Don’t Listen To Your Customers

Your customers won’t tell you the truth.  And they won’t tell you what they really want.  And they won’t tell you what they’ll really pay for.  The customer is, of course, always right, when they’re expressing a paid opinion.  But, for businesses, and bands, there’s an important lesson that they’re not always going to tell you the truth and the things they say they want or need won’t always correspond to what you experience, objectively, to work and to sell.

I think Steve Jobs talks about that concept.  Training people to understand what they will need or like and then leading them to that place.  As many have said and written, mp3 players had been done before the iPod and nobody was saying they wanted one.  And yet there one was.

Here’s a controversial example from the music world.  Email.

People say they don’t want email.  Some people unsubscribe.  Some people tell you you email too much.  Some people, if they have a sense of humor, should comment on this post and simply write, “You email too much” and that would be funny.  Some people say you can get kind of annoying.

But, don’t listen to them.  They’re lying.  Or they’re not lying.  It’s just that they’re not that helpful.

Here’s the truth.  Strong, repetitive signals work.  And they work because there’s already so much noise in the atmosphere that, until you have a immutable brand, something solid and permanent with widespread recognition and acclaim, you need to broadcast the signal as loudly and clearly as possible to get people’s attention.

While I know it can be annoying.  And I know it can be irritating.  It’s far better to fail because you’ve sent too many signals and turned a few people off, then sent too few and not pierced through the collective consciousness of your fans or your audience.

Meaning, if you’re a band or an artist, while I might annoyed, and maybe I’ll unsubscribe, I encourage you to make absolutely 100% certain that people know what you’re up to rather than err on the side of being too docile, too quiet, too pliant.

It’s important that people know.

People I know will get as many as 7 emails through Facebook and my mailing list before this next show at Piano’s.  And I know it’ll be annoying.  And I’ll always try and include something in the email like a song or a remix or a cool image.  But the truth is, some people will get annoyed.  And some people will unsubscribe.

And more people will come than if I had tried to be polite and not told them.

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