Don’t Shoot Your Clients

A tar­get is “a per­son, ob­ject, or place se­lected as the aim of an attack.” 

Tar­gets were first used in archery, be­fore they be­came the cen­ter of mil­i­tary think­ing and sniper vocabulary.

So, how’s your tar­get {group|market|audience} doing?

Have they sur­vived your attack?

And what will be left of your clients and cus­tomers af­ter you’ve ex­e­cuted (!) your busi­ness strat­egy? Strat­egy be­ing the „the art of dis­trib­ut­ing and ap­ply­ing mil­i­tary means to ful­fill the ends of pol­icy,” or “the em­ploy­ment of bat­tles to gain the end of war.” 

I know you have no in­ten­tion of putting your cus­tomer to death.

But the metaphors we use are proven to have a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect on a deeply, deeply sub­con­scious level. 

That’s why the speeches of pro­pa­gan­dists and politi­cians are filled to the brim with metaphors.

That’s why We need to STOP us­ing mil­i­tary metaphors in our business.

‘Tar­get­ing’ thingi­fies your client or cus­tomer. We look at them as busi­ness func­tions and over­look the whole­ness of the hu­man be­ing we’re ac­tu­ally talk­ing to in our marketing.

It’s eas­ier to rec­og­nize the men­sch-ness of your client in per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but in mar­ket­ing it’s of­ten im­per­sonal ; and bad metaphors re­move us one step fur­ther from the person.

That’s one rea­son I love coach­ing. It’s a glimpse be­yond the mere busi­ness func­tion of the client. I’ll see how much more is go­ing on in their lives than just run­ning their busi­ness. And how tiny ac­tu­ally my prod­ucts and ser­vices are in the big­ger pic­ture of their lives.

Prac­ti­cal implications? 

You bet!

The more the ‘tar­get’ be­comes a con­cep­tu­al­ized en­tity in your think­ing, the more your mar­ket­ing mes­sages get out of synch with the real peo­ple you are sell­ing to. The real peo­ple you are serving.

It’s also true for ser­vice or prod­uct development.

If you lose touch with peo­ple, you’ll cre­ate ser­vices and prod­ucts that just don’t res­onate with your ‘tar­gets.’

No res­o­nance, no cash in your bank account.

Sim­ple.

Don’t shoot your clients!