I don't know, Doreen, it all sounds too much like buying and selling to me.
your focus is to fulfill my needs
Really. Dor, I
don't think your focus is to fulfill my needs, and I don't think my focus is to fulfill yours.
Treat others as you would like to be treated, yourself. That makes a lot more sense to me.
You are selling two products - You are one of the products. The relationship itself is the other product. Your partner is the person who you are selling the products to.
If you ran a business, the author said, you would want to make sure your customer could see the value of the products you are selling and buy them over and over. Repeat business is business success.
And so, the author's theory was that you need to find out what your customer's needs are and show them how the product(s) can fulfill their needs.
Responsiveness to the needs of your customer is key to keeping him or her as a customer who believes in the product(s) and keeps coming back to purchase them.
Just as in operating a business, it is important to be aware that your customer's needs may constantly change, so you need to constantly be on top of finding out exactly what their needs are, the author said.
1) I am not a product, I am a person.
2) I am not selling anything.
3) It's up to each individual to decide whether or not they would like to be in a relationship, and with whom.
4) I am going to find out what the other person's needs are, certainly, and
if I can fulfill those needs, I will certainly make sure they understand that. But it's easy to go overboard with this analogy. Take the example of different sexual drives. If your partner wants a LOT of sex and you only want a little it might be difficult for you to meet that need without compromising your own.
The next thing you said was:
Responsiveness to the needs of your customer is key to keeping him or her as a customer who believes in the product(s) and keeps coming back to purchase them.
it is important to be aware that your customer's needs may constantly change, so you need to constantly be on top of finding out exactly what their needs are, the author said.
I guess it all depends on how badly you want to be in the relationship. If you're willing to bend over backwards to meet every single one of your "customer's" needs, and stay ahead of the game to anticipate new ones too, then you must need to be in the relationship pretty badly.
I was in a relationship like that once. I was constantly anticipating his needs and meeting them. Even though his needs and mine were pretty much on a par, the fact that I was always the one doing the anticipating got pretty exhausting. And in the end, all my hard work and going 150% was for naught. He got bored and left me anyways.
I am not trying to be totally argumentative. If you got something good out of the advice, that's great, but it's an analogy that doesn't strike me in exactly the same way it struck you.
I fall back on the old advice of treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. That means not being rude, or sloppy or making the other person do all the work. It means giving back when someone is giving to you. It means just trying to be helpful and supportive.
It doesn't mean chasing someone else with your tongue hanging out and your ear to the ground waiting for a sign that there's a new need coming up that you should get ready for. (LOL! Sounds anatomically impossible, anyways!!). That's a good way to sell a product, for sure. I'm always trying to think ahead to what the next need of the customer might be. And once I see a need, I will ask the customer questions and try to match my product to him until he tells me to STOP. If I did that with MEN, in any way shape or form, I think it would be something between harassment and solicitation.
And going to another work analogy, if my boss thought, for one minute, that I was TOTALLY devoted to her, completely bought into all her concepts and laying awake at night trying to anticipate her every need, I'd be setting myself up for a cut in pay and probably some serious abuse as well. I keep my job by DOING my work, very well, but also by letting her know that I don't think I should be her go-fer or slave. She would love a slave, a FREE slave, to follow her around and pick up after her messes and the things she doesn't want to do (like completing apps after she's sold a policy). But I'm only going to do so much of that. If I didn't drop the ball occasionally, or remind her of her shortcomings every once in a while, she'd run roughshod over me and I'd get nothing.
There needs to be BALANCE in any relationship, and I personally can't achieve that by looking at my partner in a relationship like I would a customer.
Just my opinion.
And if you give Cecil a hug for me, I'll give ya a kiss!... (Hell, I'll give ya a kiss anyway...)... Happy Lovers Day to you a couple day's late but every day is a Love Day to me 'cause that's the business I'm in 