Here’s something I’d like you to think about. According to most of the social psychology we know, especially the work of Albert Bandura, one word can make a critically important difference.
In an experiment performed by Bandura, subjects were asked to give electric shocks to quiz-takers who they couldn’t see, whenever a quiz-taker got a wrong answer. The subject (or, who I like to call – the Zapper!) would be able to decide when and how severe a shock to give.
After getting some instruction on the use of the shock button, one of Bandura’s assistants would mention something in front of the Zappers.
The control group heard, “The subjects from the other school are here.”
The positive-bias group heard, “The subjects from the other school are here. They seem nice.”
The negative-bias group heard, “The subjects from the other school are here. They seem like animals.”
Guess what happened next? Those party animals for their asses zapped off compared to the neutral group, while the nice folks got zapped significantly less than the neutral group.
Great, so aside from being really nice to research assistants the next time you participate in an experiment, what can we learn from this? I’ll answer that question with a question:
When you see a skankily dressed girl, the first word that probably comes to mind is “Slut!” or, alternately, “Hoebag!” What if, instead, you switched that word to: “Daughter” or “Sister”? I didn’t use “Mother” here because the jump from Slut to MILF is a pretty short one.
If you’re like most people, the negative connotation goes away – she’s not “asking for it”, instead, she’s just unfortunately dressed. It shifts away from anger, jealousy, or disgust (maybe all three) and straight to empathy for a girl who’s over-compensating, sympathy for her parents and her siblings, and remorse that you probably can’t say anything to help her.
That’s the power of positioning. You just removed that walking fashion nightmare away from an unsympathetic, inhuman bias (WHORE!) to something you could readily identify with: your sister, your daughter, whatever. I’m not picking on the ladies here, either – gentlemen do this too: dumb jock, gym monkey, manwhore, whatever. Right?
Now, I want you to play a different game – word association. Think about your business. What does the word Client mean? How about Customer?
Chances are, you said one of the following: Work, Support, Service, Complaints, or – and this is what most people say – Cash.
When a person interested in doing business walks through your door – you don’t see a person. You see dollar signs. And that’s fucked up.
So what can be done about this? The same thing we just did for the skanky hoebags.
What if you stopped calling them customers or clients – what if you called them Friends instead? Unless you’re an anti-social douchebag, you like your friends. And you don’t see dollar signs, in fact – you give them a lot more leeway than any other human (and perhaps even your family) gets.
How would your business change if you just switched up one word?
Ideal Customers? Think Again – Find the Jerks
When you start your business, they usually ask you to visualize your ideal customer:
“Tell me about your ideal client,” some stuffy suit-wearing desk jockey will say. He looks down at you over his thin-rimmed “I’m better than you”-brand glasses, which he wears only for effect to distract you from the crumbs on his tie and the fact that he hasn’t owned a business in nearly 20 years. “What age are they? What race? What’s their third-cousin’s first-born’s name? What movies do they like to see? Would they be OK with being 1/3rd of a Vin Diesel sandwich, or would that get weird?”
It’s a useful exercise, to be sure (particularly that Vin Diesel part – that can save you a LOT of headaches). But ultimately it’s bullshit. You know how to recognize the people you want to sell to – because they’re just like you. Some will argue with me about this, but they aren’t Nick Armstrong, now are they? H8rs can STFU.
You created a business to solve the problems that bug you. That’s why you created a business – not to fill a need or serve a target demographic or for the cool new nameplate you could put on your desk… (ok, maybe for that, too). You had a problem, you wanted to fix it, so you built a solution. Your target demographic is you.
Don’t believe me? Identify the top strengths and weaknesses of your current recurring clients (if you don’t have any, the one that stuck with you the longest). What are those traits you hated about them? The traits you loved? Do you share at least 75% of them? I know I do. (For the record: my clients are wicked creative, all of them have a wonderful sense of humor, they’re generally in a good mood, and they deal with stress really, really well. I <3 my clients.)
So maybe that system isn’t so foolproof. There are plenty of people who look and sound like me, but have the combined values of all the folks on this list (that’s right, we have so many, we needed our own page. Go America!) And the worst part? You never know they’re crazy until they’re dining on your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. We’ve all had clients like that, it’s just part of doing business.
That being said – you absolutely must find the jerks. Not the psychopathic “gnaw off your fingers” kind of jerks, but the regular plane-jane variety of Jerk. It’s vitally important to your business that you do, because every time you find a jerk, you learn how to identify them before you’re beholden to them.
Let’s be honest: every once in a while, when things are real slow, we take on work that we really shouldn’t. We say Yes to every opportunity because the gaping void in our wallets where money should be demands it. And then, most of the time, we regret it (usually by the time it’s too late to issue a refund).
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a form of Jerkdar? An early warning system of some sort, so we’d know that the tingle we feel from landing new cash and a new project is actually a signal from our “hey, you’re about to be this psychopath’s dinner”-sense?
Find the jerks. Hone your warning system. Try not to get murdered. Good luck.
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This post is part of the Word Carnival series, hosted by the masterful Word Chef – Tea Silvestre. I’ve participated in two so far, and you can read more about them here.
(Header photo: Biting The Dust)