8. Customers move toward you step-by-step.

Things happen instantaneously, but there’s a long process to go through first.

You know how some brands seem to explode on the scene all of a sudden? From the outside, it looks like that’s how it works. Of course, how it actually works isn’t visible on the surface. For pretty much any brand, success is preceded by a series of smaller steps that build to the point where we notice them.  

The difference between you and your customers

Every entrepreneur sees the value in what they have to offer, and sees how it can help someone. The problem is that the people we think of as likely customers aren’t looking and don’t see it. We have to find some way to make it compelling to them.

You have to get out of your own head, forget what you know about what makes your thing so wonderful, and put yourself in the mindset of the people you aim to serve. The ones who know nothing about you yet. 

To begin, we can break down your customers’ journey into discrete steps, from “They’ve never heard of us” to “They love us and tell everyone about us”. There are eight steps along they way:

1. Not on the same planet. 

The more innovative your creation, the harder it is to get anyone to see it. 

You can see your future customers from here.

People need a frame to understand where this fits into their lives before they can even consider any fresh idea. In fact, everything we use, every innovation no matter how radical, was first adopted as the direct replacement of something else. Just to take one example: look at your phone. 

Why do we call that thing a phone?