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Article Title: What 'job' Did Your Product Do For You?
Author: Kim Klaver
Word Count: 736
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As someone whose job is sales, and maybe marketing, it's quite
natural to want to believe that your product is for "everyone"
and so should be marketed to everyone.
Network marketing companies tell their recruits, "This product
is for everyone - it sells itself. Everyone will want it."
Of course every new recruit discovers that "everyone" does not
want it. This creates quite a shock, and often people quit,
thinking THEY were the problem somehow, because they said
"everyone will want this," didn't they?
But selling to everyone doesn't work. We have all discovered
that. Focus works better, it seems.
In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, the authors
suggest that successful marketing means to focus a product on
the job it was designed to do, a la Harvard marketing professor
Theodore Levitt:
"People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a
quarter-inch hole!"
It's the JOB we want done we're after, isn't it? Rather than
the product per se. And not everyone is looking for the same
jobs. If you think of a product this way, then a product is
"hired" to do a specific job, the authors observe.
Many of you already know how to focus your product on people
who need a certain job done, e.g.
"This is a product for people who..." Saying those words to
someone means that you will exclude those not described after
the words "for people who..." This is worrisome for some
people, because they fret about leaving someone out.
However, presenting a product by its focus on a certain "job"
it did for the speaker also means that the listener can
immediately recognize if there's a match or not.
For example, "I market a product for someone with achy knees
who doesn't want to do drugs or surgery, like me. Do you know
anyone who might like to know about a product like that?" (from
the book, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It?")
The YES's can immediately say YES, tell me about it, and the
NOs, NO. That's preferable to "everyone" not responding at all,
because they didn't hear their name being called as to a job
they might want done. Think?
This very focused approach is presented in the current issue of
the Harvard Business Review, along with the failure of companies
who try to market to "everyone."
The remind us that "The great Harvard marketing professor
Theodore Levitt used to tell his students, "People don't want
to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"
It's what one DOES with a product, then, that makes us buy it.
So, they argue, focus a product on a job it is supposed to do.
Like "for people who have achy knees and don't want to do
surgery or drugs, like me." However, the authors write,
"Focusing a product and its brand on a job creates
differentiation. The rub, however, is that when a company
communicates the job a product was designed to do perfectly, it
is also communicating what jobs the product should not be hired
to do. Focus is scary..."
They conclude with the observation of what's happened to one
big industry because they're too scared to focus and market a
specific job their product does well, and instead, they try to
focus on all jobs everyone might want, at once...
"Focus is scary - at least the car-makers seem to think so.
They deliberately create words...that have no meaning in any
language, with no ties to any job, in the myopic hope that each
individual [car] model will be hired by every customer for every
job. The results of this strategy speak for themselves..
automakers are losing money. Somebody gave these folks the
wrong recipe for prosperity." - Christensen et al, Harvard
Business Review, 12.05
So fixate on what job the product did for you, and ask for
those who'd like to hear about a product that did that job for
you, in case they know of someone who might like that VERY job
done for them. OK?
Now you have the brains of the Harvard Business Review on the
same page with you.
Neat, huh?
About The Author: Kim Klaver is Harvard & Stanford educated.
Her 20 years experience in network marketing have resulted in a
popular blog, http://KimKlaverBlo
http://YourGreatThi
http://BananaMarket
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