I remember when my son was two he became very headstrong and independent. This is normally a good thing; we want our kids to grow up. But it can also be a headache. He went through a stage of not wanting to hold my hand in parking lots. He was a “big boy”.
I increasingly found it frustrating trying to juggle bags of groceries while simultaneously trying to keep him from breaking free. Every time we went out it was a constant struggle. And he was so big and strong, I worried one day he would escape, with disastrous results. But I couldn’t get him to listen to me.
One day out of frustration I stopped in front of a parked car. I told him, “I am big and you are small. If there was a person in this car and they wanted to drive away, who do you think they would see? Me or you?”
He agreed that it would be me.
“What would happen if you weren’t beside me and someone wanted to drive away?”
“I’d get squished flat!”
A little more graphic than I was looking for but I went with it.
From that day on I never had to fight with him about holding my hand. In fact, I could even hold bags in both hands, ask him to hold onto the bag and know he wouldn’t try to break free.
When trying to convince my son that he needed to listen to me, my original methods hadn’t worked. I wasn’t relating to him in a way that mattered to him. He really didn’t care about obeying me. It wasn’t until I made holding my hand something he wanted to do (to avoid getting “squished flat”), that I got through.
The same is often true of your marketing. You know what’s important to you. You may think you know what your customers should think is important. But your customers don’t care about that; they care about what they think is important to them.
If you find you’re not getting the results you want from your marketing, perhaps it’s time to try to rethink your point of view. Try to get into the head of your prospects. Look at the world from their priorities. Speak to them in your own language. Find a way to show them that what you are selling helps them with things they value or worry about. When you do that, you’ll find you get better results.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Did you ever change the focus of your marketing message and get better results? Please share your experience and leave a comment.
