Fundamental Human Desire, & Re-positioning








		by Ron Richards, President, ResultsLab

Deeper than conventional positioning
Some of our biggest gains in results involve re-positioning a publication, product, service or entire organization.

Many marketing and advertising experts think of positioning in terms of a “great idea,” “unique selling proposition,” or a focused theme matched to the target market’s needs. But there is a deeper level that leads to incredible gains, and utilizes psychological concepts we’ve developed over the years.

I’ll spend a moment introducing those concepts. Then I’ll give you an extended case story that illustrates key aspects of elegant repositioning using the new conceptual tools.

We always want to grab, to fascinate, to make a great argument, and to imbue the communication with high curiosity. To do that, it’s essential to tap into a great issue, one or more fundamental human desires, and in the process reset the standard.

Solutions that do all that all at once are usually hidden, but once discovered generate “of course, that’s what it’s all about.”

Sometimes the solution can be glimpsed by someone psychologically sophisticated who is well briefed and is coming from a new perspective. More often, it requires some research -- in the population of the rational-evangelist users, the ones who can articulate why they acted despite all alternatives and objections. Even they rarely voice the new positioning through conventional interviews. But as we’ll see, rational evangelists -- if skillfully interviewed -- provide the essential hints that feed further interviews and creative work, and yield the breakthrough.

A revealing case story -- a solution to
devastating price competition
To me, the following case story is all the more valuable because it was a low-tech example, and one that applies to both low- and high-tech. In fact, we have applied some of these concepts to high tech products.

Our client, International Wood Products, was famous for designing and manufacturing the very best hardwood luxury door systems for upscale homes. The door systems have side lights, leaded glass, hand carving, etc., and cost $5,000 or more. For years they had the top of the line niche to themselves.

Then, over the years many competitors entered the market, some copying IWP’s designs. They offered an inferior door for $1,000 to $1,500 less. IWP’s sales had deteriorated, and no one in the organization had found an effective way of countering their eroding position in the market.

They were plagued by price qualms. Prospects were willing to take second best to save $1,000. Every sales interaction with homeowners, dealers, architects, and builders had price qualms that usually led to a sale of the competitor’s product.

Our Persuasion Design and our subsequent design of their trade show displays so devastated the price qualms that our client’s top three executives reported that no one at the 3-day show had a price qualm.

How can it be possible to “eliminate” all prospect qualms?

This project was one of two where we were able to totally eliminate qualms. (The other is the Mortgage Broker case story described in Examples of Grabber Power.)

One element of every project we’ve done has been to cut the number of qualms to 1/3, 1/5, or 1/10th -- and to defuse the power of those that remain, so they’re easily answered (or eclipsed by overwhelming benefits).

But this is a case story that goes beyond that. Here, to everyone’s amazement, we were able to take a situation where every prospect had price qualms and turn it into a situation where no prospect expressed price qualms.

Before doing this, we wouldn’t have thought it was possible. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized the outcome was the extension of some familiar principles...

It wasn’t really that the prospects had no qualms remaining in their mind. Rather, we think what happened was the combination of three factors: (1) Each prospect’s remaining qualms were greatly attenuated, reframed, and eclipsed by our Persuasion Design which we’ll describe in a moment. (2) The remaining qualms were overwhelmed by our evocative news story of unique results. (3) We’d purged the poison language that prompts qualms.

These three factors made the remaining qualms no longer compelling. Each prospect moved way beyond their persuasion threshold. In fact, the qualms in each person’s mind had become so small compared to the gains they perceived that it was not worth voicing them. Thus, in these two projects, sales people never heard qualms. The conclusion, or decision, had become a no brainer.

Conventional marketing wisdom says “Stop selling someone who’s already sold.” This fallacious maxim results in sales people (and copy writers) spending a lot of time “going for the close” before they’ve re-positioned, and before they’ve devastated the qualms. Thus they cause their communication tools, or sales people, to have to spend energy answering objections, and trying again to close.

In contrast, with great persuasion, the issue itself is reframed. The benefits have become so irresistible, and the qualms so defused, that little closing and little objection handling are needed. To an observer unaware of the Persuasion Design present, the prospects seem to close themselves. As you watch the transformed system at work, it all seems so easy. You’d never know there had been a pervasive threat to the company.

How researching the rational evangelists
leads to the breakthroughs for you
The best source of Persuasion Design, including key language, is your (or, sometimes, your competitors’) clients or customers. We typically don’t learn too much from people who aren’t high on you, but we learn a lot by interviewing the people who love what you publish or market -- the rational evangelists.

If we’re dealing with a new product, new service, or new company we get this information from studying the enthusiastic users of the closest competitors.

