Imagine that you are a gazelle and you are face-to-face with a bloodthirsty, hungry cheetah.
What do you do?
Run like the wind – blood pumping in your veins – lungs nearly exploding. Run faster and harder with fear in your heart.
You know that the cheetah will chase you until you tire and fall from exhaustion and then you will surely be devoured.
But wait, at the last second the cheetah is distracted by an older, slower, less agile gazelle. You escape as the cheetah is diverted. You live to see another day.
Later you are grazing on the same plain not fifty feet from the very same cheetah and her entire group. The cheetahs lick their chops. They are stuffed and tired from the hunt. But you and your gazelle pals are no longer afraid.
Why?
BECAUSE THE CHEETAH IS NO LONGER ACTING HUNGRY!
A New Mindset
Let’s face it, no matter who or what you are, when someone is chasing you, your first impulse is to run.
I have found that people often feel like that gazelle. They feel like they are being hunted, stalked, and eventually chased down. It happens in personal relationships as well as in business. I guess that’s because we are taught to act hungry. When we want something, we take it (assuming it’s legal and ethical).
This is particularly true in business. Traditional business practices have, for the most part, remained self-centered and manipulative designed to get someone to do what you want them to do. That could be buying your product or service, performing the tasks you have outlined or taking the actions that you deem important to achieving your ultimate goal. Make no mistake; business today is still about pursuit – the hunter and the hunted. It’s about overcoming obstacles, circumventing roadblocks, and tricking or trapping your prey. There is always a “winner” and a “loser.” This is still the sad reality of our economy. We battle for share of market or share of mind.
There is Another Way
But what if we were able to break out of this paradigm? What if we were able to present our ideas or solutions in such a way that people sought us out, rather than us having to chase after them? What if we could apply this to marketing and motivate customers and prospects to choose our company, product or service over the competition? What if team members and business partners decided, on their own, that they WANTED to, “Do it the RIGHT way” rather than being told over and over again to correct their behavior?
How valuable would it be to your business if you could ATTRACT the right kind of employees, affiliate relationships and alliances? How about customers? Imagine attracting your ideal prospect without spending a dime on advertising or putting on a big sales pitch?
All business leaders like to believe they have a unique solution. They are confident they are different from the competition. Yet when you get right down to it, most marketing communication says the exact SAME thing. It talks about what the company, product, or service DOES. At best, it may promise some generic group of benefits in which buyers MAY be interested. Even the best marketing materials (web sites, brochure, flyers, ads, radio or TV spots, promotions, interactive CDs or videos) attempt to communicate to the customer why their product, service or company is better than the competition.
Few focus on the PROBLEM that the customer is having. Few have designed solutions that are so customized to their target audience that they would have to be insane to even think about another option. This is the core of the attraction mindset. So take a step back in your business- stop chasing customers, and start attracting them to you.
Seeking a way to put this into practice for your business? Come to our Attraction workshops! Go to: http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp for more information! Our New Attract More Business Full Day Workshops will be held on:
- August 27 in the Long Beach area
- July 23 in the Pasadena area