Sharp Enough

Iron sharpens iron. 

So the real question is what iron are you sharpening? 

And how are you sharpening your iron? 

In marketing there are multiple stakeholders; 

• There is you, the business owner, 
• There is the customer, the person who wants something from you
• And there are lots of people in between. 

Your customers want answers, they want pains resolved, they want futures improved, they always need something to move them forwards. 

And the problem is sometimes if we're in an ego state over selling, then we push the potential customer away. 

Because whilst they have a problem they need answers, they have a pain that needs resolving and a future improving. They just don't want to come towards you and ask you because they're just worried it's going to descend into a sales pitch. 

The classic example of this is when somebody asks somebody for a price, all they want is a price. 

They just want to know roughly where the pricing is.

And what do they get back a four-hour discussion, fact find, question and answer session, not a price, what they get back it's the origin or the beginning or the base of the sales pitch. 

It makes people nervous and uncomfortable and they walk away frankly because all they wanted was a price. 

And that's a great way of testing how sharp your iron is, if somebody asks you for a price, can you just give it to them? 

Do you feel sharp and confident and strong enough to put the price out there and see what happens next? 

Because if you tell them the price and price condition someone early in your marketing and they stick around, that's a good sign. Because they now know the pricing and they haven't run away, and if they have heard the pricing and run away, maybe you would be able to establish the value of the product and therefore negate the importance of the price to them. 

But the reality is they may not want you to do that, and if they don't want you to do that, it's going to be very awkward. 

Ultimately they need something to move themselves forward. 

Whatever issue or challenge they have, whatever pain they want resolved, whatever future they want improving, they have to have some mechanism by which they can move towards that. 

And so iron sharpens iron.

It is no accident we all trust people over brands. 

Now some people have often said well yes but if people don't know the people in the brand, then they just trust the brand. 

That may be partially true. 

But the reality is it's the people in the brand that engender the trust. 

I don't know anyone in McDonald's head office and yet if I go to a McDonald's drive-through I'm trusting the individual people there based on the way they are. 

I don't care how big the McDonald's brand is, if I go to a drive-through and the person who's handing me my food is wiping a snotty nose, I'm out. 

Because people buy from people not brands. 

It doesn't matter how good the McDonald's brand is, if that was my experience and I'm pretty sure you'd all agree with me, we'd be out of there in a flash. 

If someone was coughing violently I'd be gone. 

And that's the point, it's no accident we all trust people over brands. 

So we have to enable people to help each other move forwards with a guiding hand, because we know what we're doing of course and therefore why wouldn't we help our customer understand something? 

Why wouldn't we coming from a place of love, serve them and support them and give them everything they need and whatever they ask for to help them make the best possible decision for everyone? 

Sometimes that means working with us, sometimes it means not working with us. 

That's life. 

But if you're going to stick to your values and sell meaningfully, your marketing needs to reflect that. 

Your marketing has to be sharp. 

Our lazy marketing academy does that. 

For our clients, we are the anvil on which they sharpen their iron, it's a coaching and mastermind environment that moves everyone forward at their pace, and it's very low cost, it's ridiculously low cost, you won't believe actually. 

So if that sounds interesting just ask me the price and I'll tell you, it's a no-brainer. 

In fact I'll tell you now, it starts at ￡100 a month, doesn't get much cheaper than that. 

So how are you sharpening your customers? 

How are you helping your customers get sharper to make better decisions that could go your way? 

How are you educating them and supporting them and serving them to enable them to make decisions more easily? 

And here's the brilliant bit, if you're the person helping your customer get sharp, you're building massive trust because you're not just selling, you're you're helping them make better decisions, and therefore the chance of them talking to you and engaging with you is much higher than if you were just selling to them. 

So it has to be an evolved approach, so how are you sharpening your customers? 

How are you sharpening your own marketing irons? 

What are you beating those marketing irons on to get them even more powerful? 

What anvil are you using?