Recently, I went with my wife to watch one of those sappy holiday season movies.
The movie is called “Last Christmas.”
As all movies like this do, it pulls at your heartstrings and makes you feel good.
A perfect date night type movie.
I won’t give away the movie, but one of the primary themes is that you can only be truly happy when you serve others.
Amen to that!
What’s In It For Me?
While I wholeheartedly agree with that theme, alas, that is not the way we broken human beings are wired.
Quite the opposite.
Our natural inclination in any interaction is to ask ourselves, either consciously or sub-consciously, WIIFM?
OK, we don’t actually ask ourselves the acronym WIIFM, but we do ask ourselves, “What’s In It For Me?”
If you’ve never heard this, or if you don’t believe it’s true, I invite you to do some research on it.
Research shows that it’s true, even for those among us who appear to be saintly.
Rather than think of the question as selfish, I invite you to consider that what is actually happening is that we are asking ourselves, “How does this make my life better?”
Or even a level deeper, “Is the thing being proposed here a winning proposition for me, or a losing proposition for me?”
Posed this way, you are simply saying that you want to engage things that improve your life.
You want to win at the game of life, and the more wins, the better!
I don’t thing that’s selfish. I think that’s smart.
Is Choosing Life the Best Choice, For Me?
“What does preserving the baby’s life mean, for me?”
This is the question going through a woman’s mind, at least subconsciously, when facing an unexpected pregnancy.
Stated another way, “How does preserving this baby’s life help me win at the game of life?”
I have been helping Pregnancy Help Centers with their marketing efforts since 2015, and I have yet to hear any Pregnancy Help Center formulate an answer to that question in a compelling way such that the woman would say, “Oh, now I get it! Yes, I can see how choosing to preserve my baby’s life would make my life better. I can see, and feel, clearly what’s in it for me if I choose that option.”
I admit that I do not have the answer, at least not yet, to a woman’s question, “What does preserving the baby’s life mean, for me?”
My point is that in order to have increased success – as measured by market share – against its competition (Planned Parenthood), the focus of a PHC’s ongoing product development (choose life services), should be singularly focused on answering that woman’s question in a way that leads to a woman saying, “Now I see that what you’re offering me is the best choice for me.”
I believe that, as an industry, if PHCs had been focused the last 50 years on working tirelessly to improve the attractiveness of the “choose life” product vis-a-vis the abortion services product, we would have had Planned Parenthood running scared long ago, and would be winning the market share battle.
For PHCs that want to make the product (choose life services) they offer more attractive to prospective clients (women facing unexpected pregnancies), how might they go about that?
We’ll turn to that tomorrow….
Regards,
Brett