Identify Yourselves, Dartboards!
Well that’s quite conclusive, then! Nobody!
I’ve never known of anyone who wants to be a dartboard. Nobody wants to be or become a dartboard. Or a target of any kind.
Yet sales and marketing literature and articles and training are replete with talk and discussions and advice about “target markets” and “target customers”. If you’re really customer-focused and customer-responsive in sales or in marketing, or anywhere else in your business management for that matter, why would you ever want to get your thinking into the “target customer” headspace? Why would you ever want to “target” clients and customers when clients and customers never want to be targeted? People never want to be targets. Of any kind. Anywhere. Ever.
It’s very straightforward. So be very clear about it. The thinking mismatch and misalignment is so extraordinary, it’s amazing that it has persisted over decades. No one wants to be, or think of themselves as being, at the pointy end of such a relationship. So why would you want to continue such a thought-path and such a relationship? Yes, customers would very much like the focus to be on them but they don’t want to be a target. And between both of those there is a massive difference.
Sure, I get it. You’re trying to differentiate categories of potential customers [read into this “clients” if you need to]. Some categories of people and organisations are far less likely to become your customers. And some categories of potential customers more closely approximate the types of customers that you, in your business, would prefer to have or to whom, you perceive, your products and services are likely to be best suited. So you’ve called that preferred category your “target market” [fine tune your definition if you need to]. Consequently, your thinking goes, you want to “focus” your efforts and resources on attracting these customers in order to “sell to them”. And, you might then think, you’ve got that particular category of potential customers “in your sights” ━ indeed, that very specific customer “in your sights” ━ and that therefore you would like to “target” them. To win their business. To you, they’re a “target customer” within your “target market”.
Mmmm. Dare I say, you really do seem to have an almost “enemy” approach within your thinking style, don’t you think? Be honest! You’re aiming straight at them!
Consider your sales approach now: You’re all prepared, and: Ready! Aim! Throw [your best efforts at them]! So that they then get the point, and will buy from you! You hope!
Well, that went well. That really was a “hit” with them! [sarcasm intended] And you more than likely killed much of the initial potential in the relationship with the client in the process! No, not every time, sure. But way too often. And especially when you didn’t ever need to. Let’s face it, you weren’t developing client relationships really: you were engaged in “target practice”. (One more “no” gets you closer to a “yes”. That’s inherently part of the target practice!) Fortunately, you likely turned some of that around and resuscitated some of the relationships.
Sorry to have to tell you, but your “target” thinking, as common as it is within traditional sales training and practice, is likely a chief cause of a lack of client relationship goodwill. Not that you might know if you haven’t engaged in any alternative thinking path. The words you use, if even only to yourself, control your thinking, and highly influence your actions and your entire communication approach with your customer. And that remains true even if you are not fully aware of the flow-on effect.
There’s no empathy with your potential client in making a “target” out of that person. For you then have to subsequently engage in additional resuscitation efforts to counter the implications of your customers feeling that they have been “targeted”, and your customer is more mentally and emotionally aware of that than you might conceptually credit them. How much resentment or resistance did your customer experience in the process? You will likely never know. Yet they felt it, even if they didn’t inform you that they did.
Perhaps an alternative way of thinking could be more valuable.
I wonder, then, what replacement terminology might help you to invest in potential customer relationships instead of treating them as the subject of targeting. Particularly were you to invest principally in your relationships with your priority class of potential customers.
Where might an alternative terminology lead you in your relationships with customers? How would that change your thinking? Your processes? Your interactions? Your communications? Your outcomes with customers, both short term and long term? Would that simple change in terminology even precipitate a transformation in your products and, especially, your services? Would you embark on a transformation of your sales and marketing processes? Would your entire company brand transform into a far more caring and customer-responsive brand characterised by an edge that leaves the competition extraordinarily behind?
How far can you reinvent your brand anew when there are no dartboards in your thinking?!
