I was reading about the beginnings of the mobile payments processor Square in Technology Review. The setting is December 2008 shortly after Jack Dorsey had been replaced as Twitter’s CEO. He was back home in St. Louis visiting for a while, and he bumped into Jim McKelvey (a semi-retired entrepreneur). Although Dorsey had worked for McKelvey as a teen, they had not spoken in years. But as they were catching up on things, they immediately decided that they wanted to work together again – without knowing what it is exactly that they wanted to do. So they spoke every week and one day in February 2009, McKelvey had an incident that was the epiphany for Square.
The part that is quite interesting is that they knew they wanted to work together, without knowing what it was that they were going to work on. So it was during that serendipitous encounter that two entrepreneurs had a chance to share visions. They hadn’t picked a problem to solve. But they knew they were on the same wavelength in terms of the nature of problems. Something big.
It is being on the same wavelength that makes things click. And this is the state that you must strive for with new prospective customers. It is the ultimate state where a potential customer completely shares in your thinking about the problem and just wants to work with you.
In today’s web-centric environment, relationships are started or qualified as much digitally, as in any other way. Think about when you hear of something new. What do you do? Whatever the topic. A company, a person, an event, a place, just some “thing”. More than likely, you will reach for your smartphone, or your keyboard, or your tablet. It is unlikely that you will pick up the phone to call anyone.
And so it begins. The on-line learning process is where your prospective customers will begin their journey. And, it becomes so vitally important for your embryonic digital relationship to facilitate that learning. Your digital presence can’t be just be like an ad. If it is, it will get the same amount of attention as an ad. It really needs to be more like an infomercial.
The marketing and the selling comes second. Before a prospective customer will decide to engage, they need to feel that the information that you are sharing, the insights that are being presented, do in fact apply to their situation. They must see themselves in the context you create, and understand the message. If you own these insights, you increase the desirability to take things to the next level.
And getting to that utopian state will require an investment in communication channels, many of which are digital, in order to keep the learning process going. It is a continual nudging process, with some level of tracking mechanisms to assess how effectively your message is getting through.
You will only get to a willingness for a meaningful encounter, where the prospect is willing to reveal something about their real situation, once you have earned the respect of the prospective customer. If they have learned with you, there is a natural progression that they will want to work with you. If they see that you are on the same wavelength and that your goal is to make them successful, the rest of the details may not be as important.