Think Like Your Customer

Yesterday was all about discovering your customer’s perspective. If you did a thorough job, you may have found that some of your assumptions were spot on, while others were wrong. The art of branding is aligning the customer’s perspective to yours.

Over the past few days, you have gathered the emotional reason a customer buys from you. And you have identified your different types of customers. You’ve even asked them the reasons they do business with you. Today, we are going to examine the process that your customer goes through while doing business with you.

Get out your clipboard, for today your gift is to go shopping as if you were your customer. You are going to document every step of the process, beginning even prior to your customer’s awareness of you, all the way to him or her becoming a returning, loyal customer. You are going to think and act as if you were each of your customer types.

You are looking for areas where you can influence the decision-making process into your favor. Where you can reinforce the emotional reason behind the sale. Places where you need to supply the facts to justify the decision or to provide better customer service. This means looking at your business with a new set of eyes – yours or someone else’s – to tell you what you need. The more effort you put into experiencing what it is like to buy from you, the more you will get out of it.

We will get into the nuts and bolts of what to do with this information in more detail as the days go on. Your comments are welcome.