Remember, Your Customers Are Busy

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I was reading Steve Pavlina’s series about how to network with busy people. The article itself is great. He goes over a lot of common sense things, and uses great analogies and stories to prove his point. His main point throughout the series is to help you see how a busy person perceives the way you are trying to contact them.

While I was reading this, it got me thinking that a lot of the points Steve makes, are the same points that companies tend to be ignorant of in their approach to marketing. Every company’s target market is comprised of “busy people.” Busy people are very valuable, but they are busy for a reason – they have their own life, and their own challenges and every company wants to connect with them. Because of this, you need to accept up front that busy people will only give you their attention if they see value in it. The mere fact that you have targeted them is not a good enough reason. People are overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of different communications every day – email, text messaging, online ads, phone calls, television commercials, point of purchase displays, and the list goes on and on. They do not have the capacity to treat every communication experience as equally important, nor do they want to! Just because you think your product or service is important and that this busy person needs to hear what you are saying does not mean they will feel that way.

Busy people pride themselves on being unique – not fitting into this category or that. They look for products and services offered by companies they are able to trust to feed this desire. By learning to be the company that busy people trust to consistently help them feel this way, you have the potential to become the company that sets the standards instead of one of the ones striving to achieve standards set by others. Trust is what keeps a business alive and allows it to run smoothly.

With trust, businesses thrive. Without it, businesses suffer and corruption takes over. It takes time to build trust with a busy person. There is a good chance your communications will be blown off just because it is their unconscious habit. Another possibility is that you may be using the wrong medium for the message you are trying to convey, but that is a whole other post. Busy people would rather experience life than listen to what you have to say. They want to enjoy the things they do and the people in their lives, so timing plays an important role in how and when you communicate with them. People typically do not like being lied to or treated like they are just another transaction so authenticity is the best approach. The Authenticity Approach is the best way to connect with busy people and to run your business. Good or bad, the truth always comes out.

Being authentic will allow busy people to relate to your company which builds trust. When they trust you, they want to work with you.

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