Your Customer has a Vote....Will They Vote for You???

With national politics in the air my thoughts ran to “Would my customer vote for me?” Or maybe better said, “Why would my customer vote for me?”

By customer I don’t mean that person who is already in your “accounts receivable.”  No, I mean those people who are looking and trying to find your service or product.  Why should they pick you?  Unless you’re that one in a million, you have competitors.  In my case as a Real Estate Broker in the state of Washington, there are tens of thousands of licensed agents.  Why should anyone pick me?

A recent panel of political advisors where asked how they would help someone seeking public office, “get the vote needed to win?”  Their solution broke down into three basic principles;

1. Know who you are.
2. Know how to clearly articulate that.
3. Know your audience and now to relate to them.

Not exactly rocket science but never the less food for thought.  In my case, there is only one “me” even if there are tens of thousands of other real estate agents.  So if I can figure out who I am, I will be the only one of “me,” and therefore unique.  Not as easy as it seems. 

As it turns out, we’re not the best one to know who we are.  Ask past and current customers why they “voted” for you.  What qualities or expectations did we meet?  What qualities did we NOT have that made us a best fit for them over anyone else?  If you’re just starting up, ask the people that likely will be using your service, what are they looking for in a professional such as you and do you have it?

Hopefully you will now have a better idea of ”who you are,” now articulate it.  Again, not easy.  The vast majority of us have trouble talking about ourselves.  Get over it.  Think of and work on a 3 minute elevator speech, a one page resume, a tag line.  Practice it until you can deliver it like a veteran politician in a TV debate. Remember the overriding question we’re trying to answer as clearly, confidently and truthfully as possible is “why vote for me?”

The third point, in my opinion is the most important.  You can really know who you are, you can really know how to say it but, if your service is selling ice and your audience is Eskimos at the North Pole, no matter how clear, confident and truthfully you are, it’s going to be pretty tough sledding. 

Knowing your audience and now to relate to them is major!  This could be considered “Market Research.” Again I say, not that easy.  In “Market Research” the object is to find the wants and needs for a particular product or service.  What we’re after here is to figure out who it is that wants YOU to be the ONE that will deliver their needed product or service. This is more about who you are naturally attracted to. Whom do you feel most comfortable with?  Who fits with your style?  Who gets your message that you have the best answer for THEM?  That’s your target audience, the ones that you will be able relate to and they in turn can relate back.  

I can’t help but remember, as I write this, the time I met Al Gore when he was running for office.  He showed up at Boeing to get our vote, wearing a red flannel plaid shirt over a cashmere black turtleneck, blue jeans neatly pressed and shiny new logging boots (black dress socks).  I guess he was trying to relate to what he thought a typical Pacific Northwesterner would be like???  His east coast advisers knew and were aware of the importance of relating, they just didn’t have a clue of who their northwest audience was. Lesson here,”Don’t try to fake it!” Be real. Be you.

Keep these three keys in mind, as you go about your day campaigning for YOUR vote! 

Get enough votes and you will find yourself elected as one successful entrepreneur.

Good Luck!