Truth about Getting Real

Last week I talked about how poten­tial buy­ers can’t be buy­ers if they can’t find you and I showed you lots of dif­fer­ent ways to make your­self vis­i­ble. Vis­i­bil­ity by itself is not going to guar­an­tee sales you’ll have to do a bit more to get to that point. The “bit more” I’m talk­ing about  is devel­op­ing a rela­tion­ship with your poten­tial buy­ers so they can trust you enough to give you their hard earned Dinero.

Any dis­cus­sion of the kind of rela­tion­ships you may want to estab­lish with your buy­ers needs  to first travel through the land of friendly sell­ing. Two terms are bounc­ing around mar­ket­ing cir­cles now, each is being talked about a lot but not in any great depth. As a result most folks look­ing to learn how to con­nect to their buy­ers are not get­ting the best guid­ance. The terms I’m talk­ing about are: Rela­tion­ships and Authenticity.

As a result of all the buzz and mis­guid­ance busi­ness own­ers are either com­pletely adapt­ing behav­iors that appear to reflect these terms or they are com­pletely toss­ing them out the win­dow and con­tin­u­ing on in their igno­rance. The prob­lem is that most folks who adapt and try to use these con­cepts are going way to far into left field with them and as a result are feel­ing exposed and vul­ner­a­ble and their buy­ers are busy scratch­ing their heads won­der­ing WTF?

Not what you expected?

So when we talk about rela­tion­ships we aren’t talk­ing about becom­ing BFF with every buyer or for that mat­ter any buyer, no, you don’t have to have an anx­i­ety attack, think­ing this means you have to invite them over for din­ner or even have cof­fee with them. What we are talk­ing about is gen­uine friend­li­ness, and an under­stand­ing that it is impor­tant to get to know them on what­ever level you feel com­fort­able, depend­ing on the kind of rela­tion­ship you want to have with your buy­ers. Now you won’t have the same kind of rela­tion­ship with every buyer in fact you may end up hav­ing as many kinds of rela­tion­ships as you have buy­ers …and that’s ok. What is impor­tant to under­stand here about rela­tion­ships is a cou­ple of things:

Do you ever want to see that ( or any ) buyer again?

Do you want repeat and refer­ral business?

When you‚‘re noodling over this, con­sider your per­fect buyer pro­file and your Who and what state­ments. Why? Because depend­ing who that who is you might like to see them come around more often and drag a few of their BFFs also.

When think­ing about the two ques­tions above, also keep in mind that your buy­ers are your most impor­tant resource. Let’s face it with­out them you’d prob­a­bly be doing some crappy job punch­ing wid­gets out on an assem­bly line. But here’s the kicker…like I said above you don’t have to be BFFs with any of them, you do have to be human and that espe­cially goes for folks who really only want to see that customer’s face once! You never know who they might know…I’m just sayin’

One more thing…don’t fake it, don’t try to pre­tend that you want to have them for diner and a sleep over as you mum­ble to your­self you wish they’d just get their smelly body out of your space, they’re not as dumb as they may look..seriously!

There’s Authen­tic and then there’s authentic

How many times have you seen or heard some­one try­ing to sell you some­thing use the term authen­tic as if that word alone is sup­posed to ring your bell and get you to pull out your pen and ask  “where do I sign…?” What you were really doing was scan­ning for an escape route while think­ing that guy was as deeply authen­tic as a mud puddle.

The prob­lem is the way this term is being thrown around busi­ness own­ers are start­ing to feel like they have to bare all so buy­ers can ‚“really see who they are”. So they start talk­ing about what they had for lunch and when they are going to the den­tist. While that sort of thing may be really trans­par­ent you don’t have to go that far to ‚“authen­ti­cally be you”. The authen­tic­ity that is impor­tant, is what­ever is authen­ti­cally you as an artist …your artis­tic per­sona. As an exam­ple: The way I write is my per­sona on my blog and in my newslet­ter, and, that per­sona is all together dif­fer­ent than my per­sona as a pho­tog­ra­pher or for that mat­ter in every­day life. As an artist your work may project a cer­tain per­sona, a part of you that allows your cre­ations to take form, and it is that per­sona that is your authen­tic­ity. It gives you and your stuff the meat you need to  attract buy­ers, because it reflects you and what you are try­ing to say with your art. Now that’s AUTHENTICITY! Think of  “Authen­ti­cally Florida Oranges” just because they are grown in Florida doesn’t mean they have all things that make up Florida squeezed into their lit­tle orangie DNA…they are just grown in Florida!

OK…what you need to under­stand here is that if you want to keep sell­ing your stuff you are going to have to fig­ure this part out because it will play a major part in the direc­tion you busi­ness goes or not. The ‚“or not” is because that’s where you’ll be if there is mis­match between where you want your busi­ness to go and how you treat those folks who keep show­ing up to buy your stuff. Sell­ing stuff is about inter­act­ing with people.

Let’s get clear here…I’m not even com­ing close to sug­gest­ing that you go all bi-polar on your­self, if you are grumpy be grumpy and make it part of your mys­tique, your per­sona, then when peo­ple see that fun lov­ing play­ful side guess what? They’ll be astounded that it is really you. See, this is impor­tant because none of us espe­cially cre­atives are sin­gle dimen­sional, we have all kinds of sides, angles and quarks, you as an art­sy­fartsy biz per­son have to know which of those sides you want to show when and here’s the biggie…why.

In the end how you want to relate with your buy­ers and how much and what you want to show them of your­self will have an effect on your busi­ness suc­cess. If you see your buy­ers as the enemy and bark at them like a drill sergeant don‚Äôt start won­der­ing why no one shows up to buy your stuff. On the other hand don,t go all Mary Pop­pins  and then chop the head off of the first buyer who dares ask you a ques­tion. Don,t worry about being ‚“authen­tic”, just be you.