Daily Lab: Curiosity not commitment

“You need to have an open mind, the nosiness of a detective, and to assimilate all the information you can get from every imaginable source.” — Mary Wells Lawrence

When customers get close enough to buy—when they’re in our store, putting items in their online cart, discussing the scope of the project, or negotiating about the price—it’s easy to start applying the wrong kind of pressure.

When a deal looks like it’s almost done, we have the urge to speed it up or lock it in.

Honestly, we have the urge to fumble the ball right at the end.

This isn’t the time for pressure or commitment, this is the time for curiosity.

Because for our very best customers to ever come back, or refer their friends, we can’t just deliver on our promise—we have to overdeliver.

Nobody “abandons” an online shopping cart—they just go do something else they care about more. So we need to be just as curious about where the value and urgency was missing for that particular customer as we are about button placement or sales copy.

When a client asks question after question right before the deal is about to close, they’re almost certainly not trying to be difficult. They’re trying to justify our value and credibility to themselves or someone else. So these questions are gold for our future content and improvement, not obstacles or delays.

Because that’s how customers communicate their feelings on value. By their actions, not their words.

So if we want more customers taking the right actions (instead of just saying the right words), we need to be curious about their assessment of the experience.

So that we can improve that experience every single day.

And keep creating new value, for as long as we want.