The rational evangelists are the buyers who have reasons and strong feelings they can articulate about why you (or your competitor) are so unique. They understand how unusual it is to achieve the kinds of gains they have enjoyed. These are the customers we want to interview; the individuals who genuinely know the truth about why they became attracted, loyal, etc. These are the people who come across in word-of-mouth testimony as being so believable, so credible, and so sincere.

These deep research interviews are a seed bed of our creativity, and we tend to need surprisingly few of them. It tends to stabilize after half-a-dozen or a dozen deep, long interviews. It’s not like any other research you’ve ever come across. This is not a questionnaire that someone is going through. This is engaging our interviewee in the creative process with us in a very freewheeling exploration of what is so great about you, and how they overcame their own qualms.

It requires an expertly trained Persuasion Design Researcher who knows what they are looking for. It requires someone who is skilled enough, and savvy enough about all of our 30 plus marketing keys, that when they hear someone hint at a breakthrough, they know how to go after it.

How the research and creative process worked for International Wood Products
We teach our interviewers to be tuned to the moments when someone says something confusing, something that makes the interviewer feel lost or even dumb. Those are the moments to put up a big green flag and probe deeply; the interviewee is about to reframe the issue for you!

One day, a very talented researcher on our team, Sue Bishop, was interviewing IWP customers. And somebody made a passing reference to their perception that touching the finish of an IWP door was inspiring. And there was something about the way “inspiring” was said that sent a little chill up Sue’s spine. She put up the green flag, and she probed further. She also discussed it with me, since I’d also done interviews on IWP and hadn’t heard that word before. What was emerging hit home.

Nobody had the idea at IWP and we didn’t previously have the idea. But we began to get little glimpses of it in additional interviews -- that there was something “inspiring” about the experience of walking through their doors.

Here is what emerged out of that one word -- heard for just seconds in one out of twelve interviews. It fed our creative work. It led to a true and great argument that could be put into a trade show display, brochures, sales dialogues (and could be communicated in a Web site).

One other piece of context I’d like you to know before you read the winning positioning/argument -- and that’s the alternative positionings we had in the works.

We thought we could do well with an argument that a quality door system is the prime contributor to a house’s “curb value” so you might as well have the pleasure of the best and then regain your investment when you sell the house -- likely 10 fold over. (But we thought the motive was too far in the future.)

Another argument could have been that a person buys other fine things -- cars, antiques, etc. -- and this is another decision for quality. (But we thought the motive was too abstract.)

A sketch of the winning re-positioning
In this case we tapped into a fundamental human desire that’s not only unvoiced, it was unconscious.

Likely no one had ever said what we came up with. Yet when we fed our creation back to customers, they’d light up about how it captured their feelings exactly, and named the essence for them. Later, it proved to resonate for prospects as well....

“One of the key moments in your life, and it happens every day, is when you walk out of your home, your sanctuary, in the morning -- to face the challenges and hopefully triumphs of the day. The last piece of your home that you see and touch is your door, and it reminds you that your life is good, that you appreciate quality, that you are in touch with the best, and that you deserve all that.

“And then at the end of the day, when you return home to your sanctuary and family, the first part of your house that you touch as you walk in is your door. And if it’s scaling and warping, it’s demoralizing to you as you walk into your home. Or if it’s top quality, it can inspire you because it’s beautiful, and the craftsmanship reminds you of what your home is like and what your life is like.

“These moments as you go out into the world and return home happen thousands of times over the years that you’ll own your home. So what’s at stake here is thousands of inspiring, or demoralizing moments. Given that, do you care whether your luxury door system costs a thousand dollars more?”

One thing to notice about this argument is how intensely evocative it is. It takes the prospect into imagining thousands of future experiences that make up something significant in their life style.

More than interviews
In this case, we did a lot of other things. We did a data base search around key words. We looked at quotations and association words around “door” and “quality” and “best” and some other terms. We brainstormed internally and with our client. And we actually got a study on the psychology of the house that an associate of ours found in an out-of-print book. We went at it from many directions and saw that the concept of “Thousands Of Inspiring Moments” had never been put quite that way by anyone.

Once we had that concept we began to ask interviewees if that’s what it was all about and they would say, “Yes, that’s it; that’s it. That’s why I love this door, that’s why price doesn't matter, that’s why only the best was good enough.”

Unconsciously, buyers were feeling it all along. It talked to a genuine and deep truth about the product, about their home, and about a key moment in every day. Therefore, it was extremely primal, psychological, and deep. If we used it in the trade show displays, the dealer displays, and a booklet, we knew it would resonate. We had our core, our code.

Once we had our “Thousands Of Inspiring Moments” theme, the research became a way to find out the words prospects use, to to embellish the argument, to work it through. It started as language much less refined than the sketch you have just read.

There is great leverage in knowing how to find the hidden great issue, one or more fundamental human desires, and a way to reset the standard.


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