7 times to do what?
To get your neighbour to stop parking their car across your drive way?
To get a 5 year old to eat brussel sprouts? To get your partner to buy you flowers on your birthday?
No! On average, you have to communicate with a potential customer 7 times before they will buy something from you.
What! 7 times I hear you cry. If I want someone to buy something from me, I have to speak to them or send them something 7 times before they are willing to part with their hard-earned money?
Yup, that's right.
Now, obviously some people will buy on impulse and buy something or a service from you there and then.
But if the average figure is 7, that also means that it could take some people 20 times or more before they are willing to trust you enough to buy from you.
Think about your own buying habits. You are watching Ugly Betty on a Friday night and an advert comes on for a new moisturiser. You open the magazine supplements on a Sunday morning and there is a full colour page advert for that same moisturiser and you kind of recognise it but you are not sure where from.
On Monday you are chatting away to a girlfriend who mentions that she has recently bought this amazing new moisturiser. And so it goes it on until you find yourself at Boots on the high street and you are standing opposite a big display stand promoting that very same moisturiser.
What the hell, you think and you throw it in to your shopping basket.
If you hadn't had seen the TV advert, glanced at the newspaper or heard your friend raving about the product, there would have been every chance you would have walked straight past that promo stand.
If you are running your own business, there is a very high probability that you do not have the budget to advertise during Ugly Betty nor take out a full colour ad in the Sunday Times Style magazine.
But you can create a buzz and get people talking about you and what your business offers.
Communicating with a potential customer doesn't always have to be about advertising (although it can certainly help if you target the right publications) and as a small business, probably on a budget, there are dozens and dozens of ways of communicating with your potential customers.
From speaking at local events to contributing on online discussion forums. From sending people Christmas cards to forwarding them interesting and relevant emails. From talking to people at networking events to phoning someone up to ask their opinion on something.
Communication opportunities are open to you each and every day. And if you think it can take, on average, 7 times of communicating with someone before they are willing to buy from you, isn't it worth being conscious on how you can improve your communication opportunities?
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