In high school, I was lucky to have an English teacher who was not only brilliant at teaching but also saved us from the cinematic purgatory that is the standard school "film study" module - where you’re usually forced to endure something like "When Paint Dries: Episode II" on a rainy Monday afternoon (in a classroom that is never the right temperature and always so stuffy as to seemingly be devoid of oxygen)
Instead, we got to study The Matrix.
Even if sci-fi isn't your thing, there's something about the gravity-defying kung fu action scenes, philosophical undertones, and bizarre, leather-intensive fashion and awful taste in sunglasses that keeps you awake far better than most curriculum-approved snoozefests.
Early in the film, when Neo (then Thomas Anderson) turns up late for work, his boss - unimpressed - says:
“You believe you are special. That somehow the rules do not apply to you.”
And every time I hear a business owner talk about how they buy - versus how they expect their customers to buy - I feel a little like that boss.
Because what I so often hear is some version of:
“I don’t buy anything unless I actually need it. No amount of ads, emails or sales calls with change that".
Followed closely by:
“We just need to keep showing up with ads and emails and follow-ups until the prospect converts.”
In other words, the perceived rules (that you can always push a prospect through the funnel and make them purchase) apply to everybody else, but not to you.
In this "Matrix' - this alternative reality - we fully understand how we make purchasing decisions (based on a "need" that results in us being in-market, timing, awareness, and trust) … but conversely expect those who might buy from us to behave like they’re stuck on a conveyor belt in some kind of perfect, funnel stage and touchpoint frequency-driven "purchaser production line".
So let me ask:
Are you - like Mr. Anderson - so special that the rules don’t apply to you? Are you 'The One'?
Or is it time to swallow the red pill and accept that your buyers are - at least from a behaviour perspective - no different to you? Accepting this can be confronting ... in the same manner as those plugged in to The Matrix are confronted with a very different reality when exposed to the real world for the first time.
The notion that you can control the timing and decision-making of your prospective customers (but somehow you are immune to this phenomenon) may be comforting. But, much like The Matrix, it’s not the reality it is made out to be.