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Product You: The Person as the Product

Written by: Keith Thirgood

Article Overview: It’s common wisdom that if you have a service business, YOU are the product. So, when marketing gurus bother to look at the service industry, they advise you to promote YOU, the product. In my opinion, that advice is misleading at best and destructive at worst.

Product You: The Person as the Product

There are a few myths out there, in marketing land, regarding service businesses. Many of them are perpetuated by some of the best known business gurus.

For instance, it’s common wisdom that if you have a service business, YOU are the product. So, when marketing gurus bother to look at the service industry, they advise you to promote YOU, the product.

In my opinion, that advice is misleading at best and destructive at worst. However, it does go a long way to explaining why so many service companies and individual service providers do such a poor job of marketing themselves.

They make the mistake of focusing on their self-perceived skills and their record. Granted the skills are real. However, that’s not what customers care about. Customers have problems, issues and pains. They’re looking for solutions to them.

So, when you think of yourself as the product, you stop thinking from your customers’ point of view. And that’s a major mistake.

Gurus who believe that the individual is the product, often suggest that service businesses put a nice, big, photo of the owner on the homepage of their website, their brochure, or even on their business cards.

You see this all the time on small service business sites. Most of you probably react the same way I do: “This person thinks a lot of himself.” We can’t help but think the business owner is self-centred, even conceited.

With your picture on the homepage, it’s very hard to create a convincing, client-oriented message, when you’re visually indicating that you’re the centre of your own universe.

By focusing on YOU the product, many service companies make other mistakes.

For instance, many advisors tell you that it’s absolutely critical to market your personal credibility and value. That sounds like a good idea, but it leads to wrong thinking.

How can you look client-focused if you’re busy “proving” your credibility? It won’t work, no matter what you say.

That’s not to say that there should be nothing on your site about the principals of the company. A segment of your target market will want to know about you. But that’s background information. It belongs on the “about us” page of the site. And it doesn’t belong anywhere in your brochures. (Second-level marketing materials can be an exception.)

I’ve looked at statistics for many kinds of websites, and the “about us” pages are among the lesser-visited pages. Many prospects are just not that interested in your history. They’re interested in your solutions and influenced by your image.

I believe this desire to post the principal’s photos on websites and on business cards (like you see on so many real estate cards) came about when companies began to understand that selling is a relationship thing. As Tom Stoyan, Canada’s Sales Coach says, “People buy people first, ideas second, and products and services third”.

So some salespeople began to include their picture as part of their marketing, thinking their picture would advance the “people first” part of the sales process.

Dead wrong. A photo of a person is not the person. It’s ink on paper, photons from the screen. The effect it brings to the paper or screen is unrelated to the emotional connection the marketer desires. The first response to the photo is that the marketer has a major ego. The second is a judgment on the ‘looks’ of the person. The third is a subconscious attempt to relate the picture to your own world. (The worst result of this is to look like someone’s ex, or the ex’s new spouse!)

None of these reactions are in your control. What is in your control are the colours, fonts, layout and logo on the card, brochure or website. These can be planned, and through subconscious implication, they impart a value and style that are understood in a split second.

Thinking of themselves as a product, leads people to use CVs and resumes to market their business. These are the same tools people looking for a job use. Service businesses, especially consultants, who market themselves using a resume, position themselves as unemployed individuals, not businesses. Businesses have marketing materials.

After all, are you a business? Or are you just between jobs?

An exception to all of this is the sites of entertainers and professional speakers whose main value is the entertainment they bring. With these folks, the looks and even sound of the individual or group IS the value the audience is looking for. However, many professional speakers don’t fall into the camp of “entertainers”. Their value comes from the solutions they provide; their personal looks are secondary.

Give your marketing materials a good review. Are you focusing on too much on “product you” and not addressing your prospects’ real needs and desires? Perhaps it’s time drop this self-focused stance and refocus on your prospects.

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Article Tags: marketing gurus, service business, wisdom, you the product



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