{ micah solomon } reaching your customers

Attention — It’s what your customers crave.

The thing that’s most expensive to give customers—a defect-free product—just gets you in the door. Only human attention, love shown to, your customers is going to buy their loyalty in return. (If you’re making airplane engines, please, please ignore this paragraph. I like a defect-free flight. A lot. Concentrate on that, nix on giving me personal attention. Thanks.)

In many, many industries a large part — significant enough to make a crucial competitive difference — of what you’re selling is attention. This is where the small business has a chance to clobber the big one, where the upstart can get ahead because, well, you’re paying attention.

A great hotel could have the exact same floor plan as the fleabag next door and it wouldn’t matter: it isn’t renting rectangular rooms by the evening. Its business is attention. Many cars in the Lexus line are significantly similar to the Toyota line, but Lexus dealers don’t just sell transportation. They very successfully sell attention.

Get good enough at the attention business, and you’re going to get a lot more attention from your banker.