Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Customer Service - Not Sacrifice
I've talked a lot about getting inside the head of your customers as a starting point for selling to them. I've talked about the need to go to the extra mile to serve your customers. Many marketers refer to this as moving the "free line."

Moving the free line means that you give away items or information of such high perceived value that customers come to trust you as someone who is looking out for their welfare. There's a pitfall to that, though, that I want to make clear I'm not talking about.

Serving your customers should never go to the extreme of giving to the point where you can't continue your business. I've seen business owners who couldn't pay themselves a livable wage agonizing over whether to hire an out-of-work friend in order to help them through their rough times. I've seen business owners who gave away so much for free that they were going bankrupt.

I've straddled that line myself a lot. I grew up with it drilled into me that being a "good person" involved sacrificing what you wanted to give others what they want. A lot of other business owners have that same self-sacrificial mindset.

Just as running a business is no excuse to exploit customers for your own selfish ends, running a business is no excuse to self-destruct out of a feeling of obligation to give others value at your own expense.

A self-sacrificial approach to giving value to customers is destructive not only to you, but also to current and potential future customers. Business is not merely about getting. Neither is it about giving things up.

Business is rooted in sharing. Business is rooted in abundance. Business is rooted in one person sharing of their abundance in some solution in return for another person sharing of their abundance in money.

That means that rather than looking at what you can get out of your business or what you feel obligated to give, look at giving out of the abundance that you have. Grow the wealth you have in what you plan to offer. Build a sense of abundance in what you're giving.

No, it's not wealth or abundance as we normally think of it. It's not wealth or abundance in money. It is discovering what of value you have to offer and growing ever richer in that so that you have an abundance of that to offer -- in return for the money they offer you.

Then you'll feel neither a neediness that leads you to grasp for what others can give you, nor a poverty that leads you to sacrifice whatever you have for the sake of "serving your customers."
Jeff

Labels: mindset, successful business