It's Only Common Sense

Whatever your business, you must have a story. You must be able to convince customers they want to do business with you. Let me say that again: You must convince customers they want to do business with you. That statement is much different than saying you must convince customers to buy your products or services.

Did you catch the difference? What key word is missing in the second statement? Give up? It’s the word “want." Want is the difference between marketing and selling. It’s the difference between just strong-arming customers into buying your products to convincing them--showing them your product is so well suited to solving their problem they cannot do without it. To do that you have to fully understand your audience, your customer base; you must know their needs, you must know what challenges they face and what exactly it takes for them to be successful. Then you can develop your story based on those needs demonstrating to them how your products actually represent a key to their success.

The best way to do this is to develop and communicate the right story to the right audience. Storytelling has developed into one of the most critical skills a company can use in their marketing effort. In fact, the first step in developing a marketing and branding plan is to define the company’s story. This is important because this story will serve as the very backbone of all other ingredients that make up the marketing mosaic of that company. Developing a company's story is the best way to get to know them, to understand where they came from, how the company was started, and how it got to where it is today. It’s also important to discover what values the company has developed along the way. It’s the best way to understand how they do business, what is important to them, if they are internally or externally focused, or if they really put the customer first.

Notice that I use the word develop as in develop their story rather than create their story because that is just what we’re doing together. A story is not created...it’s not fiction. A story is based on what already exists; by taking the concrete facts about the company and weaving them into their story.

A company should know its customers. Who are its best customers and why? Usually a company's best customers are also its largest. Not surprising since a company performs at its highest level with its biggest customers. These top customers probably became top customers because they got exactly the products and services they needed from the company. In short, it’s not an accident that a company's largest customer is also its happiest customer.

Once a company establishes its best accounts it can find similarities in those accounts. Analysis usually shows that a company's top accounts make up a particular market segment. Medical electronics OEMs, for example, may like and appreciate the work the company does for them. Or it could be aerospace companies, CEMs, or a host of others--whichever it is, a company often finds that it is particularly adept at serving a certain segment of the industry. When a company makes this discovery the complete story comes together--the story can be refined to show how the company is an expert at serving that segment of the industry.