The Nature of Humans
There are expensive lunches and there are value meals, there are two martini lunches, and buy one get another one half off, there are tasty lunches and there are snacks… but there ain’t no such thing as a FREE lunch in this world despite what everyone would like us to believe.
Almost everything in this world is transactional, even in nature. I have a friend that insists that there is no such thing as altruism. I’m not so sure I would go that far, but it is close to the truth. Whether we do something for others approval or for cold hard cash, we rarely do anything that we don’t see a benefit for ourselves. Also, beware that there are third parties, such as the governments, charities, and some vendors that will happily take your money, turn around and give it to others to create goodwill for themselves.
Human nature is such that before I hand you a dollar, I am looking for a value that is greater than that dollar for myself. What I’m doing is comparing what you will give me for that dollar against what others are willing to give me – specifically more value. Value becomes the heart of what every business proposition is about, and there are many ways to create value. Here are just a few:
When I shop for gasoline, I usually have the luxury of picking from several gas stations and think nothing of driving a little further to save a nickel. But when I am on vacation in the middle of nowhere near some National Park or something, I have often paid as much as two dollars a gallon more, and been grateful there was a station to fill up at all. The same can be true for buying a bottle of water at the Kwik Mart versus buying the same bottle of water at the airport. If you’ve ever been in an airport, you’ll know what I’m talking about, we are willing to pay more for this convenience.
Companies like Apple have done such a good job building a quality brand, positive experience, and goodwill that we will pay 10 times more for that phone that does the same things as a much cheaper $100 Android.
Conversely, I saw an ad for propane the other day that tells me by converting to propane I can help improve reading and test scores for children. If I do switch to propane, I can tell you it won’t be for that reason, I assure you. I see little or no added value in this message.
When times are good, we are willing to spend a little more on convenience and brands even if the only thing extra we are getting is “virtue signaling”, or a “warm and fuzzy” feeling for curing breast cancer, or saving the planet. But make no mistake, this type of value can be fleeting in hard times and require heavy marketing budgets to maintain in good times.
Goodwill can go a long way to taking a customer through the “know, then like, then trust” journey and can get a customer to give you a try, but it does not replace the tangible value additions like quality, speed, and service will.
The easiest way to create value may sound old fashion, but it is to build a better mousetrap, to take pride in the work we do, to provide excellent customer service. These are the basics that everything comes back to. Even if you have the marketing budget to build that goodwill and branding without this foundation, that trust and goodwill will not last for long no matter how much you spend or how clever your marketing is.
Word of mouth is still your best advertising, so a good reputation for quality, service, speed, or convenience will earn you the goodwill you are seeking for future and repeat sales. Then when you do spend money on marketing it should simply tell the customer what you can do for them that others cannot. Tell them what problem you can solve for them, and how they will feel when their problem is solved.
And the more you can increase one form of value the less you need of another. Good example is a BBQ place I am very loyal to. They are only open one day a week, and sometimes you can’t count on that, and they close when they run out. They are nice enough there, but they are expensive and don’t make it easy to do business with, however the product they serve is better than anything I have ever tasted, they are amazing at what they do and they not only have my loyalty, but I continue to send business their way.
All this boils down to simple solutions. For starters, take pride in your work, be the very best you can be. Subsequently, work on how you can provide even MORE value on top of that. For instance, a better product, a better more accessible location, more convenience, better pricing, higher quality, and the list goes on and on as your industry dictates. These are the building blocks to increased transactions and better responses.
Improvement is an ongoing process that builds a solid foundation upon which you can compete in both good times and bad. It can be proved throughout history that those who have NOT chosen to improve, innovate, increase the value offered in a customer experience have gone to the wayside. Blockbuster, for example was a place everyone visited at one time of another, happily and joyfully. Do you suppose their focus was on improving the customer service experience to gain greater market share? I’d argue, not.
I once read that, “We don’t see things as THEY are, we see things as WE are.” Remember, transactional excitement and value is about their human nature not our own. When we look at transactions as a scale, everyone wants the receiving side of the scale to have more weight than the selling side of the scale. So, what value can we provide to them that has greater value than the money we are asking them to part with?
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