Dump tradition: use the Y-Factor

Have you ever won­dered how you could steer more buy­ers your way as they flood into the streets the first morn­ing of a show or how you can get more buy­ers into your gallery show? More impor­tantly I am sure many of you have won­dered, just like me, what dri­ves that mob to roost, what causes them to choose one artist over another?

The tra­di­tional method of draw­ing buy­ers has been to stand out in the crowd, to be obvi­ously dif­fer­ent than your com­pe­ti­tion. As work­ing artists we thought it made sense and that our work made us auto­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent enough to catch the eye of poten­tial buy­ers. We also assumed that our com­pe­ti­tion was oth­ers in our medium, other pot­ters, other jew­el­ers or fiber artists and all we had to do was stand out among them.  But the truth is many of us were just guessing…we really had no clue how to stand out we just knew we made some­thing in a par­tic­u­lar style that no one else did. Fur­ther more what we did  do was done within the con­text of a ran­dom­ized buy­ing model, sales depended largely on a poten­tial buyer “stum­bling on us” and lik­ing what they saw. We resigned our­selves to rely­ing on unpre­dictable sales pat­terns and sub­se­quent unpre­dictable income.

While show sales seem to becom­ing even more ran­dom there are some things you can do now that will help. So lets take a step back and see just how you can stand out and even more impor­tantly what the secret is that will allow you to become a bea­con to very focused and steady buy­ers. There are really two parts to this process:

• Know­ing your market
• Know­ing what dif­fer­en­ti­ates you from your competition

We have talked exten­sively about know­ing your mar­ket so lets take a look at the sec­ond part… what makes you dif­fer­ent or in market/brand speak what is you Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion (USP). But first let’s get one thing out in the open…every, yes EVERY other artist is your com­pe­ti­tion espe­cially those of you who fol­low the art fair cir­cuit. No longer do you have the lux­ury to think that you com­pete only with those in your medium.

We are also going to assume that you already have a vision of your busi­ness, you know how your prod­ucts com­pare with alter­na­tives and you know who is the best fit for your prod­ucts. Typ­i­cally, big busi­nesses rely on a process of defin­ing key points of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion based on such things as prod­uct, ser­vice, mar­ket, the prob­lem solved etc. While these are cer­tainly impor­tant and should def­i­nitely be part of your process they are not pri­mary because of the Y-factor, that hid­den ele­ment that only we as artists posses.

The very nature of our busi­ness is dri­ven by us…without us there would be no busi­ness, no prod­uct and no happy buy­ers. The Y-factor is crit­i­cal to your suc­cess, it will give buy­ers a rea­son to put you on their list, it will cause them to focus in on you with laser like pre­ci­sion. How well you cul­ti­vate the Y-factor in your busi­ness will be crit­i­cal to your suc­cess and growth and could very well lead to you becom­ing a house­hold name or not.

So…what is the Y-factor? The Y-factor is the YOU-factor, it is the sum total of how much your work reflects you, your val­ues, your vision, how inte­grated your per­son­al­ity is in your work and how vis­i­ble the pack­age that makes up you and your work is. Once you can suc­cess­fully tie all of this together buy­ers will be drawn to your work BECAUSE of you, because they see you and iden­tify you and your work as one and the same.

So the secret to get­ting focused enthu­si­as­tic buy­ers who not only love and col­lect your work but also con­nect you with other enthu­si­as­tic buy­ers is:

• Rec­og­niz­ing the exis­tence of the Y-factor.
• Accep­tance and under­stand­ing of your Y-factor.
• Your abil­ity to use your Y-factor to build a strong net­work of repeat buyers.

Now go back and review your vision, your per­fect cus­tomer pro­file, the alter­na­tives to you  ( why a poten­tial buyer would pick you) and try to tie them up in a pack­age that rep­re­sents you. Once you have that, brain­storm  ways to make that pack­age vis­i­ble. Here are some suggestions:

• Take care of your ANTS espe­cially as they relate to your own self image.
• Focus on how you dis­play your work and how it can entice the buy­ers you want.
• Learn to iden­tify those poten­tial buy­ers who get your work and in turn get you.
• Learn how to develop com­mu­ni­ca­tion links with your most enthu­si­as­tic buyers.
• Develop a sus­tain­able list of con­tacts in every venue you are likely to show.