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Don’t be afraid to piss off some customers!

October 18, 2007

Yesterday I was having a conversation with a salesmen that Architel was trying to recruit, discussing the merits of selling ’something’ versus selling ‘anything’.  Specifically, he is considering either coming to work for a service provider like Architel or starting his own ‘agency’ working with several companies like Architel.  His thesis was that by having the ability to sell anything to everyone he would be able to sell more.  I disagreed, but I wasn’t able to articulate my thoughts during our conversation as well as Skyon (in John Moore’s blog) has in his post titled, "To Win, You Must be Willing to Lose." 

Skyon, a self styled ‘marketing pick-up artist’ explains, "One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is the notion that to get a customer, a marketer must be willing to lose a customer. This advice is counter to practically everything marketers have been taught. We’ve been taught to do whatever it takes to not lose a customer. To always say YES to customers. To always kowtow to every whim of every customer. To always believe every customer knows best."

He points out that retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel and Costco repel just as many customers as they attract as they are not "afraid to piss off some customers" to focus on the customers they want to attract.  Skyon suggests ‘picking a side’ to give your brand a ’strong point of view.’  Get it?

How hard is it to sell everything?  How do you build credibility when at each turn you can say to your prospect, "no problem, I have another solution that might be a perfect fit."  Perhaps that works for the insurance industry, but even there the companies that have succeeded have focused on niches like Gieco and USAA.  Skyon explains further, "We know a brand cannot be all things to all people. So when a brand is loved by some people, that’s a great thing. And where there is love, there is hate. Where there are winners, there are losers." His final analogy:

The image “http://www.how-to-life.com/uploaded_images/pickup1-722606.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.As a pick-up artist, you don’t always score. When you enter into conversations with the opposite sex (known in the game as "sets"), some people will be attracted to your style and others won’t. Pick-up artists are able to see dead-ends before they happen and thus, they jump off one set and open another set. Marketers need to get better at understanding when a customer isn’t interested and jump off that set and open another set with a different customer. 

Architel’s model is certainly not perfect.  It won’t work for most businesses in fact.  It is a perfect fit for some.  Guess which ones we sell to, mostly?  I recommed reading Skyon’s full post and perhaps chapter 8 of Punk Marketing.   

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog 

Comments

One Response to “Don’t be afraid to piss off some customers!”

  1. Adam Duvine Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 11:54 am

    never be afraid of doing what you want.

    alexander, a pick-up artist blog you should check out is V’s blog at http://www.BecomingAPUA.com

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