WHAT PEOPLE BUY
Think back to the last thing you bought. Why did you buy it? If it was an article of clothing, perhaps you bought it because you thought it would make you look good, or keep you warm. If it was food, perhaps you bought it to satisfy your hunger, or to donate to a food bank, serving the dual purpose of making you feel good and making others’ lives better. If it was a financial product, like insurance or a stock, you probably bought it to make yourself feel better in some way. Perhaps less fearful of an accident, or more at peace with your future.
The point is that people do not buy products, not really. What they’re buying is the solution to a problem, or at the very least, the feelings that go along with the experience they get from a product. This is an obvious insight once you do a little self-reflection on your own purchases. Even subsistence items do this. I’ve been poor enough that I’ve bought only a 20 pound bag of potatoes and lived off of it for a while. I was buying subsistence at a bargain price. I wasn’t buying the potato. If Ramen Noodle would have done a better job of feeding me it would have been Ramen over potato.
As I mentioned, people buy solutions to problems. As process educators this is an important insight to us because we (figuratively) sell solutions to problems frequently encountered by educators. This organization and its practices has the potential to positively impact student and faculty retention, student performance and improvement, and self-efficacy of faculty and students, just for starters.
I think a key for us is to decide what problem we want to tackle first. I don’t know what problem that should be, but it should have the following characteristics.
1. Our customers (we will need to decide who they are, exactly) will be aware of the problem.
2. The problem is creating real pain.
3. Our customers will already be trying to solve the problem, but will need a better solution than they currently have.
4. Our customers will be willing to pay for a solution that works. (We may not charge, but the idea that they’re willing to exchange money for it indicates that the problem is meaningful.)
5. Our solution will work better than whatever our customers are already doing.
If we can hit those five points, then the only reasons people will have to not join us are that they don’t believe the solution works, or they don’t trust us. Hopefully the second never becomes an issue. The first issue can be demonstrated away.
HOW PEOPLE BUY
Focusing on one problem will allow us to ease individuals and organizations into process education. My time selling Cutco Cutlery, Apollo Fairfax Vacuum Cleaners, Amwyay cleaning products, NonScentz odor eliminating products, Quorum personal attack alarms and NuSkin skin hair and body care products (among others), taught me that in addition to buying the solution to a problem people often make their purchase decisions incrementally. Getting buy in on a small purchase can lead to larger purchases down the road. Teaching the use of the SII for instance, and giving faculty time to experience the value of structured assessment might just lead to them asking you ‘What else you got?’. At the very least, if the tool is effective, when you offer the next one they’ll be willing to listen.
This incremental approach has always worked for me. For instance, when I was selling Cutco (a high end direct to consumer knife set) sometimes I was able to sell a ‘Homemaker Plus Eight’, which is a set of ten kitchen knives and eight steak knives, all in a nifty wooden block. That was a $611 sale in ancient times. I shudder to think how much it is now. But more often I would sell 1-2 kitchen knives, or just a set of ‘Super Shears’. Almost inevitably the small purchasers would buy another knife in a few weeks, and another a few weeks after that. They’d end up with the entire set, paying significantly more than if they’d bought the entire set to begin with (which made me more commission) and they’d be happy to do it because they saw the value of using the better product in their day to day lives.
Not only has it worked for me, it has worked on me as well. My first suits were from Goodwill. My first new suit was $99 from JC Penny. I remember getting my first $200 suit, and all of a sudden it seemed that my $99 suits were garbage. I won’t tell you where this ended, or what all areas of my life incremental improvement has crept into, but it is a powerful concept. Once people experience ‘better’ then ‘good enough’ no longer is good enough. If what we have is better, and I think it is, an expansion strategy might be to introduce it a little at a time instead of all at once. It is easier to drink from a water fountain than a fire hose. |
