every man for himself

1. An expression of panic, that everyone should forget about comradeship and save themselves.

You might recall a post I wrote a little while ago about customer care. In that post I talked about how customer care was a rare breed and people who put their customers’ needs first would do well: this is true today more than ever!

I see endless examples day in day out of people who operate from a mindset that says “What’s the best outcome for me and how can I get it in the shortest possible time with the least amount of energy invested.”

There’s not really a problem with wanting the best outcome for yourself is there? And surely there is no issue with trying to achieve those outcomes quickly without expending more time and energy than you have to. But if there are other people involved shouldn’t you be considering them and how they’ll be affected in your quest for your desired outcome too? Thinking along the lines of “What’s the best outcome for me and my customers and how can we get it in the shortest possible time with the least amount of energy invested.”

I’m not sure what it is that has led to what appears to be an ‘every man for himself’ approach to life for many people. It’s as though we are in a panic and that our very survival has gotten so threatened that we are now willing to trample over our own neighbour to get what we want.

Do you give even a fleeting consideration to what your actions might mean to someone else who is involved in your transaction, your group or whatever it is you’re doing to achieve a set outcome?

I wonder if the ‘buy now pay later’ addiction of today is also reflected in how we view our customers? Take their money today, deal with their dissatisfaction later?

Is it similar to smoking a pack a day and dealing with the emphysema later. Overeating fatty foods today and dealing with the high cholesterol later. Drinking too much today and dealing with kidney disease later. Spending too much today and dealing with the debt later.

Treat people with indifference and deal with their wrath later.

I’ve seen both site sellers and buyers, Internet marketers and other sales people who only seem to really care about what’s happening on their side of the fence. Their consideration for the other person or people involved seems almost close to zero in so many things they do. They work out how they can hype up their sales pitch the most, how they can inflate the value of what they’re selling beyond what they even consider it to be worth, they look for ways to create frenzies and so on.

Never fear, I’m not against marketing, I have done plenty of it myself. What I’m on about though has two components to it. One is a personal preference toward helping people. No not just “And in my spare time I like to read books, ride horses and help people.” No I mean truly help people! Put myself in their shoes. Guess what they might be thinking and ensure their own thoughts don’t convince them of something that’s not real. Think about them and what is best for them and their particular situation.

Someone displayed this type of consideration recently and although I expected it from them I was completely at their mercy to ‘do the right thing by me.’ I asked them whether their service/type of advertising would likely lead to me getting exposure through to my target customer. The answer was no, probably not, and then an explanation as to why. I knew there were plenty of ways they could have ‘sold me’ on their product that costs several hundred dollars but they didn’t. I wish they had something I did need because that’s the type of person I want to do business with, the one who truly has my needs in mind.

This person understands that strategically it’s not going to make sense to convince me to advertise with them and then in the long run not get the desired results of which I might tell others and come back and complain to them. This is the second component to why I prefer to market a certain way, because it’s good for business when you consider things strategically over the long term. I could have handed over hundreds of dollars for advertising that wouldn’t suit me and given that company a short term boost in revenue but what are the long term affects to their brand for not ensuring their client’s needs meet what they can deliver on. It’s not as easy to convey everything in a sales letter online as it is to talk one on one with a customer, but it pays to try and send the right message to help you attract those customers who are a good fit for what you’re offering.

Will you reduce the amount of dollars you receive up front by turning off some customers who are not a good match to your offer? Of course you will which is why some people prefer to use sneaky tactics, make ‘innocent mistakes’ with how they portray what they’re selling, omit details that would be a clear signal to some that the product is not a good fit for them and generally stir up a lot of emotions and so on to get people foaming at the mouth for what they have on offer. I’m all for hungry customers, what I’m hoping you can realise though is that if you make me hungry for your secret menu of goodies you better make sure it’s vegetarian that you’re serving up because that’s the only food I eat. You can’t know everyone’s preferences but you can try hard to make clear what you’re offering and to who it might suit best.

If you’re serious about an online business, and even offline too actually, then you are crazy if you think you can get away with poor service or if you think you can come out unscathed if you mislead, inflate, hype up and pretty much not deliver on your promises to your customers.

Have you thought about the customer who actually might live around the corner from you who could have their AdSense account banned because of a questionable website you might sell them? Do you stop to think about anyone but yourself when calculating the multiple you might be able to get for a site you’re thinking of selling if you can just get the traffic and earnings to spike? Would you take a moment to think that a spike in traffic and earnings can lead to the site coming to Google’s attention? Are you thinking about the fact that the site could get deindexed and the associated AdSense account banned should a human review occur where it’s discovered that the scraped content is all that’s on offer and nothing much more.

When you decide you need $80K do you even think twice about promoting a $2000 product as an affiliate or are you just really excited and focused on the calculation you can make on what your list converts at, what date you can expect the affiliate commissions to be paid and how much interest you’ll save by rushing down to the bank and paying off a big chunk of your mortgage? Or are you having a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that says 99.9% of your subscribers don’t actually need what you’re about to send them to? Do you even take the time to do the due diligence on the person you’re promoting or do you just take them on face value because their face is pretty? Do you think you’re followers don’t see what you’re doing?

One thing I’ve learned about myself, about you and about most other people is that we’re not completely blind to what’s going on.

We’re not oblivious to the fact that someone said I should watch a sales video as it was full of great free ‘content’ when in fact there was not one piece of free ‘content’ in it, it was all pitch and they wasted my time. Did that marketer truly think I didn’t realise this was a referral for a new kid on the block and that they clearly had not watched the video themselves or they would have known there was no free ‘content’? It was obvious that they really didn’t have my best interests at heart at all otherwise they wouldn’t have sent me to that piece of rubbish – twice. They must have thought I was stupid because they sent me to the same offer a few days later only this time with a very lucrative bonus. I now finally gave up on this marketer who I’d somewhat grown to like but now realise they don’t care a flying banana about their subscribers and I don’t trust them anymore.

If you want to be someone like that, someone who employs short term tactics for quick rewards, whether that be for $500 or $80,000 then go right ahead, you will most likely win in the short term, even the long term if you can generate enough cash to pay for everything you need and then keep a low profile so you don’t get pelted with rotten eggs (oh what fun). If you don’t want to be looking over your shoulder, feeling sick at the site of your inbox because of nasty emails from irate customers, see your name up in lights for all the wrong reasons and generally end up being miserable, then try putting yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Try considering that you’re dealing with a person, a person who is no different to you, a person who wants to achieve things, a person who is parting with hard earned cash in the hope to reaching a goal. You never know, you might win them for life and actually build a sustainable business for the long term. Are there people with bad intentions? Of course there are but in the main, people are good. You might be able to help others realise that it’s not about being on one side of the fence or belonging to this type of group or that particular tribe. Whether we’re the buyer the seller, the coach or the student or the avenue that brings those things together, we are all just people and we have the power to help each other achieve by working with each other not against each other.

Michelle Adams
One Tribe Marketing

What are your thoughts on why we should take our customers into consideration more?

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