If you want to be a market leader, use your intuition.
You know what I mean, that feeling that tells us a product idea has legs, a story is going to sell, a customer segment is going to love our new offering. You just know when you’re on the right track. And you’re right on…
WHEN you think like your customers.
Customer intuition can make or break our business. When we’re in sync with our customers – we deliver powerful Value that hits their needs right on the head – or opens their eyes to new opportunities.
The problem is our customers are moving fast -and we’re too often stuck in yesterday’s news. Customer intuition is a tricky thing in today’s warp speed world. Our intuition can go from ‘right on’ to outdated’ in a matter of weeks or months as our customers learn, grow and adapt faster and faster – thanks to the internet and social media.
The good news is that those same mechanisms give us the chance to tune our customer intuition. We can be involved with our customers on a daily basis, interacting and learning.
What better way to tune our instincts than grounding our intuition in pure market reality. So how do we find that reality?
1. Interact with a broad range of customers. And by the way – don’t think talking to your top 5 customers or focusing on the unhappy ones on your FaceBook Page is the way to improve your customer intuition. Those are most likely not the best representation of your customer intuition. The top customers drank your koolaid, and the ones squawking on FaceBook are simply fluffing their feathers. Have a serious conversation with the buyer who didn’t choose your product, or better yet – the unhappy customer who walked away quietly. They may not be pleasant discussions, but you’ll learn a lot more about customer perceptions from them than from your friendly or vocal audiences alone. Also – listen to potential customers as they chat about their hopes, dreams, challenges and opportunities. That’s where you’ll find the innovation you need to power your future success – and you’ll learn to think like your customer as you do just that.
2. LISTEN, WATCH, CONVERSE AND THEN SHARE Remember the old days when we used to push out information to a waiting audience? Wow – could we preach. Forget it – that day is GONE. Social media is about conversations – not one way diatribes. In creating conversations, Social Media empowers us to understand our customer’s feelings and beliefs. But that won’t happen if you see SM as yet another way to do the same old marketing – or even that upgraded marketing that you think is so cool. If you’re planning 3 months worth of content to spread all over the social media world – where’s your focus on customer relationships? It’s time to get out of the way you’ve always thought about it. You can’t be planning what you’re going to say and also having a conversation. You’ll build intuition when you LISTEN to your customers, WATCH their behaviors, CONVERSE with them about their interests and then SHARE – based on what you already know they want or need to know.
3. Focus Forward and stop wallowing in yesterday’s brain. Great intuition is based on cumulative knowledge – leveraging lessons from yesterday’s successes, and failures. Note, I said ‘leverage’ not ‘repeat’. If you’re doing what you’ve always done only more of it in a social media world – you’re wallowing in yesterday’s news. That’s not the recipe for success. In case you haven’t heard -everything changed. So must your intuition… Relying on yesterday’s beliefs, applying them in tomorrow’s world – well, that’s gravity in its worst form. Instead – train yourself to take everything you learn from listening in the social media world and apply it to the blank whiteboard of your FUTURE opportunities. You’ve used SM to get into your customers hearts and heads – now get focused on solving the problem that’s coming at them, in a new and compelling way.
But what about those left brained facts and figures?
Numbers and trends, market research and opinions – all of those facts will tell you the same thing that everyone else, including your competition, knows. And by the way – those same numbers and facts are based on yesterday’s truths – not tomorrow’s promise. Plus, lets’ face it. Any marketer worth their salt can spin those numbers to prove whatever they want to prove. So forget relying on the numbers created in the past, and follow your instincts into the future. Get out of that Gravity and get into your customers’ thinking.
Your customer intuition is what sets you apart. Find it, and use it!
Photo courtesy of c@rljones
