The Third Immutable Law: help your buyers own your stuff

Before I begin with the final  of the Three Immutable Laws I’d like to review the other two briefly..since it has been awhile.

The First Law part I, part II
This may seem like com­mon sense but you’d be sur­prised at how many light bulbs switch on when we dis­cover that peo­ple won’t nec­es­sar­ily come if we build it. The first law is all about being find­able as in, peo­ple can’t buy your stuff if they can’t eas­ily find you.  Pretty obvi­ous, huh?

The Sec­ond Law
This law is all about con­vert­ing those folks who do find you into walk­ing talk­ing believ­ers in your great­ness. In order to get con­verts you will need to:

• Build trust with poten­tial buy­ers and buy­ers so they feel safe telling their friend
• Estab­lish and main­tain rela­tion­ships with buy­ers by stay­ing in con­tact and inter­act­ing with them.
• Nar­row the field by focus­ing on only those folks who are or might be inter­ested in your stuff by not try­ing to be all things to all people.

Now on to the The Third Law

The Third Law is all about mak­ing the actual process of buy­ing your stuff an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence. Your buy­ers will always remem­ber their expe­ri­ence with you, if every point of inter­ac­tion rein­forces their pos­i­tive thoughts of you and your stuff.

No, it is not about fak­ery or manip­u­la­tion, it is about being true to your­self and your vision or more com­monly known as “being authen­tic”. The authen­tic­ity I’m talk­ing about here is being con­sis­tent with your mes­sage, the thing, the mes­sage, that attracted them to you in the first place.

You solved their prob­lem now what?

So…they have bought one of lovely pieces and they’re proudly show­ing it off to all their friends and co-workers. You solved their most press­ing prob­lem the real ques­tion now is  are you going to just for­get them or help them by keep­ing them up to date on how your other stuff can con­tinue to brighten their day?

Remem­ber, in the sec­ond law we talked about rela­tion­ship, and nar­row­ing the field? Well, here’s were that comes into play.  Folks came to you because they were attracted to you,  and the mes­sage and vision you expressed through your work. In short, they “res­onated with you” they iden­ti­fied a kin­dred spirit one who might under­stand their needs and problems.

Help them help you

Because you are who you are, you really didn’t have to do much for them to buy your stuff, because they were actu­ally help­ing you. And…strangely enough they really enjoyed it, they walked away feel­ing all warm and tingly. The absolute worse thing you could do now is never give them a chance to feel that way again about your stuff.

Help­ing them help you means mak­ing sure they are always in the loop when you make some­thing you think they might like. More­over, you do this in the way that matches who you are, if you are shy and under­stated then be shy and under­stated when you let them know of that cool bracelet you just made. Tell them how it would work well with the ear rings they bought but only do so in your style.

Help­ing them help you means giv­ing those folks who love your stuff an oppor­tu­nity to own it, and feel that warm tingly sen­sa­tion again. They already like you and your stuff by   keep­ing the door open you are say­ing “ I know how much you liked those ear rings here are some new things that go with them”. In doing so you are giv­ing them per­mis­sion to buy and let­ting them know it’s also OK if they don’t, after all you aren’t the cen­ter of their universe.

Two impor­tant parts of this law

While being authen­ti­cally you is prob­a­bly the foun­da­tion of all three of these laws, there are some key parts of this third law.

Lis­ten to your buyers

All this means, is pay­ing atten­tion to your buy­ers as in what they buy and why and how what they bought solves their prob­lem. More often than not they told you how you saved their day, they may have done so obvi­ously or very sub­tly, if you were lis­ten­ing you will have taken note. So, when you fin­ished mak­ing that bracelet you are reminded of how those ear rings Daisy bought would make a stun­ning set. This brings us to the other impor­tant element.

Put the focus on them not you

By lis­ten­ing and tak­ing note when Daisy joy­ously bought those ear rings because she couldn’t afford a full set ( code for I don’t need a set now) you kindly left the door open for her to com­plete the set when she could. Now, this is very important…she may or may not remem­ber her dis­ap­point­ment at not being “able” to buy addi­tional match­ing pieces, and as soon as she puts those ear rings on for an impor­tant occa­sion there’s a good chance she’ll be reminded of that disappointment.

If you have sent her a newslet­ter or talked about that new bracelet on your blog there is good chance she will buy it, there’s also a good chance she won’t. At the very least you’ve kept your­self and the good­ness of your work in mind. More impor­tantly, you did so not by offer­ing her dis­counts or a free steak din­ner, but by let­ting her know you are think­ing of her.

It seems obvious…

As I said at the start this does seem obvi­ous but most peo­ple hes­i­tate here because they don’t want to be “pushy”. If this is a bar­rier to you just remember:

• They found you because they saw a match
• They want to own your stuff
• They need help in becom­ing happy own­ers of your stuff

Lastly…

Remem­ber the last time a friend told you they were look­ing for that cool hat to match her coat and how happy you were when you acci­dently ran across one out shop­ping. Remem­ber how you pulled out your cell phone and gave her a call to alert her of your find. That’s the state of mind we’re talk­ing about here.