You’re Not McDonald’s
Next time you’re in the drive-through at McDonald’s, try this mental exercise. You’ll have the time.
Consider that there are nearly 1500 McDonald’s restaurants in Canada and 36,000 in the world. Let’s say orders are fulfilled every two minutes, and that an average tab is twenty bucks. Let’s do some math.
One car, twenty dollars, two minutes. That’s $600/hour at just one restaurant, just counting the drive-through. In all of Canada, that’s $900,000 in one hour. Assuming similar numbers worldwide– well, you do the math. Not bad for one channel of a fast food business.
In order to run a business at that kind of scale, you need to be very organized and have highly efficient systems. But even if you have those, you’ll go broke unless you have a huge and steady torrent of customers. Thus, the real key to McDonald’s success is clever and incessant advertising.
Does McDonald’s know how to advertise? What a silly question. Incessantly, cleverly, charmingly, pervasively, even in your dreams. Of course they advertise.
McDonald’s is the epitome of a commoditized business– high volume, repeatable steps, limited choices, fixed price, huge and brilliant advertising. And it works.
But it’s not you.
As a professional or live-by-your-wits entrepreneur, you’re not offering product, you’re offering yourself and your solutions. The client expects you to satisfy unique needs, and in order to do so you apply your unique giftedness. You’re not a drive-through looking for anybody with twenty bucks– for you, every client is more or less a one-off.
So why would we expect that McDonald’s style advertising would work for professionals? It’s like showing up for golf with skates and a hockey stick.
If we ask ourselves the question, “How will the ideal client discover that I have the exact solution to their unique problem?” the answer becomes obvious: reputation. And therein is the simple key to getting the stream of ideal clients every professional needs and deserves.
Next week we begin to explore the question of establishing the reputation you need to position yourself as the obvious choice for your ideal clients.