One of the best ways to gain and maintain clarity about Who You Are, What You Offer, and Why You Matter is to get — and stay! — close to real customers.
This may feel obvious, but it’s surprisingly, scarily easy to lose this connection.
Let’s look at some examples from real-life clients of mine:
You could be physically removed from your customers, as you make all of your decisions from a 650,000 square feet “support center” 20+ stories up in the sky.
You could be unsure of what potential customers really want to see from you, so you muddy-up your identity by delivering some strange products in different, unrelated categories.
You may not actually, truly value your customer. I had a client that knew its best customer was more “look for less” rather than Louis Vuitton, but it still wanted to pretend it had the status of a luxury brand. (They’re not around anymore.)
If you feel disconnected, let’s look at a variety of ways you can find your way back and keep that all-important customer of yours top-of-mind.
Hire someone to do informational interviews with customers who will tell you the truth about what they like — and don’t like — about your brand and what it offers.
Create VIP or Insider online communities, so you can send out questions and gather regular information. (But, please, reward them with discounts or “points” for their involvement.)
Invite real customers to your offices for product line reviews, so you can get their input early in the product development process.
Create personas, yes. Give them real names, yes. But take it to the next level, like the discount retailer I worked with who created table tents and signage of their top 3 personas and plastered them all over their corporate offices. It made them almost-impossible to forget.
Especially in organizations where getting close to the customer may not be a real priority, this can be an area where you shine. Those with their ears to the ground end up having the clearest voices within the organization, and they become known and respected for that.
Get close to customers. Stay close to them. And let what really matters to them help guide you. It’s the kind of simple clarity that can make all the difference in the work you do each day.
