Have you ever heard someone begin a sentence with “Our customers…“?

For some reason, whenever we make a sale to someone, there’s a tendency to believe that we somehow now “own” this customer – that they’ve somehow given up their independence and sworn allegiance to us as a vendor or supplier.

This customer ownership mentality can also lead to the mistaken belief that we have some kind of newfound control over these customers – perhaps because the customers chose us over the competitors, or appear to be reliant upon us in some way for support, future updates or other services.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth… customers are not owned by anyone – and it’s very dangerous to think and talk this way, because we’re deluding ourselves and ignoring reality when we do.

Like everyone, customers have certain needs, selfish wants and preferences.  And in today’s world of global competition, every customer has alternatives to you and your product.  And with very few exceptions, most customers hate being reliant upon anyone or anything and much prefer their independence and self-reliance, especially when it comes to their business.

When a customer buys a product from you or uses your services, it’s much more accurate to realize that they just “hired” your product or company to get a particular job done. It’s usually as simple as that.  And if they aren’t satisfied with the kind of job you do for them, guess what happens next?  They’ll find someone else to do that job tomorrow.

Customers have a “what have you done for me lately” kind of attitude and like the boss, they have very short memories about what you’ve done right and seemingly eternal recollection of everything you’ve ever done wrong…

When companies and their people begin to think of customers in the possessive, this is often when big trouble has already set in – with complacent Support, assumptions about repeat or future business, excuses about subscription cancellations or competitive losses, etc.

This is especially true in the technology business, where one day you’re the market leader who seemingly can do no wrong and then something happens and you wake up another day only to find that you are no longer king of the hill and “your customer” is now focused on something and someone else…

Sometimes we become complacent with our success and forget about “who brung us”, to use my grandmother’s vernacular.  It’s human nature for people to become accustomed to, even take for granted, what they think they already have.  And we often don’t realize what we’ve lost until it’s too late.

Customers will only put up with bad service, complacent attitudes, non-responsiveness or other forms of being taken for granted until they have another alternative.  And customers who receive poor service or get ignored repeatedly quickly find there are others who are still hungry enough to give them their full attention – for just a little bit of their money.

So the next time you hear or say those telltale words “my customers”, stop and take a close look in the mirror. They’re not going to be “yours” for very long.

Customer relationships have to be earned every single day.

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TRUST

The number one reason people don’t buy from us online (besides price and no need) is the fact that we’re strangers and they don’t know us and don’t trust us.

We’re all taught from childhood not to trust strangers. This carries over into business, because most of us have been burned at one time or another by someone we didn’t know.

The old saying that “trust must be earned” is very true.

Big brands like Amazon.com or EBay do not face this same barrier, as they’ve already earned their trust in the market. Unless you have the wind of an established brand blowing behind you, you will certainly have to face and overcome this trust issue. Even if you have a brand, it may not be enough to carry you, especially in new markets.

The other reason people do not believe or trust you is because they realize you are trying to sell them something. In addition, they often have developed an instinctive distrust for sales people because of experiences buying things (and being “hard sold” on things that turned out not to be in their best interest or of value to them).

Lack of trust and belief is probably the single biggest cause of online selling failure (probably offline, too). Fortunately, you can do plenty about this.

When people do not trust or believe us, there is a gap or chasm between us and them. Notice my use of the term “us and them” here. They do not trust us.

To maximize our online sales, we must change this “us vs. them” perspective.  We do this by building an online relationship – that eventually blossoms into a customer relationship.

Every relationship begins with a Chasm of Doubt between the two parties. This chasm is often filled with fears, anxieties, questions, misperceptions, and other forms of doubt.

There are those risk-takers who will simply leap right across this chasm, but more often than not, they are the exception instead of the rule.

To attract the big, mainstream part of almost any market, we must convince risk-averse people that they can safely do business with us.

Consider the following picture of the chasm.  How many people will put themselves at risk to jump across it?

It is as if we are standing on one side of the canyon or a large gorge, and our prospect is on the other side looking across at us.

He can see us and hear us but isn’t ready to try to jump across this dangerous-looking chasm to join us on the other side, where we can help.

Yet to sell to him, we must somehow help him across this Chasm of Doubt onto our side, where we can have productive conversations about his desires and his needs and how we can best help and serve.

So how are we going to help our prospects cross to our side?

By building a metaphorical Bridge of Trust across the Chasm of Doubt – by removing the perceived risks of being on the same side with us – and avoiding the risky-looking jump we see here.

This “chasm” has been written about before, so this isn’t really new.  Remember Jeffrey Moore’s famous “Crossing the Chasm”?  Another place I saw this concept being applied to email marketing was Michael Cheney, an accomplished Internet Marketer, who portrays this chasm in his River of Doubt metaphor.

To get across this famous chasm, we must build a  ”Bridge of Trust” and get our prospects to start walking across the bridge to reach us on the other side –  one-step at a time.

You might be wondering: what can we use to build such a bridge?

Trust is built one step at a time.

It begins by being honest and sincere about helping the prospects get the results and achieve the positive outcome they seek.

Each step of the bridge must be built. We provide the prospects with something that causes them to consider us as trustworthy.

They then take a step closer to being on our side of the Chasm of Doubt.

Here are some examples.

We offer the prospect something valuable for free (perhaps a free offer that attracted them to us  in our original advertisement), and then we deliver it to them.

We ensure they will be satisfied with what we give them. Gift giving has long been a good way to help build a relationship, and it is no different online.

Next, we give them something else that is completely unexpected for free, like a free video, report, or something else even more useful.  These gifts must not be self-serving, with embedded sales messages, links to buy your product or service, etc.  Real gifts aren’t Trojan horses – they’re honest to goodness useful, valuable things that can be appreciated.

By giving useful, free stuff to our prospects, we are accomplishing several important steps:

• We’re demonstrating that we are trustworthy by trying to help them
• We’re proving that we are interested in them and their needs
• We’re showing them that we actually do have something valuable to offer them
• We’re helping them along the path toward solving the ultimate problem (our product can fully resolve)
• We’re staying in front of them and keeping our company/product in the foreground (vs. not following up with them at all and allowing them to slip into the ether).

Another way to gain their trust is to confide in them by letting them in on something special, telling them a secret, or even sharing something personal with them. When people confide in you, they are signaling that they trust you. Therefore, you should trust them in return.

Think of all the ways you would go about building a relationship with someone and evaluate whether that same approach could work in building bonds of trust with your prospect.

Sometimes it is easy to forget all the stuff we learned when selling to people in the offline world—how our sales people go about their process of selling.

It begins by establishing rapport, finding common ground and establishing some nominal amount of trust that the sales person has your best interest at heart.

It is no different online.  Our brand (if we are an established company) helps to bridge the trust gaps somewhat.  If you’re like most small businesses, you don’t yet have an established brand in the eyes of your prospect, so that’s not going to help.

Instead, we must invest the time and effort required to develop the relationship and bonds of trust with our market. Then when our email arrives in her inbox, she will open it and actually read it more often than not.  When we recommend something, that recommendation will be taken seriously and not pre-judged as just another sales pitch.

So if developing these relationships is this straightforward, why don’t more companies do it?  Because it takes time, work and a sincere interest in our market and customers.  It takes doing things that aren’t in our own selfish interests and instead investing our time for someone else.  And that’s not nearly as much fun as building more stuff to sell…

So the next time you’re wondering what you can do to increase sales in your market, step back and ask yourself this question.

Which side of the chasm is my market waking up on today?

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