The Only Question That Matters

Even in the most disparate categories and business models, all enterprises share an overarching critical need: how to provide a more valuable answer than competitors to the one question that ultimately drives decision-making and action for target audiences.

What’s in it for me?

When individuals and groups have multiple viable options, irrespective of their decision-making process, it always comes down to calculating relative win. And as straightforward and empowering the notion of most valuable win may be, identifying the necessary singleminded “what’s in it for me/us" is almost always a hit or miss undertaking.

The good news: there are always underlying dynamics which, when properly understood, can be used to create a framework for determining an organization’s most potent answer; a map that, with exceptional discipline, clarity, and precise articulation, leads to a more compelling and catalytic answer than competitors'.

In choice-rich conditions, a product, service or other core output’s “functional benefit” – the central tangible win it can provide – is almost never, on its own, a sufficiently motivating answer to achieve critical objectives, no matter how excellent or competitively superior the benefit may be. In B2C you can never win competitive races on functionality alone. The same holds true in a wide range of B2B settings - even when functional wins play a more heavily weighted role.

Businesses today almost always operate in environments where intended audiences have abundance of choice. Increasingly, an overabundance.

To become and remain a leader, in addition to exceptional tangible benefits, the product, service, experience, and organization has to provide exceptional intangible benefits – emotional and psychological wins that go hand in hand with functional ones. Not surprisingly, given the breadth of choices potential customers have in almost all categories, the role of intangible benefits as decision drivers continues to grow in importance.

By identifying, articulating, and seamlessly linking the most valuable-to-customers intangible wins that can be promised and delivered, with its central tangible one, a structured, multidimensional, and highly actionable guide to the most compelling “what’s in it for them” answer emerges. It creates a lens through which to confidently and cohesively shape all elements that key audiences, external and internal, will encounter and experience – from product, service, or program interfaces and use, to aspects as seemingly ephemeral as how individuals feel about having made what they believe is a smart decision.