When we are passionate about the products and services we offer our customers, it is very difficult to objectively evaluate just how much value our customers get from our products.
After all, passion is an emotion.
Passion about the products we offer is really more about our own personal relationship with our products than it is about our personal relationship with the customers who buy our products.
Naturally, we don’t want to hear that we are putting our own emotions ahead of our customer’s interests, so we come up with sayings like, “the customer is always first.”
But is it really true?
I would ask you to reflect on your own interactions with all the businesses you transact with, and ask yourself if it is obvious that those businesses value their relationship with you more than their relationship with their products.
Why Don’t They Buy?
We can become so emotionally invested in our products that when a prospective customer decides not to buy, it can throw us into a state of confusion.
How could they not purchase this most amazing product of mine?
Returning again to our Shark Tank example, one of the most interesting aspects of the show is to listen to the reactions of entrepreneurs who did not secure funding from the sharks.
You rarely hear an entrepreneur say something like, “You know, I think those sharks may be on to something in the points they made about my product not meeting their investment needs. I think I’ll go back to the drawing board and see if I can make my product more attractive for them.”
Instead, you hear something like, “I know this is going to work. The sharks just don’t see it.”
I see a similar dynamic in Pregnancy Help Centers.
For both the board of directors, and the team operating the PHC, the emotional investment in what they offer abortion-minded women is so deep, they find it hard to believe that there are prospective pro-life benefactors who choose not to invest in the PHC at all, or that current benefactors choose not to invest even more in the PHC.
Don’t they see that we’re saving lives here?? Don’t they want more of that??
Yes they do, but I submit to you what is happening is, just like many of the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, the team at the PHC is not stating its case to its benefactors in a way that reveals that the benefactors’ desires are paramount.
In other words, the team at the PHC is in love with its relationship to the product it offers, rather than in love with its relationship to its benefactors.
Keeping Our Emotions In Check
I think this emotional connection to our products is too powerful to overcome on one’s own.
It requires an objective third party to keep emotions in check.
Imagine if an entrepreneur who had been selected to present on Shark Tank created an advisory board consisting of qualified professionals tasked with informing the entrepreneur the truth about what the sharks desired to see in investment opportunities.
With great respect for the entrepreneur, the advisory board will tell him what he needs to hear – “Sorry, but your product will not meet the shark’s investment criteria” – not tell him what he wants to hear – “The sharks will love your product as much as you do! Investing in this is a no-brainer!”
In like fashion, I don’t think it’s a mystery what pro-life philanthropists want.
But the board of directors and staff at the PHC need an objective advisory committee tasked with focusing solely on what the PHC’s benefactors desire.
Too often, leaders of PHCs assume that benefactors are as emotionally invested in what the PHC offers as they are.
Tomorrow, we’ll discuss why that’s not the case.
Regards,
Brett