Hacking the tipping point
Businesses are built on offering products and services people want and then making it easy to translate that into something that they need and will pay for. Ideally, again and again. By learning about the mechanics of how we assess wants and needs, you can learn how to acquire and convert customers more successfully.
Technology trends come and go, but human behaviours rarely change.
That’s why 3rd-century concepts like the Seven Deadly Sins still hold true today. In fact, it’s easy to see how many of today’s most prominent companies speak to these behavioural drivers.
- Linkedin (pride)
- Robinhood (greed)
- Twitter (wrath)
- Instagram (envy)
- Tinder (lust)
- Just Eat (gluttony)
- Uber (sloth)
Go back further in time, and you’ll find that Aristotle was writing about these kinds of behaviours over 600 years before in 335 BC in his Nicomachean Ethics. No doubt he derived his thinking from someone else even further back in time and so on.
Those ways of thinking have clearly evolved over a very, very long time.
So, if our ways of thinking appear to be predictable, why is it so hard for businesses to work out what people want and translate that into a product or service that people need?
The answer is twofold.
Many people in business fail to validate IF enough people truly want something in the first place, and then they fail to appreciate HOW people perform the mental calculations that translate those wants into needs.
In this article, I will explore the importance of assessing wants, break down how they are triggered and explore a simple framework to increase the chances of turning wants into needs by hacking how people think.
Assessing wants
I want lots of things.
A way to avoid hunger. A kayak. A more meaningful life.
Depending on whether you’re looking at them from a scientific, economic or philosophical perspective, wants have been described and categorised in all sorts of different ways over recorded history including -
- The Seven Deadly Sins
- The Seven Heavenly Virtues
- Aristotle’s Eleven Virtues from his Nicomachean Ethics (that the Deadly Sins and Heavenly Virtues are thought to have been derived from)
- The Four Noble Truths (of Buddhism) that speak to the nature and experience of wants
As we’ve established, these ways of thinking haven’t changed much since we started writing about them, but technology has changed at an increasingly rapid pace.
We can do all sorts of interesting things with technology now. But should we?
The short answer is no.
The first and biggest mistake most business people make is starting by assuming that people want the product or service they have in mind.
You can avoid this mistake by assuming you’re wrong about your idea and go out and prove that you know what people want.
Assuming that you have tested your thinking and you’re confident that you’ve uncovered a worthy problem or challenge you can address, perhaps you should consider a bit of Buddhist inspiration?
The Four Noble Truths of Buddhist philosophy are distinct from the western philosophies because rather than list out things like wants, sins and virtues, they examine how you experience wants and specifically how they start, end and the path you follow along the way.
Having this understanding of the mechanics of how we experience wants is crucial if we are to learn how to translate wants more effectively into needs.
How wants become needs
Speak to a scientist that studies how our brains work and they will tell you that we translate wants into needs through a series of triggers and stages.
All our wants start with some sort of stimulus. It could be something you see or hear, a smell, something you think or feel, or a subconscious trigger from your body like a sense of hunger.
This triggers your brain to “do something” — what we call that an urge.
Our brains then translate that urge into a specific thing — a desire. It’s at this point as we get closer to the tipping point that things get interesting — Is your desire for the thing you want strong enough to tip-over and translate into a need, something you’re willing to take action over?
Think about this moment next time you’re hungry…
Am I hungry enough to get up and eat something right now or is there other stuff that takes precedence? Do I grab something quick from the fridge? Put the oven on and prepare something more elaborate? Or maybe even prepare something really fancy and get dressed up for the occasion?
Once you decide to take any action, your body has ways to detect evidence of action. Maybe you’re hungry and you’ve decided to eat something and you can now taste the food and feel its crunch or its temperature or seasoning.
That evidence of action then triggers a reward, usually a release of chemicals that is our brain’s way of telling us that we’re doing the right thing. It’s how we get a feeling of satisfaction and depending on the strength of the reward, it reinforces this pattern of behaviour in the future.
The tipping point
When you understand that our brains work through this series of triggers, it’s much easier to see the inputs that can be experimented with and moments that matter that lead up to that tipping point when wants translate into needs.
The calculation we make at the tipping point is assessed by examining the relative time a desired action takes, the effort or perceived complexity of taking that action and the cost versus the perceived reward of taking action.
If we can work out what triggers the strongest sense of reward and satisfaction, with the least perceived time and effort, we can experiment to understand which stimuli work best for different types of people to trigger off this chain reaction.
