The Pursue of a Customer, the Pursue of Addiction
I'm a salesman, an area manager, a sales manager, who cares! I'm the one who wants you to buy from me, not once but multiple times. I want you back, over and over again. My business consists in bringing you back from from the I-95, Interstate 10, St. Louis, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Macon, Austin and yes, from Mars, from there too. I want your money and I want it now.
It used to be back in the 80's when Art Williams would give those "Just do it" speeches when the client was always right... did I say right? well, time have passed and nowadays, the client is always right as long as he comes back for more, and more and, more. Period.
Like nothing in the past, a client is more valuable now as long as he returns to the very same place where he placed the order, our business. Client used to be regular people with regular names, yeah, names that you would find in the yellow pages, not that ones that you have to google up today and choose among the 19 options that the first page will come up with. Now, a client is the one that is part of the "conversion" world, the ROI universe, the only valuable factor that a company needs, a frequent buyer, a repetitive buyer, the kind of clients that you would called "family", yeah, those ones, the addictive ones.
The goal of every single business is no longer to fulfill a need in the community and make money along the way, today, all you are looking for is an addictive client, not an addictive personality but an addictive client, the one that will have the cramps and the urges to buy from you the minute their product or service extinguishes.
The society has no longer a place in the business plan or mission statement, the only objective that matters is to achieve the highest performance and make the most amount of money in the less amount of time.
Every single digital marketing campaign is designed to create an addictive client, a client that not only will fall into the pit of addiction but a client that will dragged some more referrals along the way. A fantasy island, a place where addictive clients long to embark to every time they have the need for more. Our business.
There is no need to use any kind of psychological theory like psychoanalysis, or gestalt or cognitive or systemic theory; just the behavioral approach is good enough by re-enforcing the behavior with more products and services so the client is never satisfied. I want more. I need more. Give me more. Of course I will. I will give you more as long as you get more addictive to what we have to offer to you in the marketplace on one condition; you have to get addictive to us.
There is no longer "in between" clients, the ones that would eventually come back or maybe someday will buy from us. No. All we have now is clients that buy from you and the ones that will never buy from you, which ones? yeah, the ones that for some particular reason never got addictive to your products.
You, as a client are always right "only" if I can sell you more products over and over again, because, you know what, in reality, I'm not from the 80's, I'm from today and today, you are valuable as long as you buy from me today.
When strategizing new campaigns, I always find myself looking for that addictive factor to instill in the potential client that wording, that copyright that in the end will create an addictive personality.
Let's face it, in the 80's you could hide behind the yellow pages if you wanted, nowadays, that is almost impossible. Today, TV, radio, newspapers, billboards ads are just as "straight to the point" as the digital marketing commercials. Nobody is looking for a friend or eventually somebody who can "help"; companies are looking for clients and recurrent clients when they invest their money in their marketing and advertising campaigns.
Addiction is the only word that fits the bill, the only goal worthy to pursue as a salesman, area manager or sales manager. Salesman. If I can get you addictive to my product, then, we are family... what a wonderful world!