Patterns

Human emotions and needs are immutable. They cross all cultures and all geographical barriers. Marketing is the art of understanding human patterns and behaviors. It assumes you know what you want and then you seek to observe patterns of human actions to see if you have something humans want or need. WANTS are the most powerful. People sacrifice wants for needs all the time. People need education but want a new TV. TV wins. People need good nutrition but want booze and drugs. Booze and drugs win all too often. People need to be slim but want a donut.

Check out this pattern of behavior: the pattern of doing business. Business is simple. Find that need or want. Find a product or service that fills it. See if you can make money on supplying that. Find the customers and find a price that they'll pay.

Don't find the product first and try to foist it off onto people. Clinton Felsted built his business doing exactly the opposite, which is the right pattern. He was doing programming for companies and asked if they needed anything else. They did. He built a program for that and sold it to them. Low cost marketing results.

Sophistication often gets in the way of marketing and business. It loves to over complicate things to make them seemingly more meaningful. But business and marketing are simple as I just described.

When I was in the Soviet Union teaching a ship load of highly acclaimed Soviet business leaders (they were leaders but I must use the term "business leaders" loosely as you'll see), I was trying to help them understand the process of commercializing a product... finding a product, and selling it.

I asked them a simple question: What one thing do you need to have a successful business? They first said money and I said, "no, I've started businesses without money." They said "a great product" and I said, "no, many successful businesses have started with a weak product and managed to transform it to a good one -- see Honda." They said many other things and all were exhibits of their failure to really understand business. When I ask this question to university students I teach, they instantly say, "a customer." Right.

When I finally pulled out of the Soviet's this answer, they shook their head and disagreed. Said one, "in Socialism we make what they need and they must buy it from us." He was right. In the fantasy land that is Socialism, customers are at the bottom of the heap. But in a free market, as I told them they would soon have, customer is king. I explained what I stated above about the simple nature of business.

To illustrate the point I brought up a 17 year old boy from the dock at Gorki (now Nizhny Novgorod) who was selling soldier hats, paintings and dolls. I asked them what his business model was. They managed to state that he did the following:
1. He noticed that tourists were coming and they all wanted souvenirs.
2. He found out the trinkets they wanted and how much they spent.
3. He found suppliers and artisans who would make those items for a price he could afford.
4. He sold the trinkets and made a profit.

I then asked them what I'll ask you: how does this differ from your business model? In all likelihood you'll say it fits about what you do. But the Soviet leaders were horrified to be compared to a young Speculateur! (A really nasty thing to be in a Soviet Socialist land.) Then I horrified them more. I said the only differences between him and them were two fold: he made a profit and didn't live on subsidies, and that the number of zeroes to the left of the decimal were more in their bookkeeping.

After some gentle discussions (I may sound tough but I really nursed them carefully through this so they'd learn), the light finally dawned.

Notice patterns. Follow successful ones.