Why would someone choose to buy from you rather than one of the many people who does something similar?

It's an important question.

We'd all like to think it's because we're better somehow. But in the real world it's for a myriad of factors.

Sometimes we're just in the right place at the right time. Often it's because of that magical word: chemistry.

I remember the first $1m consulting assignment I sold back in the day. We went out with the senior clients for a meal on the first day of the project and I asked their CFO why they picked us.

He initially talked about our capabilities and experience and methodology. But then he paused and (perhaps aided by the consumption of an amount of alcohol) said “you know what…the real reason was your team just kind of clicked with our team much better”.

Here's the important thing…chemistry comes from interaction. And more often than not it takes a bit of time.

Those interactions can happen face to face. But they can also happen online though emails or video or messaging. It just takes longer that way.

That's why it's vital to build a following. People who regularly tune in and interact with you in some way. Whether that's reading your emails, watching your videos, or chatting with you in your group.

Our interactions over time teach us whether we like someone and trust them. We get a feeling for whether they understand us and are on our side. Whether they're the sort of people we'd like to work with.

All those feelings influence our buying decisions which we then rationalise and pretend we made on purely logical criteria.

So in addition to understanding why someone would buy from you, you also have to understand why they would follow you and keep following you.

Because unless they stay with you, you won't reach the level of relationship where they'll feel comfortable buying from you no matter how better you rationally are than the competition.

So why would someone follow you?

A good way of answering that is to ask yourself why you follow the people you follow.

Think of the people whose emails you read whenever they arrive in your inbox. Or whose channel you're subscribed to on YouTube. Or whose posts you always take a look at on Linkedin.

What is it about them that makes you follow them like that?

Have a ponder over that question and I'll share my answers in the next post in this series.