Would You Buy from Yourself?
Today, a simple, straightforward question for you: Would you buy from yourself?
As the owner of a management consulting firm who also owns another company, I have the distinct privilege (you could call it that) of being my own customer. My commercial painting business frequently turns to our fractional resources at Crews & co. for support in areas like finance, recruiting, and HR (and the Growth Method, of course).
Being your own buyer is like….well, have you ever recorded a video and then had to play it back and watch yourself? It’s excruciating. You scrutinize and criticize every detail. Why does my voice sound like that? Why are my hands doing that? Why does my face look like that?
It’s also an exceptionally valuable way to find out what’s not working in your company.
There are many ways we can get people to buy from us. We can rely on charm, charisma, or sex appeal. We can lowball our offers. We can focus on volume and ignore terrible conversion rates. We can play on our customer’s impulsivity, FOMO, and general anxieties.
But that’s not how you probably want to sell. You probably want to sell by providing a product or service of real value to your customer, and you want to be paid fairly in exchange for that product or service.
To do that, you can’t rely on a bag of tricks. To do that, you need a quality product or service, a clear value proposition, a sales process with minimal friction, and a strong customer orientation throughout the journey.
Easier said than done, I know. But by no means impossible.
When we only operate from a vantage point inside our businesses, we can’t see them clearly as they appear to our customers. We don’t see that we seem unresponsive, or disorganized, or overeager, or unclear - what our customers can see, plain as day.
As a leader in the company, you’ll never be totally objective about the business. But you can gain a lot of ground by choosing to see things through the customer lens.
Here are three things you can do today so start answering the question: Would I buy from my business?
Go through your own funnel. Fill out a form (spin up a new email account or ask a friend to help you). What happens next? Does the process benefit you, as the customer, or is it built for the business? How long does it take? How responsive is the team?
Attend your own event. At your next trade show, spend more time inspecting the other booths. Who has the crowd, and what are they doing differently? If you were a passerby with no context, would your own booth be compelling enough to stop for a conversation?
Observe your own delivery. For my SaaS and service businesses (not ecommerce): you’ve got an AI notetaker recording your calls, right? Watch them. Is your team living up to the promises of your value proposition? Are they serving the customer, delivering at a high level, and reducing friction?
You can hire firms to be true secret shoppers at your organization, but I’d start with a few simple observations. Identify no more than 3 changes you want to make in your process, and tackle them this quarter. Refine, and do it again.
Because if you wouldn’t buy from you, I wouldn’t expect many other people to buy from you, either.
