Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Is a "Fishing for Customers" Mentality Strangling Your Sales?
Fishing can be fun. But if you apply its principles to your marketing, it could be strangling your sales. Let's look at fishing for a moment.

You come to the lake well-equipped with tools: bait, hooks, nets, rods and reels to bring 'em in. You bait the hook, toss it into the water and wait. Before long, some dumb fish is off and running with that tasty bit of bait and you're reeling away.

Let's see, that's maybe 200 pounds worth of highly intelligent human with state-of-the-art tools going against some dumb fish that weighs anywhere from a few ounces to a few pounds. Is this easy or what?

Unfortunately, many new business owners like to imagine selling to be this easy. They see their businesses as a type of fishing for customers. The wily business owner goes off to do battle with the elusive customer. The business owner brings what he hopes will be the right bait (the product) and the right tools (promotional strategies, effective sales copy, etc.) to reel the customer in.

But think for a moment what fishing involves.

The fisherman offers bit of worm or a shiny doodad. The fish, when it's reeled in, could well become supper. Not a very even trade, do you think?

So what happens if you apply a fishing mentality to business? You look at the products you sell as bait. You look for something that you hope will attract customers. But the focus is in on doing whatever it takes to CATCH THEIR MONEY. And that's the wrong focus.

Customers are not dumb fish. They won't bite blindly at any shiny little doodad you dangle in front of them. Remember the "bargain" that the fish was getting? The fish gets a worm or an inedible shiny thing. In return, the fish gives up its life. Customers want a slightly more equitable bargain than that.

So if we're not fishing for customers, what pattern should we follow? Think negotiating instead.

In fishing, you're hoping to pull fish out of the deep where they're hiding from you. In negotiating, you are face to face with the other person.

In fishing, the fish will bite at something worth far less than what they're giving up. In negotiating, your customers want something of equal or greater value than what they're giving. That's the only way a smarter-than-a fish customer will buy.

You have to provide something that your customers will consider more useful to them than the money they give up. That sounds like a money-losing proposition, doesn't it?

But it isn't if you know anything about negotiating. In negotiating, you give up something that is worth much more to your partner than it is to you.

Maybe you're selling some special knowledge the other person needs by packaging it in the form of an information product. Maybe you're selling a product that you know how to get a lot more inexpensively than your customer does. The difference between what you consider the product to be worth and what your customer considers your product to be worth is what allows you to make a profit.

When you look at products merely as bait and your promotion tools merely as ways to reel customers in, you lose sight of what your customer is looking for. You dangle your product and hope that that's what they're biting on today. And when you leave to chance something as important as what your customers want, you likely will dangle bait that doesn't interest them.

When you look at products from your customer's point of view, though, you will make more deals. If you get to know what your customers really wants instead of just what you hope they'll want, you can find those things your customers will value enough to do business with you.
Jeff