DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

Sellers tend to get caught in the intricacies and details of what they are selling, forgetting that the buyer is making an emotional decision, an investment, or a statement about his self worth, and may not connect with the brand message

We have gone from the Age of Reason to the Era of Emotion. In most walks of life, and especially in the corporate world, EQ often replaces IQ, relationships replace hierarchies and the ultimate goal (for some marketers atleast) is to transform brands into “Lovemarks.”

Rupin Jayal

Key point here – as can be seen from the quote, above, is that a lot of so called rational decisions made by consumers are actually driven by emotion. Our rational mind evaluates options and if it remains in control we procrastinate forever. Often the rational pros and cons seem so close as to make action based on reason alone, almost impossible. A decision does require a final leap of faith or belief or desire or any other motivating emotion.Many of humankind’s greatest leaps have been those of imagination and have required the ability to see beyond the logical (and what at the time seemed the most obvious). Heavier than air flight, the concept of the earth as a globe and not flat, horseless carriages, the internet, men on the moon, mobile telephony – look around you and almost everything you see would at some point of time seemed like science fiction created by someone with a poor grasp over sanity. Yet they are around us and are continually and profoundly changing the way we live, think and feel. In fact, the ones who got it hopelessly wrong were those who predicted things to be impossible to achieve. Emotions have created pathways where reason presented insurmountable obstacles.

And so it is with entrepreneurship. It is essentially a leap of faith. After all the studies have been done, the logical presentations made to various VCs and the plans cast, it finally boils down to the conviction and belief of an individual or a group of individuals and their ability to create something sustainable, different, meaningful and profitable.

Yet often we forget the basic building block of emotional conviction when we go out to sell our products or services to other people. Suddenly from “people” they become “target markets,” “demographic groups,” “an audience,” or the ubiquitous “consumer.” In the process they are seen to be rational beings driven by reason and logic. They are researched, evaluated and placed into neat little categories with very pithy names like “savvy aspitrationalists” “traditional experimenters” (an exaggeration but the reality is not very far from this) and so on.

The problem is that more often than not the “consumer” is actually our neighbour, our cousin or wife. In other words, they are people and not some strange species created by a supercomputer. So they actually are heavily influenced by their children when buying cars; they do not always select the “best” product and they can change capriciously without warning. Sometimes their biggest drivers are boredom, ego or even temptation.

And what they buy often has nothing to do with what many of us are seeking to “sell” to them. Recently, for a real estate brand, based on a series of interviews with potential consumers we arrived at this conclusion:

Sell

• Right from the luxurious green townships to villas in the sky - Homes and living spaces

Buy

• A space where life is made
• where a million stories are written
• Triumphs celebrated
• Tragedies averted
• Moments enshrined for ever
• Families created and life changing decisions debated
• A dream realised, aspiration fulfilled

Where people within the industry saw monolithic creations in brick and concrete, those seeking to live in them saw a “life space.”

Similarly when talking about a motorcycle brand what marketers saw were huge numbers and ubiquity on the road. They saw hoards of riders moving out each day and celebrated this fact through large advertisements. However for each rider, this ubiquitous brand was the fulfilment of a dream. It was the culmination of putting together what possibly represented the single largest investment of his life so far and was an object of pride. He didn’t see the millions who rode it, he saw himself, the individual who had decided to trust this brand over the cacophony of competing claims of other brands and the advice of his friends and peers. It represented more than just mobility. It represented his belief in himself and his future (financing makes the purchase of a vehicle a very definite investment in the future).

Similarly, when addressing a health care brand what the people who were seeking solutions from it were looking for differed quite significantly from what was believed was being “sold” to them: What is "Sold" l Body "solution" l Weight loss deal

• Results
• Regaining shape
• Metamorphosis
• What is "bought"
• Confidence
• Acceptability
• Expertise/reassurance
• Regaining control
• Dreams

This does not apply only to so-called consumer brands. Marketers of industrial products and services need to understand that despite the emphasis on standards and specifications the final decision is taken by a human mind. Hence, with one world leader in petroleum products and chemicals the key differentiator was not the specifications or products themselves but the feeling of trust that people awarding them contracts, felt for them. While the trust was partly driven by their scale and control over every part of the process from extraction to delivery of the finished product, what really drove the feeling of trust was their legendary devotion to exceeding rather than just meeting standards. So what was actually being bought was better performance leading to a healthier enterprise and not just a chemical of a particular specification.

In fact, when the seller acknowledges what the buyer is actually buying, it results in relationships that endure and do not break easily. This is something that luxury brands do understand very well. After all, if we bought a watch just to tell the time we would not be spending tens of thousands and even lakhs to do so. If we merely needed to cover ourselves, we would not spend large sums of money to keep the fashion industry afloat. If what we required was mere transportation, Porsche would not be possibly the world’s most profitable automobile company. If two-wheelers were just a basic way to get from A to B accountants would not be tasting the forbidden fruit of rebellion by owning a Harley Davidson. And if cigarettes were merely tobacco in a stick, the Marlboro man would not be the universal symbol of masculinity and Marlboro would not be amongst the world’s most valuable brands.

In our desire to “sell” what we have worked so diligently and painstakingly to create, we should not become statisticians. After all the data and market figures, we must return to just being human beings again. There are many who are well equipped to provide all the rational data you need but you will have to decide what it really is that people should want to “buy.” The celebrated “new” Coke example has now become part of brand folklore. This dismal failure helped one of the world’s greatest brands to refocus itself on what people were really buying and not on what its closest competitor was selling. And it grew to even greater heights after this.

Do a simple exercise. List down all the features of what it is that you sell. Now forget that you sell it. Become a buyer. Better still, just become an ordinary person and see what you would want to buy. It could transform your brand and your business.

The author is Director-Strategic Planning at M&C Saatchi.

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