Hacking wants
The right nudges in the right places at the right times can drive the strongest desire and help trigger off a set of thoughts that translate wants into needs.
Get this wrong and the desire fails to trigger the chain reaction.
As we’ve just explored, we need to hack the stimuli we present to people to package up a few key data points to get them to buy into the relative rewards they will get and then, once they’ve bought into that, to downplay the time and effort they think are needed to take this action.
Notice that it’s essential to get people to buy into the reward they will get first, not the details on the perceived time and effort it takes to get the reward.
Start with rewards or start losing customers
I want to stress at this point that going into lots of detail too early is another common mistake I see people make.
It’s a red flag that I see all the time in the Startup world that says to me that Execs have failed to understand what difference their product or service will make for their customers. Lacking these key insights about the benefits and rewards, all they have to talk about is endless, complex details of the how the thing works.
[Note: This is also very common with technology endeavours that involve Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, 5G or anything of that nature].
The wrong way to start
When you’re working on all the details of a product or service, it is very easy to get excited about could be and get lost in the details of how something could work. But you need to stop yourself right there.
If you think this through, what’s likely to happen?
You’ll have worked really hard to attract potential customers and you may even have got some to come and visit your website, packed with everything that anyone could possibly want to know.
But what your customer have to do now, is use up lots of their time and make lots of mental effort reading through all those details and trying to work out which products or services might be right for them and guessing what the rewards for them might be.
If it’s this much effort and complexity to work out these key questions now, imagine how much more complicated it might be if they keep going?
You’ve just killed your chances of reaching the tipping point.
The right way to start
Your first consideration to trigger the desired chain reaction is to get your customers to emotionally “buy into” the sense of satisfaction and reward they will get if they consider this line of thought. You want to short circuit the triggers and start giving them a sense of the satisfaction they will get.
Help them understand the value.
Use words that help them feel the rewards.
Use imagery that shows people enjoying that same sense of satisfaction.
If you’re struggling to imagine what I’m talking about, think about an advert you remember from the thousands you’ve seen. What made it stand out? What made it resonate with you?
It’s the stories they tell and the emotions they conjure up that you remember first. Those feelings you get. They are the rewards.
Your job is to bottle that up and give people a taste of it.
Practically speaking, you’ll be doing this by creating what are called “Value Propositions” — A short, punchy statement that describes an aspect of your product or service that gives your customer a reward.
Here are a couple I like as food for thought.
So when you’re thinking about how to acquire customers, or how to activate their desire when they come to your website, focus first on understanding which rewards trigger the strongest responses from your key customer segments. Keep targeting and testing variations until you’ve worked out which combinations of words and images work best.
Differentiate to seal the deal
Once your prospective customers have bought into the promise of the rewards they could have, it’s time to seal the deal and turn desire into action.
But beware of the next mistake people make. Too much detail.
You might be tempted to think that now is the time to start talking about all the great features of your product or service, but this would be unwise. This is what all the other average competitors out there are doing. So you end up just sounding the same as everyone else.
Now is the time to highlight just the features that make what you do different to everything else out there.
In the example below, by only talking about the ability to “Watch anywhere. Cancel at any time” Netflix have chosen to pick out 2 factors that make them different — You can access your Netflix account on any device that’s got the Netflix app (you can even download films so you don’t need an internet connection) AND you are free to leave when you want. No two-year contracts to worry about. You can binge that one show you want to watch and leave.
By explaining what makes your product or service different to other similar products or services you have set yourself apart from the competition, and you’ve helped people understand how using this product will be a better experience. Less effort. Less hassle. You’ve stood out.
What you’ve also done is distracted people from the effort it’s about to involve to take action.
Clear call to action
Now it’s finally time to close the deal.
Everyone’s mind is on the prize. They are sold on how easy it’s going to be to use your product or service. What next?
The answer is to keep providing stimulus around the rewards.
Firstly, provide clearly visible ways to call your customers to take action so it’s obvious what to do next
I call this the “squint test” — Make it obvious where to click next.
The next part is to reinforce what you get if you click — the reward!
On Shopify, not only do you get a chance to try out the shop you always wanted to own, but with a free trial too! what’s not to love?
Experimentation is the key to success
So if you’re about to launch a new idea, pause for a moment and consider…
Have you
- Tested that enough people want your idea
- Understood the kind of benefits and rewards your key customer segments are looking for
- Worked out what your key differentiators are
- Made it impossible for customers to say no to taking action
If you haven’t, I strongly recommend you explore and test these so you can find the strongest triggers to use on your marketing and landing pages to get people over the tipping point.
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