Do you belong to a public library?
In our house we all do – and a couple of times a month I bring the kids to it. It’s a wonderful haven – thanks to the philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie and others. It also saves us many hundreds of euros a year as our two boys are voracious readers with wide-ranging interests.
I got a book out for myself recently – a collection of new Irish Short Stories.
Superb stuff by and large.
One was about a boy’s interactions with the Devil – interactions that continued as he grew into adulthood. The Devil fascinated him – particularly the Devil’s uncanny ability to know what was really going on in people’s heads and hearts.
Here’s how the writer put it himself: “It was as if he could jump at will into their heads, see through their eyes; he could intuit exactly what it was they wanted, the specific lacks and yearnings that gave them traction on the world, he could understand.”
Can you see the applicability of that to your business?
As I read it I thought it also had accidentally captured something crucial to us in business – to truly know the person we are delivering (or attempting to deliver) our products/services to.
Who’s your market? Anyone with a pulse and a credit card? Or have you defined a niche? And how well do you know what’s going on in the minds and hearts of your prospects? Of your customers?
And could more such knowledge allow you to better orientate what you do? And help you better serve them? And thereby make more money?
PS: If you fancy reading some great Irish Short Stories here’s the book. Or you can perhaps get it in the library! And the above extract is from “How I Beat The Devil” by Paul Murray.
