The Three Worlds of Business
1. The World Outside Your Door
Think about the people in your city who don’t do business with you: Is it because they don’t know about you? Or is it because they do?
The customer’s expectations and preconceptions can be found in the World outside Your Door. This is where your reputation lives in the hearts of the people. What is your typical customer’s predisposition toward you? What expectations does she have? How well are you really known, and how much of what is known, is real?
The World outside Your Door is where media dominance is established. Will this be accomplished by you or your competitor?
Simply put, the World outside Your Door is the world of advertising, the place where success begins.
But it definitely doesn’t end there.
2. The World Inside Your Door
The World inside Your Door is the world of the customer’s experience: the place where you must make good on all the bold promises you’ve made in your ads. How well do you deliver on those promises?
Eyes, ears, nose, and skin enters the World inside Your Door. How pleasant are the signals they receive? Regardless of whether your customer steps into a physical store or merely contacts you by phone or internet, advertising is finished the moment that contact is made.
Don’t expect advertising to fix problems inside your door. If there’s a deficiency in the quality of your customer’s experience, fix it!
3. The World of the Executive Office
Earthquakes happen when seismic waves travel outward from an epicenter to literally shake the world. Likewise, businessquakes begin in the office of the business owner and spread from department to department; shaking both paradigm and tradition until the size and shape of the business finally fits the vision of the business owner.
Some businessquakes are the genesis of a brilliant future; others result in bankruptcy. But at the epicenter of every one of them is the chair of the business owner. The quality of decisions made in that chair is ultimately revealed in the long-term profitability of the business.
To understand a business owner’s vision, you need only visit the business. Whom to hire, how much to pay, where to be located, hours of operation, product pricing, merchandising, staff training and motivation are all the result of businessquakes in the mind of the business owner. From there, the ever-spreading ripples create the world of the customer’s experience, and then continue outward until they are revealed in the company’s advertising, forever telling the story that is uniquely and wonderfully their own.