Getting Your Future Customers To Tell You How To Build Your Business

Our marketing agency is growing in APAC, and we’re using our future customers to tell us how to do it.

We’re targeting other marketers in different verticals as a way to find out what our customers want.

Here is how we’re finding these people and pitching them.

1. Sign into LinkedIn and follow this My Network link

2. Select “Search With Filters”

3. Select “All Filters”

4. Scroll to the bottom of the Filter pop-up until you get to “Keywords”, and under the “Title” caption, enter the industry you are targeting.

You’ll now get a list of all your LinkedIn connections with this in their title bio.

Now ask for their advice.

Here is the reply.

We’ve booked six meetings with ten people using this approach.

It returns to the old adage from Pitbull, who said, “Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice.”

Most people hate being pitched directly.

Most people want to help.

If you want to grow, ask your potential customers how they would grow your business.

They’ll give you the answers you need.

Notes: This entire process can be done via automation and almost any industry.

We’ve got a full guide on how to do this at the bottom of this email if you refer someone to our newsletter - hint, hint, nudge, nudge

Why The Long-Term View Is The Best View

Between 2000 - 2002, Amazon lost 90% of its stock value.

52% of tech companies founded during that time folded.

Today Amazon is the 5th largest company by market cap.

This is because it’s founder Jeff Bezos, started with a long-term view.

In his 1997 letter to shareholders, Bezos said, “We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term.”

For companies—as is the case for individuals—there are always pressures to narrow our focus and vision. Bezos, unlike most business leaders, refused to play that game.

“Rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions,” Bezos said, the real value lies in thinking decades ahead.

Human nature gears us towards short-term outcomes.

This is because we want others already have; the problem is we never know how long it took them to get it.

Next time we compare our business or lives to another person, look at where we want to go, not where we are now.