Episode 29 - Get Woke - Go Broke

Customer Secrets

Earlier this year, before the Corona Virus shutdown happened, the economy in the USA was booming. But behind the walls of Nike Corporation, there is looming panic. Their sales are plummeting. They reported at the end of June 2020 that they lost $790million while their sales dropped like a stone from $10.18Billion to $6.31Billion. How is this happening? What did they do wrong?

What they did wrong was to violate the first law of sales and marketing. That law is: "Who is the customer?" They didn't know who they were selling to. And just as importantly, they didn't know what their customers valued.

Because they didn't know what their customers valued, they unknowingly attacked those values. And when you attack anyone's values, it always triggers the emotion of anger. And the anger was directed at the attacker - Nike Corporation.

In this episode, we're going to discuss the emotion of "shame" and how it is triggered. If it is wrongly triggered, as what Nike was attempting to do, it leads to anger. That is why I try to stay away from sales techniques that could accidentally trigger shame. I stay away from values solicitation questions, because it is too tempting to throw the values back into the face of the customer, which is what the shame trigger is all about.

If you want to learn more information, see the book: Selling by Personality Type from Amazon. Or come to our website at: CustomerSecrets.com