Lead Customers So You’ll Get to Your There.

In WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE, Marshall Goldsmith & Mark Reiter wrote, “There is a place where you can be a financial pro who listens well and delivers the message that he cares more about his clients’ goals than his own needs.”

Instead of piling products onto people, optimal retailers empower & equip customers for physical & cognitive labor. Customer integration empowers & equips people to create their ‘THERE’ or ways to reach an existing ‘THERE’.

Case studies can indicate routes to an existing ‘THERE’, but practical route access requires matching knowledge with physical resources. Knowledge (empowered cognitive labor) identifies steps to determine what’s necessary.

Customer integration is also your way to benefit from delivering optimal messages about superior value.

Increase Your Influence with Better Integrated Value

Customer integration makes influence part of the value of your advantage offer so people will seek your influence over their results. Influence & integration will increase together as your advantage offer enhances people’s lives by adding or maintaining positives &/or reducing negatives.

People might perceive their status quo as borderline negative & modifications as more inconvenient (stressful) than beneficial. There are stresses in 1) struggling to achieve goals; 2) tolerating negatives & 3) enduring declining conditions. Which modifications are affordable? Which affordable modifications can be made more convenient plus improve enough factors to reduce long-term stress?

Help customers decide if problems warrant higher priorities than other issues. Determine how to decrease hassles of modifying conditions & increase benefits of efforts. Urge people into action while uncomfortable elements are adjustable by explaining options of stopping declines & starting improvements.

Influence consumers by helping them influence their conditions. Though you probably won’t detect all constructive & destructive elements, defining elements can help you determine what aided or hindered positive & negative changes. Like artists making pictures vivid by adjusting color brightness & depth, you can adjust what makes elements good or bad.

Make your leadership a source of customer advantages by shaping beneficial decisions. Example: ‘Eliminating (factor A) requires (products & methods) & makes fixing (factor B) possible with (materials & tools). It’s necessary because __.’

Without guidance, providing products can be like dealing cards without explaining games. Rules can be like information without strategies, tactics & reasons.

Explaining games/methods can be leading with examples & answering “What if” questions, so beginners gain benefits. Leadership increases value for followers. Retailers can lead customers to help them manage conditions.

Share Leadership

The internet has a lot of information about & from paid influencers. Groups can be community leaders & unpaid influencers who are or work with nonprofit organizations. You can donate or offer discounts to encourage people to share information about results. Your charitable contributions should be disclosed but are perceived differently than direct payments or bribes.

Knowledge & method adaptations can bring higher quality benefits when consumers learn from & imitate leaders' & groups' results. They can lead by example with local results plus asking & answering questions.

Examples: Would (benefit 1) help you more than (benefit 2)? Why this, but not that? How did you adjust methods when you noticed (problem)? How did you make (benefit) last?

This would give your advantage offer social proof.

As leaders & influencers help you & customers, you gain profits & can contribute more. Tutorial sessions can be community events.

Optimal project leadership requires tactic development with available resources & strategizing to maximize tactics & resources.

Retailers should lead customers with information about current & emerging conditions. It's important to define opportunities & problems, so available resources (information, insights, methods/skills & products) can be combined into plans.

To evaluate alternative plans, consider participants' values & goals. How do opportunities fit participants' values & goals? How do problems interfere with values & goals? Do problems threaten people &/or property enough to delay pursuing other issues so efforts are focused on major threats?

Evaluations can also verify strengths & weaknesses/vulnerabilities of resources, opportunities & threats/problems. What might limit durable usefulness of resources? What might interfere with durability of opportunities?

Decision-making can be easier by using paradigms. Here are some metaphorical examples: If we figure problems are vulnerable enemies, what do they leave undefended while they attack? Will anything in the conditions stop or decrease their attacks? Will they wear down our defenses with constant attacks? If we only defend, will we reduce or just maintain vulnerabilities?

Examples: Insects eat plants & lay eggs. Eggs & larva are vulnerable to chemicals & predators.

