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The Pawnshop Chronicles: Street Wisdom for the Business World by Jack E Rossin Chapter 4 One of the more common mistakes in marketing is not knowing who the real customer is. When it seems obvious, it probably isn’t and we would all be wise to think through the selling process to understand who really makes the buying decisions. Who’s the Real Customer? I loved selling suits at the pawnshop. When you're selling suits, there is nothing between you and the customer. There's no counter. No little window with bars. It's a full-bodied selling effort. Hand-to-hand selling. In-their-face selling. Noon at the Plaza del Toros with me waving suits in front of charging customers. All of the suits we sold were second hand, and there were a limited number of choices within each size. It was hard to give a customer lots of options, but Nate taught me a pretty good strategy: I would pick the suit I wanted to sell to the customer and have him try that on first. Invariably, the customer never took the first one he saw, so I would return the suit to the far end of the rack. After trying on another half dozen suits, I'd tell him about a terrific suit that I was sure would fit him. We'd try on the first suit again. The sale was as good as made. But, the dynamics of selling clothing changed dramatically whenever a customer brought his wife in to help him pick clothing. The dreaded spouse would act as if her husband wasn't there. She'd immediately take over the sale and bark out orders at me. Try the black one on him. He hates tweed. That's awful. Put it back. Put this jacket on and turn around. Raise your arms. Bend. Button the jacket. Take your hands out of your pockets. He doesn't wear cuffs. Not once would she ask his opinion. She might as well have been dressing a window dummy instead of the dummy she walked in with. It was just another day at the pawnshop. Good marketing is dependent upon a thorough knowledge of the customer. You are always selling something to someone, so the definition of that "someone" is crucial to the marketing process. The marketing jargon is target audience. It is a profile of the buyer by age, gender, income, and lifestyle. Marketing people can sometimes be too casual about identifying the real target, choosing instead to go with the obvious target. If you're selling suits to men, are men the target audience? Maybe. But, maybe their wives are the ones who wear the pants in that relationship. In order to identify the target, you have to understand the selling dynamics. A men's slipper company has been running ads in traditional men's magazines for years. I interviewed a dozen men in a focus group to learn why they purchased that brand of slippers, and made an astounding discovery. None of the men in this focus group actually purchased the slippers. Men don't buy slippers. Men don't really like slippers all that much. Slippers are one of those gifts that women like to give to men because they think we need slippers. If you want to sell a man's slipper, talk to the man's daughter, or wife, or mother. Learning who the real target is has a profound effect on the message you deliver. When the slipper company thought the man was the target, the message was about comfort. However, learning that the target was a woman and that she was buying slippers as a gift changed the message entirely. It changed the media. It changed the shoebox that the slippers went into. The slipper company changed its 90-year approach and started advertising in women's magazines and displaying their men’s slippers in the women's section of department stores. How do you know who the real target is? There are syndicated research studies that define the customer. However, the best way to discover the real target is to get it firsthand. Watch how the selling situation unfolds. Go on sales calls. Talk to customers. Interview salespeople. Make your own observations. All of the tactics of marketing are influenced by the definition of the target customer. Don't assume who the customer is until you have experienced the whole selling situation. Jack E Rossin is a marketing consultant who speaks frequently and humorously on this subject. Contact him through his web site at www.pawnshopstories.com To Chapter Five
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