Getting people to reveal real core needs

I just took a break from a coaching email.  I was explaining how people really want to tell you what they need; it's just that they have surrounded themselves with too many perceived barriers and limitations.  That's why most market research fails to uncover much that is a clue to breakthrough innovation.  

Since the core element for creating Alpha domination in the marketplace is the skill of uncovering the real core unmet needs of people (especially the unstated ones) and then innovating to help people fulfill more of their higher-level unmet needs, this is a pretty critical issue for anyone trying to follow the Alpha model.

Every time I help someone through this, I learn how to explain it better.  I have the advantage of having developed research tools that make it fairly easy for me to uncover these core needs.  But it is far harder for someone to try to do it without those tools.

Here's a start:  

Think about the barriers we set up around ourselves to try to make sense of the world.  Let's face it: the world is a pretty crazy place.  What looks like order actually turns out to be controlled chaos.  People struggle constantly to understand how they can get what they think they want and need.   They are continually trying to understand the unstated "rules" of how things work.  

Since "how things work" is obviously limited by what solutions are visible or offered, we start off with some serious limitations and barriers.  If I have never been able to believe that I can feel more appreciated or more powerful in my world by purchasing breakfast cereal, guess what?  I don't reveal those needs in research about cereals.  That doesn't mean I don't still have those core needs.  I just don't waste my time telling them to you anymore than I would reveal that I really want to have a vacation in the south of France this year.

We quickly "learn" that certain things cannot be attained through the solutions available.  So we create a limitation to our expectations that limits what we can and will reveal about our real needs.  

On the other side (and this is even more devastating to both customers and marketers), we also absorb confusing and false information through the culture that says we can and should be able to fulfill certain core needs through means that can never actually fulfill them.  For instance, why do people continually believe that they will find real love by buying a product?  It never works.  It never can work.  Yet I see more of that false promise foisted on the public than almost anything else in today's jaded advertising culture.  That pervasive false preconception has actually become a barrier to attaining real fulfillment, because the person never looks in the right places for that fulfillment AND he starts to believe that his needs can never be fulfilled properly.

The challenge to an aspiring Alpha is firstly to not fall into the trap of helping continue such lies.  People will pay almost anything to have their real core needs fulfilled, but false promises never pay off long-term.  Secondly, the aspiring Alpha must help potential customers become comfortable with the possibility that they might fulfill more of their core needs through products or services in his category.  Again, this doesn't have the intent of falsely promising anything.  Rather it is opening the possibility and then allowing potential customers to uncover and define what that could look like and how it would be played out in products and services. 

The result is (depending upon the skill of the researcher and the creativity of the innovator) a list of areas for innovation that can drive greater fulfillment of core needs, which will in turn drive greater market influence for your product or brand, increased price leverage, improved profitability, and dramatically more control over your category.

Can you think of any examples of how you have seen this at work in the marketplace?