How often do your customers have an easy time flowing with you?

I volunteer with an organization that allows me to create and promote incentives and competitions for members to be recognized.

For one promotion we were having a hard time agreeing on how the points should add up. One opinion was to count all things equally while I said more difficult items should get more subjective credit.

My point was that we had to make it fair or people wouldn’t want to participate. We ended up deciding to keep the judging subjective. Several experienced members would subjectively weigh all the criteria against each other and pick an overall winner.

Flow experiences are the intersection of skills and challenges. If your skills are high and the challenge is low, you may get bored. If your skills are low and the challenge is high, you may get anxious. Flow is the happy medium between the two extremes where high skill and high challenge intersect.

When the rules are easy enough for people to navigate, flow has a chance. Considering a sporting event, that’s what allows it to be recognized as a challenge that holds our interest. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of people pointlessly fighting over a ball. Without knowing the rules, that’s probably what it looks like to you.

For the member promotion example I mentioned, the rules have to not only be clear but they have to be fair. No one is going to play a game where the outcome isn’t predictable with some amount of certainty. It’s difficult to get into a flow state that with a poorly defined challenge.

Your message will be most effective when it helps create a flow experience for your prospect. Your ideal customer will match their current skill level to the solution you’re offering.

Helping people to flow creates value and therefore more customers.