I love having breakfast with inspiring people. It starts the day off on the right foot. Ken Schmidt former director of communications at Harley Davidson, national best selling author and public speaker shared his thoughts on the American and European consumer while I ate my cheerios. He described us (consumers) that would be you too, as faceless, nameless, and invisible. We have all had the experience with the automated phone system when what we really want is a person on the other end. We shop online without a second thought as to giving our money and financial information over to a machine without a bit of human contact and think nothing of it. We click and consume with no interaction to become only a transaction.
He suggested that we are numb to marketing messages. They are all the same and have been for years so we know what to expect and ignore them. We also know we can buy what we want; when we want it and have a certain price in mind about what we expect to pay. What it all seemed to boil down to is we buy from companies we like.
When we make it a point to humanize the individual we create an instant millisecond of trust. If we trust, we like, and as said before we buy from people we like. He turned Harley Davidson around with the simple observation that human behavior is the key to business. So have you asked yourself, do your donors trust and like you?
Here is a great read if your interested in finding out how Ken helped kick start the Harley Davidson come back.
