Start With Why

they are the cost of entry in business today. It is those visceral limbic feelings that create loyalty. And it is that loyalty that gives Apple or Harley-Davidson or Southwest Airlines or Martin Luther King or any other great leader who commands a following such a huge advantage. Without a strong base of loyal followers, the pressure increases to manipulate—to compete or “differentiate” based on price, quality, service or features. Loyalty, real emotional value, exists in the brain of the buyer, not the seller.
    It’s hard to make a case to someone that your products or services are important in their lives based on external rational factors that you have defined as valuable (remember the Ferrari versus the Honda). However, if your WHYs and their WHY correspond, then they will see your products and services as tangible ways to prove what they believe. When WHY, HOW, and WHAT are in balance, authenticity is achieved and the buyer feels fulfilled. When they are out of balance, stress or uncertainty exists. When that happens, the decisions we make will also be out of balance. Without WHY, the buyer is easily motivated by aspiration or fear. At that point, it is the buyer who is at the greatest risk of ending up being inauthentic. If they buy something that doesn’t clearly embody their own sense of WHY, then those around them have little evidence to paint a clear and accurate picture of who they are.
    The human animal is a social animal. We’re very good at sensing subtleties in behavior and judging people accordingly. We get good feelings and bad feelings about companies, just as we get good feelings and bad feelings about people. There are some people we just feel we can trust and others we just feel we can’t. Those feelings also manifest when organizations try to court us. Our ability to feel one way or another toward a person or an organization is the same. What changes is who is talking to us, but it is always a single individual who is listening. Even when a company airs its message on TV, for example, no matter how many people see the commercial, it is always and only an individual that can receive the message. This is the value of The Golden Circle; it provides a way to communicate consistent with how individuals receive information. For this reason an organization must be clear about its purpose, cause or belief and make sure that everything they say and do is consistent with and authentic to that belief. If the levels of The Golden Circle are in balance, all those who share the organization’s view of the world will be drawn to it and its products like a moth to a light bulb.

Doing Business Is Like Dating
    I’d like to introduce you to our imaginary friend Brad. Brad is going on a date tonight. It’s a first date and he’s pretty excited. He thinks the woman he’s about to meet is really beautiful and that she makes a great prospect. Brad sits down for dinner and he starts talking.
    “I am extremely rich.”
    “I have a big house and I drive a beautiful car.”
    “I know lots of famous people.”
    “I’m on TV all the time, which is good because I’m good-looking.”
    “I’ve actually done pretty well for myself.”
    The question is, does Brad get a second date?
    The way we communicate and the way we behave is all a matter of biology. That means we can make some comparisons between the things we do in our social lives and the things we do in our professional lives. After all, people are people. To learn how to apply WHY to a business situation, you needn’t look much farther than how we act on a date. Because, in reality, there is no difference between sales and dating. In both circumstances, you sit across a table from someone and hope to say enough of the right things to close the deal. Of course, you could always opt for a manipulation or two, a fancy dinner, dropping hints of tickets that you have or whom you know. Depending on how badly you want to close the deal, you could tell them anything they want to hear. Promise them the world and the odds are good that you will close the deal. Once. Maybe twice. With time, however, maintaining that relationship will cost more and more. No matter the manipulations you choose, this is not the way to build a trusting relationship.
    In Brad’s case, it is obvious that the date did not go well. The odds are not good that he will get a second date, and he’s certainly not done a good job of laying down the foundation to build a relationship.