The Best Way to Think About What You Do for Your Customers

Here's something you should never, ever forget: your goal as a marketers is to serve your customers and make huge profits. Make no mistake: our businesses are for-profit enterprises, here to serve our customers and, in exchange, rake in money. We're

not charities, cause-driven organizations, or non-profits.

Let's look a little closer at this concept of serving the customer in the highest and best possible way. Now, they may not agree that we're doing so, even when we know we are. Here's a good way to consider it: Suppose there's a severely dehydrated man crawling through the desert. ..and you happen to run a Gatorade stand. And suppose you're a hydration expert, with years of training in how to properly hydrate people—from people dying of thirst, to world-class marathoners.

Now, this dehydrated man has a little money in his pocket (enough to afford your Gatorade) but doesn't have any water or liquids at all, and there's no water in sight. In fact, there are no other liquids for miles around. Your Gatorade can save this man's life; if this man doesn't ingest liquids quickly, he'll soon be knocking at death's door.

All you have is Gatorade. Now, what is your responsibility here? Simple enough: it's to give this guy Gatorade, get him to drink it, and then get the money in his pocket in return for rendering this life-saving service. If he gets your Gatorade but doesn't like the flavor and spits it out on the ground, what then? Do you refund him, turn a blind eye, and allow this guy to crawl to his death from dehydration in the middle of a sweltering desert? If he thinks drinking your Gatorade would be too much work, or take too much of his energy, what then? Do you refund him and let him crawl onward to his death?

If selling him a straw for a nickel that makes drinking the Gatorade faster and easier causes him to want a refund for his Gatorade (because of those dreaded hidden fees), then what do you do? Refund him and let him crawl to his doom? Just imagine his protest, "But you told me I didn't need anything else! I want a refund for this Gatorade now!" Well, the truth of the matter is he doesn't need the straw…but it would help him. He can drink the Gatorade without the straw, but with the straw, it's much easier.

Maybe this guy, who is about to die if he doesn't drink your Gatorade, is dead set (pardon the pun) on drinking water only. What then? Suppose he pitches a fit at the thought of drinking your Gatorade instead of water. Suppose he's certain that Gatorade won't work for him…maybe because he read some ignorant report somewhere, or some numbskull on the Internet posted a report about how Gatorade is a rip-off because you can drink water for free. Maybe this guy has the money in his pocket and can afford your Gatorade, but is saving to buy a pack of smokes as soon as he hits civilization. What about that? What then? What do you do?

You make him drink the Gatorade. In fact, you're morally obligated to save this guy's life by giving him your life-saving Gatorade, even if he doesn't want it. If it takes opening his mouth with the Jaws of Life (like emergency medical crews pull open smashed up cars to extract victims), then do it. If it takes educating this guy about how Gatorade will save his life, you're obligated to do it. If it takes twisting this guy's arm until he opens mouth and swallows the Gatorade, do it. If it takes hog-tying this guy on a stool and not letting him go until he drinks the Gatorade, do it!

And after he's drunk the Gatorade, get the money. You're justified in reaching into his pocket to withdraw the fee. You've saved his life! Remember, you are the hydration expert. You have experience hydrating Olympic Boxers, World-Class Marathon Runners, and People Crawling Through Deserts. You have the knowledge, skill, abilities, and expertise. This person, on the other hand, is crawling through the desert without adequate reserves of liquids. This is a guy who might be possibly delusional from exhaustion or heat or fluid loss. He was probably delusional to think he could handle the desert without enough fluids anyway, so he started out with only a little—or nothing.

You've saved this guy's life. And you know what you should do next for good measure? Help this guy more by selling him a second Gatorade. Use the same process as before, then get the fee. As long as you're selling this life-saving Gatorade, you owe it to him and yourself to sell as much product as possible, provided it all serves him.

This is the way to think about customers. They don't know what they're doing most of time; they don't really know what they want, although they have a vague idea of the results they want. In the opportunity marketing field, our customers have a vague goal of making more money; and they usually know nothing about marketing. So in our field, as in any other, we sell our customers what they really want: results. Now, I don't mean to drag our customers through the mud; these are simple facts of reality we need to realize and embrace if we're to prosper from them.

Here is our role: we're the experts. We're the leaders. We're the advice-givers. We have the talents, skills, expertise, experience, and abilities to help and serve these customers. If they're delusional to the point of protesting our good advice, we need to overcome that. Don't let the customer crawl to his financial death because they don't like your flavor of Gatorade. Sell them the Gatorade, do everything in your power to get them to actually drink it (this is harder than you might think), and let them prosper. When they prosper, you prosper.

Again, this isn't always the easiest task in the world. People will resist you. Imagine a nutcase going to the doctor, but deciding not to follow doctor's orders after the doctor diagnosed the condition and prescribed a treatment regimen. Imagine some screwball going to a lawyer to get advice…and then deciding to act as their own lawyer against the advice of the real lawyer. Things like this happen all the time, and they're analogous to us telling our customers what to do, but them protesting because it's too much work, or they can't get labels for postcards, or they have to spend a little extra money…and so on. But you know what? We're the opportunity industry equivalents of lawyers and doctors. We're the experts. Our customers may ignore our advice or try to quit on the program, but if they do, it's to their detriment.

We hold the keys to helping save their financial lives. We must treat this as an enormous responsibility, and do everything in our power to help customers. Our goal is to help them make more money, stay away from scams, and graduate from program-hopping business opportunity seekers into being beginning marketers, and later into becoming solid, competent marketers. When we do a refund without fighting to save the customer's financial life, we put a little money in their pocket, that's all. It's the same as if, instead of providing life-saving Gatorade, we gave the crawling thirsty guy a free map, patted him on the back, and wished him "good luck" in his crawl to civilization. A free map is not what he needs. Similarly, our customers don't need refunds to solve their short-term cashflow situations. They need financial vehicles, they need to work them (with our help), and when they have them, they can begin to prosper.

Hell, you can't even win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket. For some of our customers, I think the act of buying the ticket would be too much work. Seriously. And even if they were to win the lottery, they would want direct deposit. Why? Because they're too lazy to get the check and deposit it in the bank. Pathetic.

These people follow one of Newton's laws of physics. It's called the Law of Inertia, and says that an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Well, let's be the outside force taking these objects at rest and putting them in motion. Let's get them doing a little something, and then a little more, and then more—until finally they're in the game! Get them taking small steps until they're ready for giant leaps.

This must be our constant goal as marketers. We can help these people. We provide a valuable service with the power to make a huge impact in our customers' lives. Let's do everything we can to make sure they use our products and services.