If insects eat leaves, they can't remove chemical residue & their focus on food decreases their attention on predators. How much pesticide residue is enough to hurt harmful insects without hurting people & beneficial insects?

How can we encourage just enough predators to disrupt harmful insects without disrupting people?

When you (customer) consider your values & goals, would predators be disruptive? How can we control the numbers of & exposures to predators? If we don't attract enough predators, what's our maximum chemical level without hurting predators & us?

After decimating plants, will insects lay eggs & be worse next year? If we don’t plant this year, will we disrupt emerging larva or only decrease our productivity?

Do strong scented, beneficial plants repel insects?

With these considerations, which strategy would maximize tactics & resources? Let's use that strategy to make a plan.

Another Perspective

Suzi McAlpine writes about leadership & accepted my suggestion about insights applying to customer service. I’ve included URLs for some of Suzi's blog posts & my responses. I've read some other posts without commenting. Suzi's posts are valuable for various leaders including employers. Community groups can adapt them & work with retailers to offer value to communities & individuals.

https://suzimcalpine.com/4-conversations-to-have-with-your-new-team-member/

I'm including an example:

“What aspects of the job are you feeling most confident about, and least confident about?”

This can be adapted for customers: What aspects of the project are you feeling most confident about, & least confident about?

Let's build your confidence while you build your project.

Some people learn well from audio/video tutorials, but others prefer to read.

Should we find videos or are you more comfortable reading books or articles? Which tools & materials have you used most?

Do you want to take pictures as you finish steps so we can review your progress?

https://suzimcalpine.com/feedback-tips-for-the-conflict-avoidant/

I’m glad you included the subjects of customers & control because we need to guide each other to make course corrections. Sudden changes can cause losses of control to become damaging. When bosses set this example with subordinates, they can do it with customers.

Example: ‘This plan has 5 steps based on what we know now. As you implement this plan, you might uncover other symptoms or problems. If you do, please report them so we can adjust. This isn’t about who’s right or wrong. It’s about the best long-term benefits, so we need to be sure preliminary results fit our goals. We have more knowledge & wider perspectives than just one of us. If conditions are different or change differently from what we expect, let’s respond as quickly as we can.’

https://suzimcalpine.com/four-questions-to-ask-yourself-when-faced-with-a-big-decision/

What you wrote is VALID for validating decisions.

You seem to advocate establishing distance between emotions & logical reasoning plus trying different perspectives. That distance is important. Though emotional reasons can be important for morale, logic is necessary for decreasing stress & maintaining long-term total health.

Emotions rise & fall minute-by-minute. Logic should be long-term & depends on conditions, so what’s logical can change when conditions change. If something FEELS right, how long will it seem right?

Are condition changes already emerging? Will values be adjusted with those changes? How are values limiting or expanding options now? Will those limited or expanded options be viable when changes are complete?

If future options would better fit new conditions, would those options fit your current or updated values?

Do current negative emotions indicate you’re uncomfortable with changes generally or are you hesitant about ramifications of your actions? Are negative emotions really intuition indicating caution?

Your suggestions can validate intuition or reveal illogical conclusions.

https://suzimcalpine.com/3-common-myths-of-coaching-and-whats-true-instead/

I’ve been writing about functional hope to help people go beyond intentions to implementations. Coaching helps people focus on how to add functionality instead of hoping things will happen. Your questions are functional in determining what works/will work plus finding interference causes & effects.

It’s vital for building businesses with workers & giving customers reasons to stop hesitating. Prevent & solve problems now to end stress sooner. Reducing stress clears minds for more productivity which reduces stress more & helps with more productivity.

Lead People Out of Stress

Firefighters are leaders because rescue includes finding & leading people who might feel relatively safe because fire hasn’t reached them yet. Firefighting equipment reduces firefighters’ risks but trapped civilians wear regular clothes. It’s important to communicate, ‘I can make a safe path now. Soon there won’t be any safety including HERE. Let’s leave safely together now!’

Safely rescue customers now!

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2022 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.

When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here- https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/