40 years ago Bob Taylor, at age 19 and two other friends started Taylor Made Guitars. At the beginning the going was tough, like it is for just about everyone launching a new idea and within a couple of years they were making about 20 guitars a week. In 1986 sales started to inch up, in large part thanks to MTV’s “Unplugged” series that featured rock stars playing their songs acoustically (check out the great Stevie Ray Vaughan – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3YKSWZGBnc). Today they make 700 guitars a day and will sell over $100 million worth by the end of 2014. In fact, Taylor Made Guitars are the number 1 brand in America. That’s saying something when the average guitar costs about $3,000!
Musicians like Dave Matthews, Taylor Swift, James Taylor (kind of a name thing?) and the dudes in the Zac Brown Band all are Taylor Made players.
Why write a piece about the gang at Taylor Made? True, I am a hack guitarist but instead it was about something Bob Taylor said; “We can build guitars, that’s not a tough thing to do, but building a great guitar, a guitar that people WANT to play, that’s really doing something.”
“A guitar that people WANT to play.”
How can you attack that thought. What would it take for people to WANT to do business with you. Can you strategically attack “want”? I think so. It begins with the “GREAT” mentality. It then moves to you wanting to be great. If you have that desire, you create a fantastic filter that allows you to develop a client experience that makes your customers WANT to do business with you.
This brings us back to a laser-like focus on your client experience. This is a DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, YEARLY strategic imperative and allows you to control every aspect of how a customer “knows” you.
Start your WANT TO initiative now! Ask your team about the different companies they do business with. What makes them want to spend their money there? People will pay more when they want to do business with you. You can buy a good acoustic guitar for a lot less than $3,000, but when you WANT to play a Taylor Made, the price is not a big barrier. Build a WANT TO environment and watch how clients will come to you and how you will notice a lessening in having to go after them!
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