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?

Welcome to the world of Alpha domination

I've spent the past two and a half decades turning around companies by using a revenue-generation model that I discovered only after fighting past all the silly things I learned in college.  It has been an uphill battle trying to convince MBAs and CEOs that the world works a lot differently than they were told and read about in the business press.

I thought that having created growth of as much as 300% for companies that had not been able to grow in more than a decade would convince them.  I thought that the research findings alone would have convinced them.  I even believed that the basic logic of what I discovered would convince them, because it makes so much sense when viewed through the filter of how customers actually make decisions rather than how we have been taught to create business success.  But the weight of all that "learning" that kept them following a model that has not worked and cannot work was too much for most.

Then I discovered something really profound:  its much easier for smaller companies to become Alphas than for large companies who have become embroiled in their internal processes and who cater to the opinions of a business press sold out to a wrong model.  

I am about to launch a new coaching model for small to medium-sized businesses to become Alpha companies, knocking over their much larger competitors.  

In this blog, I plan to chronicle much of what I observe and learn, as I work to build a group of businesses across the country who are working to become Alphas, whether on a local level or a national level.  My hope is that you will help me by sharing your own experiences in using Alpha principles.

If you are not already familiar with The Alpha Factor and the Alpha model, you can learn about it at www.thealphafactor.com or www.ballgroup.com.  I look forward to a dynamic conversation here.