It’s Not Business; It’s Personal

Show Notes

• How you communicate with your customers isn’t business, it’s personal.
• See your customers as people who could be part of your family. By doing so, you will naturally communicate with them more effectively and in a way that will help them to know that you care about them and have a solution for them.
• Understand what makes someone want to do business with you.
• What does your customer believe your product or service will do for them?
• In order to deliver what someone wants, you need to be able to understand what they expect of you.
• You want to make money on quality, not on quantity because quality is worth more than quantity. The margins are better, it’s more enjoyable, and you will have a better overall experience.
• Communicate with your customers as people and see what their needs are and meet those needs in the most effective way.
• How do you view your customer? What do you hope for your customer?
• If your focus hasn’t ever been on your customer, but only on yourself, then you are doing it wrong.
• Do you speak at your customer or with them?
• Do you expect a response back when you reach out to your customer and potential customer?
• When you help somebody get what they think they need, then you are creating value for them. As a result, you create money that goes into your business which pays your employees and allows you to take care of those you need to take care of.

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] It's not business. It's personal. I know if you say that differently it can sound ominous. But in this case, it's not. It's not business, it's personal and we're not talking about getting revenge or anything like that, although that could be where some people could have gone with that phrase. But we're talking about how you communicate with and how you see your customers.

It's not business. It's personal. How you see them and how you perceive them is gonna determine how you communicate with them. What I would like you to consider with this episode is that the way that you see our customers, if you see them as people, people who could be part of your family, then you're gonna communicate with them in a more effective way, in a way that's going to help them to know that you actually care about what's going on with them and that you have a solution that's actually addressing what their problem is.

So when I wrote my first book, Would You Like To Go Big, which is about up-sells, you might not [00:01:00] think that we would talk about this, but the very first thing that I said, before you worry about what you're going to offer people in up-sells, is you got understand what motivates their decision to do business with you in the first place. And really, this is at the core of being able to be personal in your communication in your business. You have to understand what it is that your customer believes that they get from your product or service.

If we go to a very easy concept, like the restaurant, right? What is it that the person who goes to the restaurant believes that they're going to get from the restaurant. Now, it depends on the restaurant, on what they believe they're going to get from it. In some cases it may be an enjoyable experience. In other places it may be just to satiate their hunger. Depending on what the experience is, that that person is expecting as they go to that place, will change the way that that business needs to look at how they respond and communicate and deal with that relationship that they need to create.

So, I want you to think about the answer [00:02:00] that question. What is it that your customer believes that your product or service will do for them? And believe me, that's at the core of why they decided to spend money with you, or it better be if you want it to last for a long time. It has to be based on their personal self-interest.

So what is it that their self interest dictates the cause of them to do business with you versus somebody else is? That is the core of being able to see people as people. You need to understand what it is that they're expecting out of you in order for you to deliver that.

The secret sauce for a small business is its ability to be personal. Huge large corporations lack this, and they only make up for it on volume. That's not what you want to be. You want to be where you're making money on quality, because quality is way better than quantity. Margins are much better. It's much more enjoyable. You have a better experience in general.

Believe me, you only get one life on this Earth, so you might as well make the [00:03:00] most of it. And the way to make the most of it is to actually get more personal with your customers. That doesn't mean you invite them over to your house, it doesn't mean that they're eating dinner with you or anything like that. What it means is that when you communicate with people, you communicate with them as people.

You don't go corporate, speak to some individual that represents a unit of business. It means you see them as people and you see what their real needs are and you try and meet those in the way that's most effective for you as a business owner and for them as a customer.

I want you to really think for the rest of this episode about how you see your customers. How do you view them? What is it that you hope for them? If the focus has never been on them, but just on you and what you can get out of it, you're doing it wrong.

Do you speak at them or do you speak with them? When you send an email out to them, do you expect them to respond back? And if they do, is that a good thing? If you call somebody, do you want to know what they have to say or do you just want [00:04:00] to say what you have to say? If you send a text to somebody, is it because you're trying to get them to do something or is it because you want to interact with them because you want to find out what it is that they need and how you can supply that need? Do you know what they're really after, and you know how to help them in a way that they want to be helped?

It's not business. It's personal. What are you doing to help people? That's what creates value. When you help somebody get what they think that they need and, this is what's important, it's what they think that they need what not what you think that they need, what do they think that they need.

When you help them get what they think that they need and at that point you're creating value for them. And when you create value for them, then you create money and that money that goes into your business. It pays the people who work with you or for you and then it also pays you so that you can be able to take care of those people who you want to take care of.

So, remember: all your communication, the way that you see people, it's not business. It's [00:05:00] personal. Get personal. You'll be much more effective, much more happy with your experience and, believe me, your customers will love it as well, and all around, things will be much better than they are if you look at it as business and not personal. This is Ryan Chapman with Fix Your Funnel. Keep moving forward.