Making people do what they don’t want to do.
Image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/hindolbittern/
It probably has become apparent, due to the disappointing lack of activity around here lately, that things are very busy here at the moment. I’ve not had time to keep up with the things I ought to be reading, let alone form any coherent thoughts worth writing about.
However, as I frantically scanned Twitter and RSS for stuff I that might be useful yesterday, I realised again that the only things that caught my attention were stories or Tweets containing timely, but ultimately fairly shallow information.
There’s an interesting paradox in this, because it’s exactly this kind of information that’s likely to be the least useful in solving my larger problem – lack of attention. What I actually need is information that gives me the benefit of a different and broader perspective. What I ought to be looking for is information that’s probably a lot less time-sensitive, that’s longer, deeper and harder to consume.
There are similar patterns in other areas. For example, it’s precisely when I am the most out of shape that exercise becomes the most important. The thing that’s hardest to say is often the thing that most needs to be said.
At the exact moment a task becomes the least desirable is typically when it is the most necessary.
I think this is a truth that we remember infrequently in our personal lives, and hardly ever acknowledge in our professional ones. In fact, it would probably seem quite insane to develop your marketing around the insight that you want to help your customers do exactly the thing that they least want to do. The reverse is probably far more common and a basic assumption of many marketing programs is that your job is to make it even easier for your customers to do what they already want to do.
In the same way that this addresses the immediate need, it probably fails at solving the larger problem of creating a stronger relationship. Our clients at Nordstrom like to say that the really great salespeople will put you into clothes that you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself, but love later. Your truest friends are the ones who tell you the things you find it hardest to hear. The brands we love the most may be the ones that take us places we least wanted to go.
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Tags: doing what's hardest, marketing, strategy
