More Stupid Fish!

So we were hanging out last night. A whole bunch of non-fisher-folk talking about the wisdom of fishing and how to apply it to our businesses.

The previous post, Stupid Fish! shared some of the things we learned. Here are a few more ideas on how we can improve our catch in whatever we do that relates to people.

It’s easier to catch fish at night or in bad weather – fish become less cautious when the water gets darker colored – Are there some times of transition that your ideal customers might be going through that might make them especially open to your offer? The ideas are endless here. One big idea is to target folks who are new to the area. Odds are people new in town haven’t yet built a relationship with someone with your product or service offerings.

Your lure needs to look like what the fish normally eat – What kind of marketing are you currently using? Is it being delivered in a format where your ideal customer is even looking? Are they online, in front of the TV? Which web sites? Which programs?

Fish are lazy – they want us to come to them – When it comes to our ideal customer, the responsibility is on us to go out and find them. They aren’t likely to jump up into our boat. (Stupid Fish!)

Fish are always looking for great opportunities, they’ll take the bait if it looks good and seems like a high probability – This is our edge. We can package our offer in such a way that it looks great. We can reduce the customer’s risk so that we eliminate some of the objections that they’d naturally throw up (at our competition).

You hook more fish with small hooks – This one really got my attention. Perhaps one of the reasons we are having trouble catching fish is that our price points are all too high. Is there a way where we can re-package our goods or services to come up with different levels at different prices? Perhaps even offer the lowest offering for free to start building that relationship with our ideal clients with the idea of funneling them into a deeper relationship.

We talked a little about building trust with our ideal customers and compared it to a marriage which goes through different stages – Friendship, Dating, Engagement, and then finally Marriage. If we jump too quickly right to the marriage stage we will likely drive off a whole bunch of fish that we might have caught if we worked a little harder by moving more slowly.

Build the trust in stages and see more success.

Good fishing!