistent with what they expect?

What do they hear?

If the first thing we do is see, then the next thing is usually to hear.

What does your prospect expect to hear from you?

Usually it’s one of two things – they expect information or they expect to be entertained.

They don’t want to be given irrelevant information or be bored.

But that’s what happens a lot of the time with the way in which we do things.

No one sets out deliberately to find useless information or waste time – but in business we end up putting prospects through that experience all the time.

So you have to think about what you are going to put out there that they are going to hear.

Is it polished and slick and perfect or is it more simple and real?

Are you going to write in “corporate speak” or in everyday language.

The style you choose for the way you are seen is going to probably influence the way you want to be heard as well.

Which is actually a disadvantage for corporates – they cannot afford to take risks and so they end up looking and sounding dull and predictable.

As an individual or a startup you can afford to be real or dynamic or innovative.

What do they smell?

After the first two senses comes smell.

Smell is an interesting one – you don’t physically have a smell when you’re doing digital products or marketing over the Internet, for example.

But a smell test can also be taken as does you product or business smell right.

Going back to the example of the website I looked at earlier – how many times have you looked at something and thought that something is off here.

This is what you might call a gateway sense – seeing and hearing are about initial impressions, but smell starts to get you involved and you will step forward or back away depending on whether it smells right or not.

What do they touch

The next sense that gets involved is touch.

In real life it’s an examination of the product, but in our digital world it’s an examination of the features and specifications.

Does this thing look like it will do what I need?

Your prospect is now getting involved, they’re look at the details and trying to see if your product or service will work for them.

When it comes to online sales, especially on marketplaces, this is crucial.

You have to get the descriptions right to be in the running, and quite often people will look quickly at the first few results if the price is low.

If it’s expensive they will spend a lot more time doing research.

But in either case touch, or the digital equivalent will come into play as they decide what to do.

What do they taste?

And then, finally, they’ve bought your product or service and it’s time for the last sense.

When they try it do they like it or not?

Satisfied customers come back for more.

Dissatisfied ones leave.

Unhappy ones leave bad reviews.

You need to make sure that you don’t assume people are happy with what you do – most people don’t speak out and tell you what they think.

You have to get it out of them – really look to see if they enjoyed themselves rather than taking the approach of disinterested waiters who come over and ask if your food is all right because that’s what they’ve been trained to do at the ten minute point into your meal.

Put aside what you know, and sense again

Look at the sensory map in the image above and try to put aside everything that you know.

Look again at your product and service, the way someone with no knowledge of you and what you do would do.

What would they see and hear.

When they got closer, what would they smell and touch.

And finally, when they asked you to serve them, what would they taste?

And is the experience they have the one you want them to have?

And if it isn’t, what do you need to change or do differently?

In the next post we’ll carry on with our exploration to map our customer’s worlds.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh