When A Business Relationship Isn’t Meant To Be
Of course you want to sell your product or service to people, but is that always the right decision?
Let’s say later today you wander into a store. You’ve been on a hunt for a tool to help solve a problem you’ve been experiencing. You know what you need this product to do, but you don’t know much about it, or which brand you’d choose if given the option. You’re a salesperson’s dream, right? Perhaps.
If you’re like me, that’s more like a nightmare. Without any sort of business ideals in mind, I have a somewhat intense moral guide that tells me I won’t be so happy with myself if I sell something that isn’t a great fit for them, so I tend to avoid doing this if possible. Or, at the very least, giving them the truth about how what they’re buying will impact their needs.
So How Does This Work For An Actual Business?
To consider the implications of this from a business sense, it almost certainly means lost sales. There is no argument there. Converting the wrong customers, however, is also a very costly risk–not all potential or actual sales are created equal, after all. With limited resources, making sure you’re selling to the right potential customers matters–a lot. Blindly selling all leads that come down the pipeline can waste an incredible amount of your already scarce resources, and attracting the right customers can ensure that these resources are allocated in the way that best benefits your company.
The Good
Happy (read: ideal) customers of your service rarely need any assistance, and require very little effort to be delighted. They’re self-sufficient when they do have questions, and can troubleshoot most things on their own. Your service makes total sense to them and you pretty much don’t know they exist outside of the occasional, easy interaction.
The Bad
Conversely, bad customers can be your worst nightmare. These folks tend to need a lot of help, like to complain, and are rarely the biggest customers you’ll have. You’re obligated to provide them the support they need since they are indeed customers of yours (and really, as much as you may hate it at the time, they do deserve it as paying customers).
But what if I told you that you didn’t really have to have bad customers? Wouldn’t that be something? In many scenarios, you can actually do a pretty good job at avoiding less-than-ideal relationships.
My Reality
I’m lucky enough to work at a place now where I’m allowed to get to the root of our potential customers’ actual needs, and what their ideal is. Once I’ve got that answer, I can tell them in complete honesty whether my company will be the right fit. It’s incredibly liberating, and in my mind, always ends in a positive outcome. Here are the potential scenarios:
- Your potential customer knows for sure you’re not the right fit and you never hear from him again (ensuring he doesn’t become a bad customer).
- Your potential customer doesn’t become an actual customer, but is happy about the fact that you didn’t sell him on something that wouldn’t actually help (most regular occurrence in this scenario).
- Your potential customer decides that we’re a good enough fit (though perhaps not ideal) and has correct expectations about what we can actually do for him.
- Your potential customer is sure we’re the right fit for him, and happily becomes an actual customer, needing pretty limited support along the way.
- Your potential customer becomes an actual customer, then a “Product Evangelist,” and a major brand advocate for you.
In my mind, all of these outcomes are completely fine (4 and 5 clearly the best). The key here is that, in most scenarios, we’re avoiding the truly bad customers who are worst for your business in the long term (even if they’re giving you money). A customer requires more resources, more help, more attention; a bad customers is not a good advocate for your brand, won’t positively recommend you to his friends and colleagues, and likely won’t have brand loyalty in the event that he finds another serviceable option.
None of these things are good things.
My advice to you is simple.
Whenever you can, work to sell as honestly and thoroughly as possible.
In most cases, the worst that happens is you lose a sale that had a strong chance of ending up being a pretty unsatisfied customer–but the upside of this decision is very, very high.
The Absolute Best Case Scenario
You buy in early to this strategy and work to maximize the percentage of happy customers for your business, and down the road end up with almost exclusively customers who are:
- Good brand advocates and evangelize your products
- Easily delighted (since they’re starting from an already pretty pleased place)
- Likely repeat/longtime buyers
- Need a low amount of help on a per-customer basis
Not too shabby, huh? Of course, this is all somewhat utopian, but a little effort in the right direction can yield some pretty powerful results in the department of customer happiness and success. It’s not completely utopian, though, as it’s a major factor in “the Wistia way” and has been doing wonders for us thus far. It is completely feasible.
It’s this sort of thinking that inspires stuff like this at Wistia:
