How to Feel Good in 2013
I was not surprised to find out that my three personal New Year’s resolutions were also listed in the top ten resolutions of all Americans. I was surprised to find out, however, that every resolution on that list had the virtually same core net benefit – it would make the individual feel good.
I had never really thought of “feeling good” as a top driver in my life. How about you? Whether you or I spend our days engaged in loving relationships and fun activities, pursuing careers and financial success or selflessly giving to others, at the end of the day, the core net benefit actually is some variation of feeling good. No wonder James Brown’s 1965 hit song “I Feel Good” still resonates nearly fifty years later.
The thought of feeling good brought to mind a national furniture company that came to me with a vexing problem. While some of their customers had displayed almost fanatical loyalty – one woman spent over $200,000 in one month solely on this company’s furniture to furnish her home – most retailers reported that the company’s various products were steady sellers, but nothing extraordinary. How could they capture this woman’s passion for their products and translate that into a tipping point for sales nationwide?
After extensive research into the company’s core value proposition, we realized that the core net benefit from owning the company’s furniture was that it truly made you feel good. Both retailers and customers alike said the same thing – when they were surrounded by the company’s couches, tables, lighting and accessories, on a pure emotional level, they all inexplicably felt the exact same thing – the company’s furniture made them feel good.
The company seized this core value proposition and leveraged the power of feeling good by focusing on selling “environments” of hand-selected groupings of furniture and accessories rather than individual pieces. That way they could recreate the “feel good” effect of being surrounded by the magic of the company’s creative design. Virtually overnight, retail sales soared from an average of $150 per square foot for products spread across the entire store to over $400 per square foot for the environments of grouped furniture display.
Clearly, “feeling good” is a primary driver in our lives. And, the ability to create a “feel good” environment in our homes is a primary need that when satisfied effectively can have an immediate and dramatic result in generating revenue. In the case of the furniture manufacturer, the only thing they needed to do differently was to convince retailers to alter the selling environment for their products in a way that featured and emphasized their products’ core benefit of feeling good.
The same principle can be applied to increasing your company’s revenues.
Does your company really know the true core benefit that your customers derive from your products or services? If so, are you really featuring and leveraging that benefit in its most effective way, so that you can maximize the revenues you realize from satisfying that core customer need?
