Remembering How We Learned To Ride The Bicycle

You still remember don’t you? That happy day when you found out that nobody is behind you and you’re the one in control. You’re now one of the cool kids with a cool bike. But before we learned how to go slow, fast, turn to the left and right, someone was behind guiding our turns and speed.

There’s something about this that businesses should consider looking at. This is not about how to sell and get profits but it’s about how to treat our customers as humans with needs. Interested?

Yesterday, it was my son’s birthday and ever since I got home, he always points his fingers to a bicycle he really likes every time we go the mall. How can I say no? It’s his birthday and I was away for more than 2 years.

So, yesterday, we got his bicycle. There were a lot of variations to choose from. If I will ask my son what he likes, we would probably choose them all. What we did was to choose the best that would make him jump for joy.

Choosing the best is not that easy since there are too many parameters to look at but since we really know our son, it became easy and less time-consuming. When we got home, he immediately tried it while I was at his back guiding him.

It’s his first time to ride a bicycle and he needs all the guiding he can get from me.

You see, this short story has something to do with how we should take care of our customers. We’ve been looking into marketing and selling too much and we forgot how to deal with people. No, we can’t always say that our products are easy to use or what we offer is not that hard to understand.

Each of our customers is unique. How can we tell that we know their needs? We can’t always push them things that they don’t need. There are some who just create products and hope that customers will love them.

Successful companies do their homework. They spend time talking to their customers and ask for their opinion and inputs. That is one of their success ingredients and that is the thing that you should start doing now. Stop throwing coins in the air and hope people will be interested in catching one.

One of the reasons why social media is here is to help you and your companies listens to customers and have a channel to interact with them. The more you spend time in creating relationship, the more you will understand your customer.

Remember how we learned how to ride a bicycle. The best bike was given to us and there was someone behind us, guiding us in every turn of the pedal.

Care to share your thoughts? I love to hear from you.

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Tagged as: Add new tag, Bicycle, Business, Consumer Goods and Services, Cycling, Human, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Tips, Sporting Goods

carlajane

Hi Rob! I just found your post here via Twitter- I really like your analogy and how you describe the process of creating relationships with people, whether it's in business or with our family members or whoever. I think one of the most important, valuable steps in being able to serve others effectively is to realize how we would like to be served ourselves- much like the old saying about treating others as you would want to be treated. Thanks for this refreshing reminder.
Rob Angeles

Thank you Carla! This analogy is actually one of my personal tenets. In every thing we do, most of the time, it's like learning how to ride a bicycle. We can either be the rider or the one guiding the rider.