Daily Lab: Show them what you don’t do

“Admissions against interest are intrinsically credible.” — Peter Sandman

Once a potential customer has demonstrated some interest in a business, it’s time for that business to start revealing, by way of specific insights, the tradeoffs they’ve made to serve their best customers the best way they know how.

If someone signs up for your newsletter, subscribes to your YouTube channel, reads the deeply technical pages on your website, or demonstrates some other interest in your company, they expect you to move closer to them and start revealing why you’re the best business for them in particular.

At this phase, things like annoying promotional popups, unsolicited email, sudden automated DMs, and other cold sales tactics push the ideal prospect further away.

Sure, someone might buy because of something like that—heck, lots of people might—but your ideal customer? Really? The one who wants what you sell more than anything else, who’s happy to pay a premium for what you do in particular?

No, once your ideal customer is interested, it’s time to make them comfortable knowing that if they work with you they’ll get more than what they simply need—you’re so focused on them, you’re able to give them exactly what they want.

You’re able to overdeliver because you’ve made the tradeoffs they value most.

Because, while somebody might need what you offer (and might buy it based on a discount or some aggressive sales technique), nobody wants to be hassled by a sales person or a weirdly guilt-laden website popup—nor do they want to work with the company that throws that sort of thing in their face.

Reveal the type of business you are by showing what you don’t do that everyone else does.

Reveal what you don’t offer that everyone else feels they have to.

Reveal what you don’t believe that everyone’s bought into.

Because your best customer doesn’t want to work with anyone else.

They want to work with you.

Show them why by telling them what you don't do.