Don’t Just Sell to Your Customers – Educate Them!

This is why I love reading books. In each book I read there are a couple of take home messages that really hit home. And it doesn’t have to be an outstanding book, sometimes even an overall average book can have just one very relevant take home message that makes a massive difference to you.

They can be obvious and jump out right away and at other times it can take a while for things to sink in and then you may get a bit of an ‘aha moment’ at a later date (often an external factor triggers the memory).

This happened to me recently when I read Rework by 37 Signals (which is an outstanding book by the way). There was a topic about the importance of not just selling to your customers, actually educating them. And over the next couple of days my mind started to race about just how important this is and it inspired me to write this blog post!

So many companies either miss this point entirely or try and do it and fail miserably and end up missing a huge opportunity.

So what does educating your customers mean?

Well, most products or services fall within a particular area of interest right? If you are selling a product or a service, your customer base obviously has a passion or at least some interest related to your product or service right?

So rather than simply sell them your products/services, if you can help educate them in your particular area of interest you’ll build stronger, more loyal relationships with your customers, which will ultimately mean they will buy more and more often from you and they will refer more customers to you.

Why?

Because you’ll show them that you actually CARE about them. You’ll show them that you’re not simply a faceless business without a personality in it purely for the transaction, but you actually have a passion for doing what you’re doing and you care that your customers have a rich experience.

And trust me, this will set you apart from 95% of your competitors and your customers will notice and reward you for it. This is also a great way for a smaller business with larger, more established competitors to stand out amongst the crowd.

Ok, I’ve been a bit vague, so let’s take an example.

Your name is Betty and you run a cake shop (I just picked Betty because Betty’s Cake shop has a nice ring to it lol). You are one of three cake shops in the area. You tend to have a pretty varied customer base, making cakes for occasions but also offering lots of little treats for people to grab on the go etc. People in town love your cakes and you’ve got a pretty good reputation for having tasty cakes, but then so do your competitors. You’re pretty equally matched if we’re going to be honest about it.

Now, you could simply just sell cakes to your customers. You do it well and people like them so it’s all good right?

Well sure, but you could go a step further and really show your customers just how passionate you are about cake making and also educate them on the art of cake making (they at least have an interest in eating cakes and probably for making them).

Just a few ideas off the top of my head…

• You could actually tell and show your customers how you make cakes
• You could have a kitchen open day where your customers can see you in action making your cakes
• You could run classes where you show your customers how to make great cakes
• You could share your recipes and hand them out to your customers for free, making it easy for them to have a go themselves
• You could hold a competition for the best made customer cake (free cakes for a week for the best one!)
• You could sell your customers cake making books and magazines or even just have them available in the shop to browse
• You could have a blog on your website where you share your cake making wisdom with your customers

And the list could go on.

The key thing here is that you are actually showing just how passionate you are about making cakes and you’re making a genuine effort to help enrich your customer’s lives in cake making.

And genuinely is the key word here. You have to go about this with passion and a real thirst for sharing the joys of cake making with the world. If you fake it, your customers will notice that too and it’ll be worse than not doing it at all.

And don’t worry that you’ll be giving out your secrets. Do you honestly think if you give out your recipes your customers will be able to make cakes just as good as you? If they could, well you’re probably not just that good at making cakes Most likely though you have a real gift for making great cakes and that cannot easily be copied.

Now, imagine if you did this and your competitors just sold cakes?

You would definitely stand out from your competitors and be more popular. Your customers would visit you more often and buy more from you. They would tell their friends about you and most importantly they would be your fan rather than just being your customer which in turn makes referrals so much more powerful.

Think about other companies that do this well. Big supermarkets like Sainsbury’s and Waitrose don’t just sell good food, but they help their customers have the best food experience. Just selling them good food is not good enough.

Take a look at www.waitrose.com for a good example. You can find recipes from Delia and Heston, great picnic recipes and spots in the UK and they have a free weekly magazine which contains product reviews, lifestyle articles, events, recipes etc. And this stuff seems to stand out more than their online store!

I do this with my own business too. Sure, we sell products on AtLarge Nutrition (and they are great products). However, in addition to that we run Wannabebig where we are insanely passionate about helping our customers achieve their fitness goals more quickly. Whether you want to get big and strong or lean and mean you’ll find really useful and inspiring articles and a large, helpful community that will help you get there more quickly. We literally spend thousands of dollars every month paying the best writers in the field to write content for us so that our customers can be as well informed as possible.

So whether you own your own business or work for someone else, I encourage you to think about how you can share your passion and educate your customers rather than simply sell to them – you’ll be pleasantly surprised just how much it can grow your business and help set you apart from your competitors!

I’d love to hear from you if you already do this or perhaps have ideas for doing this in the future!