Emotional Intelligence in 7 articles. Article 2
Know
Thy Customer
In commercial jobs the ability to put yourself in someone's
shoes, as well as your capability of understanding someone's behavior are
essential skills. Using Neuro-Linguistics, Sales and Marketing people are
increasing their awareness of these skills of what is now called
"Emotional Intelligence". Here we give you some cases from Roger
Bailey, the researcher who brought us the LAB-profile.
"New Coke" is probably one of the best known
marketing failures that happened over the last 10 years. Before releasing it,
the product had been tested in all ways the marketing staff could think about.
The test panels all agreed: "New Coke tastes a lot better than the old
Coke." The Coca Cola Corporation decided to launch New Coke as a
replacement of the old product. The expectations were very high, but after a
couple of weeks they found out that the sales figured dropped at an unseen
rate. The called in Roger Bailey to analyze the problem. He found out the New
Coke was a product that only appeals to about 10% of US Population. How come?
The key is that from a psychological point of view the name
"New Coke" is directed to a marketing segment of customers that wants
something new from time to time. They are most often known as the "early
adopters". The differ from the rest of the population prefers to keep on
buying things they already know. When launching a new product, these more
conservative customers take longer to be convinced (the early adopters help to
convince them). The problem that the Coca-Cola Corporation faced is that they
couldn't afford such a long adaptation period. So the relaunched the old
product as "Classic Coke". This time, the product seemed to appeal to
65% of it's old customer base. This didn't come as a surprise to Roger Bailey,
since he predicted that this change would be against the psychological
preferences of 30% of the customers. Facing all these problems, it came as a
surprise that Cherry Coke did appeal to the US market. But this product in fact
shows a strong resemblance to an old-style softdrink, produced on a small scale
by many drug stores in the 1950's. So in fact Coca-Cola copied a product that
the customer already knew and brought some small changes to it. Again, it will
appeal to the 65% of the population going for similar products, but willing
some small changes from time to time. To complete the story, New Coke
disappeared from the market about 18 months after it first appeared. This again
can be explained by the preferences of the early adopters: by that time, these
persons had gone off looking for a new soft drink.(footnote
1)
The approach that Coca-Cola had followed for New Coke was
completely in line with what you can expect from Marketing Specialists. It is
their job to be focussed on differences. They are paid to find out what you can
change about a product (with the idea that change will increase sales).
However, this approach doesn't take into account that a lot of preferences
don't need radical change. Since the mid 1980's we have seen a lot of Marketing
campaigns focussing on tradition, as well from Coca-Cola as from Levis. these
campaigns find the middle of the road between novelty and stability.
A mail order catalog for jewelry in the New York area had been
good enough for producing consistent sales figures of about 5 Million USD for
several years, but the owners of the business wanted to stimulate growth. They
sent out some Neurolinguistic Modelers to find out what made the customers buy
their goods. In stead of using standard question lists, these modelers actually
observed the customer using the catalog, to find out about their buying
patterns. The paradox of the catalog was that the freedom of choice offered
proved to be the constraint on the sales generated. And indeed, 65% of those
buying take decisions according to a routine. The catalog mainly offered a lot
of options, which makes it hard to choose (but something the other 35% of the
population are in favor of). By leaving the choice, and by adding a procedure
according which the customer could handle the catalog, the company was able to
double its sales in less than a year!(footnote
2)
What do these cases teach us? Doesn't each salesperson try to
put himself in the shoes of the customer? Well, maybe they don't try hard
enough. There is a world of difference between trying to think as if you were
the customer, and the customer will react. If you use your own thinking patters
to "simulate" customer behavior, your simulation program is running
with the wrong set of filters! That's why we teach our students to take over
the emotions of the person we want to understand. because, together with these
emotions (internal state) we take over the internal processes of the other
person. In fact, while doing putting yourself in the other persons shoes, you
ask yourself the questions: "What do you feel", "What do you
see", "What do you hear?"
Patrick MERLEVEDE
Patrick Merlevede is an NLP
trainer specialized in emotional intelligence and knowledge management. He runs
Acknowledge,
an international consulting and training company.
The original version (in the
Dutch Language), appeared in "De PersoneelsGids", the weekly
employment section of an important Flemish newspaper group between May and July
1998. This version is more that a mere translation: it has been rewritten in
English. The footnotes and endnotes were added during this process.
End Notes:
- Since this story was originally published, I saw
another strange marketing decision from Coca Cola in France. The current
can of Cherry Coke doesn't look like any other Coca-Cola product I have
seen until know. And as far as I can remember, it doesn't taste like the
Cherry Coke I drank in Belgium in 1986.
- This article (as the first)
refers to the meta-programs, a Neuro-Linguistic model explaining how
people motivate themselves and how they structure their thinking.
Footnotes:
- The meta-program we refer to is "sameness VS difference". To
find out about this filter, ask the question: "What's the relation
between your current job and what you were doing last year". 5 to 10%
of US population is directed to difference. They are the people that find
it difficult to understand the question: "What do you mean, the
relationship?", is their typical answer. Some 35% will talk about the
similarities in what they are doing. The rest of the persons will talk
about similarities and differences.
- The second meta-program is "options VS procedures". It was
also one of the meta-programs you'll find in the first article.
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