The Marketer Listened
Some really wonderful people have written the loveliest, most insightful books for children. One I’ve recently come across is “The Rabbit Listened”. Any parent who can read this dry-eyed is far more stoic than I am.
It’s all about a little boy who has some misfortune befall him, and a cast of animal characters who come to comfort him, but only in their own particular ways. They all believe that their way is best and leave him when he won’t engage.
Until the rabbit comes along. He merely listens, and lets the little boy’s emotions unfold and unfurl at their own speed, and in their own way. It beautifully illustrates how many ways there are to react to setbacks, to feel your feelings, and to move on from the negative to rebuild the positive.
And, if you’re a marketer, you can’t help but be struck by the importance of listening over dictating to create a connection. Or, maybe that’s just me.
So much of an entrepreneur’s journey is about pitching themselves - their idea, their qualifications, the team that they’re building, the brand that they’re building. It’s a non-stop “look at me” show, and it has to be. You can’t get the resources you need if you don’t ask (ahem, beg) for them and win everyone’s attention.
But, when it comes to your customers, you have to put all of that aside, because, like becoming a parent, it stopped being all about you, as soon as the customer entered the picture.
And that’s hard. Especially because you do actually need to talk about your product or services a bit. You just have to frame it in terms of what your customer needs. Not what you think they need; not what they need in order to make your product valuable (we’ve all been guilty of this sort of thinking), not what sales tells you that they need, but what the customer tells you that they need. And you hear it by having ongoing conversations with them.
Start today. Close your LinkedIn tab and call one of your customers, just to ask how things are going. And, like the rabbit, the best thing you can do is just listen.