Marketing: The Death of Begging.

The only time a desperation sale works is when it is real.  When the business is truly going out of business, that sale is real.  That is usually when the bargains are true and the discounts are realistically slashed deep.  In a going out of business sale there is usually no care given to the margins of profit anymore.  All that remains for that failing business to do is to get rid of the inventory quickly before it becomes permanently owned.  That is why this kind of desperation sale works.  The consumer finally knows that the prices are the lowest they will see.  The owner wants to get rid of the stuff.

Desperation sales work well to move a lot of goods because the customer gets their last chance to benefit well.  Customers do not go to desperation sales to support or try to save the dying business.  They go to a desperation sale because they want to get a good deal.  That's it.

Customers are more interested in taking care of themselves than they are for trying to help out a dying business model.  This has always been the truth for how customers move.  The bulk of their buying behavior is a self serving list of activities the consumer performs.  This is not a serious revelation.  Most business owners completely see and understand this consumer motion.  Customers will do what it takes to take care of themselves.  This is not all bad news, however.  What it is for sure becomes the most important pattern the business owner should always try to honor in their marketing ways.  Consumers support self.  Stick to this fact when the marketing plan rolls out.  Make sure the marketing plan recognizes that the consumer wants to win.

Saving your business does not mean I win.  It means you won.  Consumers clearly get this.

The mind of the consumer is a fickle thing.  I am a consumer.  I know.  My mind can become very fickle at times.  I buy what I want to buy and I shop where I want to shop.  However, my mind is triggered by things that I have come to like.  That makes me vulnerable to some actions of patterns that become my way of preference to choose.  I become attracted to doing some things in the ways I prefer to have them done.  My buying patterns reflect those desires.  That is exactly how everyone else shops and buys.  We all have our patterns of preference.  Those patterns of buying preferences dominate where we go, how we do it and when we purchase what we purchase.  All of us are consumers.  We have our preference patterns.

Did you know what I discovered?  I discovered that we can change up how we shop and how we buy.  We do it all of the time.  Even though we have strong preferences in how we shop and buy, we can alter those preferences in a flash and do some new patterns of buying completely out of our character of habits.  We can change it up and buy in a brand new way.  Something triggers that kind of change.  We all have done this kind of pattern.  We can switch it up.  That is one of the ways we become so fickle as buyers for the business thinkers to know.  Business thinkers work overtime trying to figure us out.  Then we switch it up a little bit on them.  That is when they must go back to the drawing boards.

Consumers have the ability to practice their fickle ways, and they do.  It is something I have discovered.

Did you know what else I discovered?  As fickle as consumers can become, they do not usually share their money with panhandlers and beggars.  Once in a long while, someone hands a beggar some money, usually small change or some small 'left-over' amounts.  That's it.  Consumers do not care to have their spending opportunities limited by giving away what they do not want to give away.  Most consumers do not see that process as a win.  They did not go shopping to lose.  Most keep what they have and rarely let it go to someone who tries to beg it away from them.  Don't believe me?  Just go sit in a mall parking lot and watch as thousands of consumers go back and forth into the stores and count how many will actually stop to give small amounts away to a beggar.  Maybe one in a thousand.  I have done this survey.  It is a lot less than you might think.
 
So why do business owners resort to begging?  Many business models do just that.  They beg for business.  They use their marketing efforts to approach the consumer with patterns that represent a way of begging.  They arrange their 'marketing plea' to encourage the consumer to buy around some principle of thought.  They play the consciousness card with the mind of the consumer.  They beg for the support of those kinds of thoughts.  Why do business owners tend to resort to marketing their sales in a panhandling way?  Why do they use the consumers consciousness to beg for trade?  Consumers do not like it.  And when they honor it, it is usually done with the 'left over' change.  We can prove that pattern.  So why do some business models fall for this kind of technique?  Why do they believe it will work?  Let's review some examples and reasons.

Page two.

I had a furniture customer who would come into my store with a tape measure.  She would measure lamp after lamp to see if it was too tall or too short.  Once in awhile she would purchase one.  Occasionally, that one would return for credit.  She was a regular shopper in my store.  She would buy the things I had marked down, but only if they fit.  Sometimes she kept them, sometimes they returned.  Always, however, she was friendly to see.

