Kelford Labs Daily: Reassuring, not disempowering
Involving your clients in your process.
“It is very hard to disempower people and reassure them simultaneously.”
— Peter Sandman, Responding to Community Outrage
Yesterday, we talked about making sure your clients feel involved in your process–demonstrating to them that you created it with them in mind.
Which gets me to Peter Sandman’s point above. When we make our process a secret, when we protect it too tightly, we disinvolve—we disempower—our clients.
We remove their ability to choose us based on how we work—and the tradeoffs we’ve made to provide value to our best clients.
Marketing isn’t about “winning clients,” it’s about selecting them by letting them select you.
By demonstrating to them what you do, how you do it, and why you do it in your particular way.
So if there’s a process behind your work—and, surely, there is—don’t be afraid to show it.
If we want people to believe we know what we’re talking about, they need to be able to check. They need to be able to see.
Otherwise, we’re trying to reassure and disempower simultaneously.
Which is making things harder for ourselves than they need to be.
