So True...

Today Seth has a point on reality. You know, the kind of reality that really matters. Your own. Their own. And guess what? Sometimes it isn't the same. We think that everyone sees our reality the way we see it. Or they bring their reality with them and try to force ours into theirs. Never works.

"People make their own realities. If Bill thought he was first, then in his mind, he was. When he started using it, it began to exist. When he stops going back, it will disappear.

Every person who encounters your organization for the first time comes with beginner's mind. She knows nothing about yesterday or how hard you worked or your financing or what it took to build it. She's here now, she's first, let's go."

So what happens is that the customer sees your website and thinks it is what it is according to thier reality. And you never know why you didn't capture that client, or keep the visitor or close the sale. Some folks have websites that only demonstrate the knowledge of their own reality, never looking into what their visitors bring with them.

I was talking with a good friend of mine and we were lamenting the fact that he wasn't getting the kind of jobs that he wanted and needed to change his business direction. And yet, his website didn't speak to the clients that would be seeking that kind of work. Sure, it's there... buried under a navigation choice, but it isn't featured. It isn't UpFront.

Case study: You want to do more commercial work. Get some of those juicy ad agency assignments. Currently you are making a living doing portrait and weddings. Dilemma is that while you want to get commercial clients, you don't want to give up your wedding business. So you leave the wedding stuff up cause it is making you money NOW, and you add a button that goes to "commercial" - yeah - that's the ticket.

Except it isn't, you know, the ticket.

When the Ad Agency person finally comes to your site after a zillion postcards, they see a wedding photographers site. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it just confuses her and their reality is that commercial photographers have commercial photographs on their sites.

She never notices the "commercial" button, and even if she did, it looks like a step-child of the wedding work.

Your reality is that you know your are a really good commercial photographer and she should see your work and then be inspired to hire you. You know you will do a great job. Your work shows you can. But her reality is that she doesn't have that understanding of your work and it will all be colored by her reality and beliefs in what she thinks she should see. You wonder why she can't understand how hard you worked to get that killer portfolio. She wonders why you were looking to do commercial work.

Frustrating? You bet. Trying to be all things to all people is far too difficult to maintain.

Find ways to change your approach to realities... your and hers. It may mean having different landing pages. It may mean having different websites. It may involve some hard soul-searching and re-focusing of marketing materials and messages.

A truly wonderful book which I will review soon, is "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing". by Bryan Eisenberg (Author), Jeffrey Eisenberg (Author), Lisa T. Davis (Author) Buy it, read it. Review coming soon.