I just happened to read this interview of Jason Fried who is the founder of 37Signals, a highly successful web application development company.In the interview, Jason offers some tricks of the business trade that he has learnt. The very first tip that he offers is “Understanding the buyer is the key to being a strong seller”.
To illustrate this example, he talks of the time when he was 15 and worked as a store help in a Golf and Tennis goods shop.
He says that peoples reasons for buying shoes weren’t exactly in sync with manufacturers reasons for selling them. Companies make and market shoes with new and great performance enhancing technologies but thats not what people care about once they’re in the store. Once they’re there, the main things they’re concerned about are look and style, comfort and of course price.
This insight says Jason helped him sell a boatload of shoes that summer in the store.
Well! Isn’t that a little paradoxical.
All that sports goods companies talk about in their ads are their superior performance and amazing new technology which are presented along with the endorsements of a few sport-stars while on the other hand all that people are looking for is style,comfort and price.
But the truth is,customers start worrying about style,comfort and price only once they ENTER the store.
The million-dollar but totally off the point ad campaign is what makes them enter YOUR store/ Choose your brand (Its not really off the point if it attracts customers!). Here’s the deal, we bring the customer to our store by making him believe that new technology is going improve his experience(We throw in his favourite sports persons in sweaty but sexy avatars to further his misbeliefs) Once he’s in our store, to actually convert him into a customer we now have to actually listen to what he wants.This it turns out is looks,comfort and price.Extra-grip? More Aerodynamic? Actually what I want to know is the price! The paradox So wouldn’t it be a revolution if one day a sports goods company decided to chuck all its hi-tech jibber jabber and sell its wares saying something like ‘Sexy Shoes’. No wait , the normal shoe companies already do that!
Would it make the company look a cat among the tigers if it were to focus on any of its non performance-related advantages in its marketing. Whatever the company looks like,it wouldn’t matter.If a company can market itself in such a manner without looking too tawdry or downmarket, its creates a whole new genre of sport goods not for sports persons.The non performance-related advantage needn’t be that great too because you’re directly addressing what people want.The market already exists but no one is taking a direct shot at it. Another important thing is that how the message must be changed to fit medium/situation.On TV it may sound ridiculous if all you’re talking about is how good your shoes look while your competitors are showing off their super hi-tech shoes while this is exactly what is needed in a one-on-one interaction with a customer in a store. Its essential to give a customer what he needs but the customers needs keep changing even in the process of one purchase and we must satisfy him accordingly.