If you’ve ever been ‘pitched’ to by a company, or individual for that matter who wants your business, the likelihood is they’ve espoused what they can do for you and how they can do it. On the surface this seems fairly reasonable and pretty much the norm, it’s what we’ve got used to and quite likely how we approach our own communication and promotion.
The problem however, is that this is not what truly successful and inspirational organisations (and individuals) do and is one reason why we might not convince our prospective market or client to buy our product or use our services.
But why is this? Every organisation on the planet knows 100% what they do. Some know how they do it, this may be through their unique proprietary product or particular USP. Yet very few organisations though know why they do what they do, and by this we don’t mean to make a profit -that’s a result!
By ‘why’ we mean what’s your purpose, your cause or your belief? Why does your organisation exist, why do you get out of bed each morning? And why should anyone care?
It’s obvious why we go from ‘what’ to ‘why’, it’s easier to go from the clearest to the most unclear thing. Inspired organisations though (irrelevant of industry) think from the inside out. As an example let’s take Apple. They’re fundamentally a computer company with access to the same resources and talent as their competitors, yet they transcend their market.
A clue to their dominant position is in how they communicate and think:
‘Everything we do is to challenge the status quo, we believe in thinking differently’ (why)
‘The way we challenge is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly’ (how)
‘We just happen to make great computers, want to buy one?’ (what)
This highlights the underlying principle in that people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it. They buy because they believe in the why, what you do acts merely as proof of why you do things.