Start with Why

People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

-- Simon Sinek --

There are few products or services on the market today that customers can't buy from someone else for about the same price, about the same quality, about the same level of service and about the same features. But if you ask most companies why their customers are their customers, most will tell you its because of superior quality, features, price or service. In other words, most companies have no clue why their customers are their customers. If these companies do not know this most basic fact, then how can they encourage loyalty among those they already have?

They try manipulations:

• Price - Many companies are reluctant to play the price game, but they do so because they know it is effective. The problem is once buyers get used to paying a lower-than-average price for a product or service, it is very hard to get them to pay more. Businesses must remember, only one company can win the price game.
• Promotions - Whether it is "two for one", "free toy inside" or "$5,000 cash back", promotions are such common manipulations that we often forget that we're being manipulated in the first place.
• Fear - If someone has ever sold you anything with a warning to fear the consequences if you don't buy it, they are using a proverbial gun to your head to help you see the "value" of choosing them.
• Aspirations - If fear moves us away from something horrible, aspirational messages tempt us toward something desirable. Marketers often talk about offering something that is aspirational to consumers and explaining why their product makes it more easily attainable.
• Peer Pressure - From "Four out of five dentists prefer Trident" to Lebron James endorsement, these are designed to pressure you into buying.
• Novelty - Innovation is sold all the time. The new iPhone 6 has a Super HD screen with Finger Print Login. WOW! However, most things billed as innovations are hardly revolutionary. That's why they are passed up so quickly. Have you ever heard of the RAZR? It lasted a couple of years before the iPhone. Want more innovation? Check out 1 of the 32 Colgate toothpastes.

But there are huge trade-offs with all these strategies. Not a one of them breed loyalty. Over the course of time, they cost more and more. Manipulations work, but they cost money. Lots of money and the gains are only short-term.

Let's dig deeper. There is a big difference between repeat business and loyalty. Repeat business is when people do business with you multiple times. Loyalty is when people are willing to turn down a better product or a better price to continue doing business with you. Loyalty is not easy. Repeat business is.

When we communicate WHY, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls decision-making, and our language part of the brain allows us to rationalize those decisions. The part of the brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language.

Companies that fail to communicate a sense of why force us to make decisions with only empirical evidence. This is why those decisions take more time, feel difficult or leave us uncertain.

The fact is, people respond using their limbic brain. It doesn't use language and relies on the "gut". The neocortex is the part of the brain that processes facts and information. The science shows us that people respond to WHY because it is the part of the brain that makes decisions. The neocortex responds to what but struggles to transfer that knowledge into a meaningful decision.

The following is an example of a marketing message for Apple, Outside (What) in (Why).

• WHAT: We make great computers.
• HOW: They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly.
• Wanna buy one?

This sounds a lot like Microsoft, or Dell, or HP, or Lenevo, or anyone else who makes computers.

THIS IS HORRIBLE! Let's try crafting a message from the Inside (WHY) OUT (WHAT).

• WHY: Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.
• HOW: The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly.
• WHAT: And we happen to make great computers.
• Wanna buy one?

That sounds like Apple.

Here are the examples:

• Music Industry - The music industry was well positioned to sell albums for the next decade. It forever through a great partnership with the Sony Walkman. But Apple saw a way to challenge the status quo and created iTunes, the first pay per song platform. Then they gave us a beautifully designed product to listen to the music.
• Computer Industry - The PC dominated the industry but not because they were fun to use. Apple believe that software should be seamless for the user and make their life easier. So they created a new platform that was more intuitive. It happened to be a new computer.

• WHY - The Champion for the common man. Wanted to create a means of travel that people could afford.
• HOW - Cheap, fun & simple.
• WHAT - Bags fly free, Hired Cheerleaders, Book your flights in one easy location.

Clarity of WHY: A Belief

You have to know WHY you do WHAT you do. If people don't buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, so it follows that if you don't know WHY you do WHAT you do, how will anyone else? To inspire starts with clarity of WHY.

Discipline of HOW: Actions you take to realize that belief

HOWs are your value or principles that guide HOW to bring your cause to life. HOW we do things manifests in the systems and processes within an organization and the culture. Understanding HOW you do things and, more importantly, having the discipline to hold the organization and all its employees accountable to those guiding principles enhances an organization's ability to work to its natural strengths.

Consistency of WHAT: The result of action

Everything you say and do: your products, services, marketing, PR, culture and whom you hire is the what. This must be consistent. With consistency people will see and hear, without a shadow of a doubt, what you believe. The only way people will know what you believe is by the things you say and do, and if you're not consistent in the things you say and do, no one will know what you believe.

It is at the WHAT level that authenticity happens.

Vocabulary

• Golden Circle

Additional Reading

• Playing the Long Game Inside Tim Cook's Apple on FastCo

Student Activity

Determine the Golden Circle for Westminster Christian Academy?

• What should be changed about what to make this vision a reality.