Often, we assume we know people because we can answer a question or two about them – he works at this company, she lives in that neighborhood, her eyes are blue, and so on. But how often do we get to know the stories of how they ended up in a particular career, or why they chose the neighborhoods in which they live.
Newchapter has taken the lead in developing successful college ministry residence halls because we took the time to ask questions. As prolific blogger and campus ministry guru Benson Hines said, “I’ve been floored by how intent Newchapter is on knowing how they can help college ministries best”. Yet, it’s hard for us to take credit, knowing the real reason we were asking so many questions is because of how little we knew. All we had was an idea, and a history of developing college residence halls for Greek organizations, but we did not know how, or if, this would work for college ministries. You could say, in many ways, not knowing our customer has turned out to be a competitive advantage for us. In other words, by not assuming what worked for our former clients would work for our new clients, we have been able to earn the trust of dozens of college ministry leaders from coast to coast.
Some of our favorite online apps are created by 37Signals. In a recent interview with Inc Magazine, 37Signals’ founder Jason Fried said something very similar.
…people’s reasons for buying things often don’t match up with the company’s reason for selling them…[Companies] thought they were arming [sales people] with facts that would impress the customers. But, it turned out, none of that stuff mattered.
Certainly, much of what we have learned in past years hasn’t mattered with regard to our new clients. Which makes me wonder, if we were to stop assuming we knew anything, and instead started asking questions about our customers (or friends or family or even our faith…), how much more could we learn? Perhaps even more important, how much would we realize needs to change?
