A Wren Says

Over the past week, I have been diving into the work of Daniel Langer. This is my key takeaway:

You have to know your customer, because it’s all about how you make them feel.

Even as someone who is not working in luxury currently, that’s a tidbit that I can take on. As I’m crafting meeting agendas, as I am scoping out new prospects, as I organize events, that is the north star.

Instead of focusing on more, instead of just trying to maximize the email contact lists, I have to start with the person in mind. When this encounter is over, how do I want them to feel? What do I want them to think? How can I backwards engineer this to ensure that we arrive at that point?

It is a very scary thing to go back to the drawing board in this way. It’s not about more as in bigger and flashier. It’s about more data and more intentional decisions about how I do things. I need to know more about how people think to give them more of what they want and need. That’s how we achieve our goals.

The scary part is that the feedback I get is to just go harder and faster, cast a wide net, try everything, look like you’re trying everything. But my experience has told me otherwise. Trying to reach everyone led to an undifferentiated, uninspired approach. That got us nowhere. Lies, I mean it pushed us backwards.

My dilemma is that I know that in order to truly make an impact, we need to slow down and get more information. We need to create a clear strategy for who we are, what we do, and why. And yet, there is no time for that. There is only the incentive to push forward faster to accumulate metrics, even if they won’t lead to results.

How do you marry this need for a pause to better understand your people with the need to look like you’re making progress? Or perhaps, it would be more charitable to ask, how do you build your ship while you’re already lost at sea?