Cutomer Relationship Intimacy
I have been reading bits and pieces from Chip Conley's book 'Peak'. Love it. He talks about Customer Relationship Intimacy. In today's world, where we see a very different "customer" compared to say the 80's where a customer went to buy a car from the local Used Car dealer in Norwood, Ohio. How I ended up there is a story unto itself. Which I will save for my friends after a few too many Mojitos. :-)
Going back to Customers ... here is what Ron Johnson (Apple's Sr. V.P in charge of Retail Stores worldwide) says in Chip's book; ...
Guys! stop the music and listen up. Do you get how deep that is? This perspective is totally centered in the "listening" and "interests" of your customers. It has nothing to do with you, your product and your survival / fear need to make a transaction. Very powerful. That will come in time, that will be the end result. Let me show you how and what I mean ... from my own personal experience.
I am benefiting from this at the moment - I am a Mac user and have the one-on-one program, where I get an hour of training at the store every week. I get 52 such classes with the low investment of $99.00 a year. Guess what, I go - I am usually there at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. It is so useful, they show me all the many things I could do with my Macs. They totally help me get more out of my life by helping me get more out of my computers. They also got a lot of my money - 4 laptops, 1 time capsule, 1 iPod. Sorry no iPhone ... Verizon has the better Network.
So, are you doing this? What do you think might happen if you started asking your customers how you can help them get more out of their life when they buy what we have to offer them?
Please try it out. Like I have always said, sales is really Problem Solving. Here is that link to the Video Interview where I said that.