Asking Questions

Note: I'm on vacation, so I'm posting some of past writing that never made it to the web. We'll be back to our normal programming next week. Cheers.

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Question:
"Am I asking my market the right questions?"
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A question about asking questions. Finally, the snake consumes its own tail. You thought 4 emails was far too short a time to jump the shark - and yet, here we are.

This question comes from the great Jay Abraham, probably one of the greatest all-time thinkers on marketing.

Embedded in Jay’s question is an assumption:

That you are asking questions of your market.

Often, I find that business owners...

(by the way, any time I talk about "other people" in this newsletter you can pretty much assume I’m just talking about myself)

...reach a dangerous level of familiarity with their market.

By which I mean, we think we know our clients, and because of that, we think we know what they want.

The truth is, we often have no idea.

The illusion of familiarity flattens and limits our perception of others.

This is as true in business as it is in personal relationships - the person you lie in bed with every night will forever be a stranger in many ways, their inner reality and subjective experiences completely unknowable to you.

When we do ask questions of our clients (or loved ones), they’re often about us:

How did I do? Would you refer me to a friend?

Instead, let’s make an effort to have a deeper conversation - to ask better questions of the people we serve, and in so doing, learn to serve them better, and more deeply.

So, ask yourself:

Am I asking my market the right questions?