One time her husband came in to buy a new bed.  He walked to the counter, asked me which one was the best bed I had in stock in the size he wanted and wasted no time listening to my answer.  While I began to describe to him the differences in how all of the beds were constructed, he interrupted me with his shortness of patience and asked me to deliver the one that was the best bed of the lot.  He asked me how much it would cost and wrote a check.  He wanted it to be delivered now.  I did that.

The contrast in how each of these two married people shopped was huge.  They practiced completely different shopping styles.  One might not recognize that these two shoppers were husband and wife.  They were like selling night from day.  They were complete opposites.

The bed he bought was not a bed he had tried out.  Actually, he never saw any of the beds on display.  As most of you know, beds are all made differently.  Some are intentionally hard while others are intentionally soft.  There is a huge difference in how they are made, one from another.  All of them differently made, and yet all of them can be made the best for what they are planned to do.  Guess what?  He did not like the bed we delivered.  It was too hard!  So we switched it up.  We delivered the next one to please his taste.  It worked.  He was never seen again shopping for another bed.

She had her pattern, he had his.  Neither one came into that store hoping to lose.  That rule is paramount for consumers to support.  Consumers hate to lose.  That is often why they do not like to spend their shopping money when it looks like they have lost something along the way.  Consumers want to win.  It is usually rule number one.


That returns us back to the message from the first page.  Why do business owners tend to resort to marketing their sales in a panhandling way?  Why do they use the consumers consciousness to beg for trade?  We have established that consumers do not like it.  We have also come to the conclusion that when consumers honor begging, it is usually done with the 'left over' change.  So why do so many business owners use this technique to capture the 'left over' trade, if it comes at all?

Here's why.  They believe it is their last resort.  That's why.

Consumers do not like buying under last resort conditions unless it offers them the best deal they can find.  That is why they flock to a going out of business sale.  They can win with the last resort purchasing if they find a good deal on something they need or want.  If they win, they are interested.  If they lose, they will run away.  Business owners often fail to recognize this motion.  Many fail to see it in themselves.

Consumers are easy to know.  As fickle as they may become, they are usually predictable in their buying ways.  Their patterns of support for the things they do not want are often where they hold the signs of how they will buy.  Their patterns of support for how they do not prefer to feed the beggars offer the most telling clues in what they will do to buy.  Most miss this truth.  The desire to survive develops a cloud that covers the view of how badly this looks.  When that cloud grows, it prevents the consumer and the business owner from seeing how we all prefer to be left out of the losing equation.  As a result, we begin serving the ease of what our desires prefer the most.  We protect our own.  We begin to plea for those things that support what we want.  We are not as inclined to give that away to lose our win.

A struggling downtown business district will plea for consumer support.  It will actually beg for their support and trade.  It will spend a gob of advertising dollars to work like a beggar who begins his campaign to plead for more trade.  Consumers do not like this kind of buying motion.  Only one in a thousand will come to support what that plea means.  What's more, the cloud of cover has become so thick that those business owners will not recognize how badly they appear to be begging.  In the meantime, the masses move on to another more pleasing place to shop and buy.  The death of begging has come to settle its ways in the last resort patterns that have come to be used by the dying lives of downtown business models.  Why do they believe it will work?  Because they believe it is their last resort.  It fits more nicely with their desire to ease what needs to be changed.

Maybe it is time to recognize this marketing truth...there is death to begging.  Stop it.  In fact, stop it immediately.  Get to work on doing some stretching out, some innovative work and some extra efforts.  Get more unique, more value and more choices.  Begin to concentrate on what the downtown region has to offer that is a great win for the consumer to buy.  When that pattern of offer becomes a true reality, the consumer will find it all by themselves.  Quit begging.  Get to work on uniqueness and providing an excellent value.  Change how you arrange your downtown to be.  Get timely and get going.  Begging stinks and provides no increased trade.  Consumers have proven this rule to be true over and over.

Marketing: The Death of Begging.

Until next time...