People don’t buy WHAT you do…
Your ads will be inserted here by
Easy AdSense Lite.
Please go to the plugin admin page to paste your ad code.
… they buy WHY you do it.
That’s one of the main points I’m getting as I’ve started reading Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Most businesses, organizations, and people start with WHAT they do, then they *might* get to HOW they do it, but few really can communicate WHY they do it.
Sinek says that many businesses have no idea why their customers are their customers and why their employees are their employees. There are two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or inspire it.
The transactional mindset of manipulations include the following: “dropping price; running a promotion; using fear, peer pressure or aspirational messages, and promising innovation to influence behavior – be it a purchase, a vote, or support” (p. 17).
These manipulations are not necessarily bad, as long as you understand they only work for the short-term, though. For example, while shopping, if I’m in transaction mode, all things considered, I’ll probably look at price. Then I may think about quality.
The other, more effective way, Simon argues, is to inspire behavior by starting with WHY.
What makes you different?
One challenge that we as individuals or businesses have is how we differentiate ourselves from others. Seth Godin wrote about this years ago in his book Purple Cow and last year in “Linchpin” (video review here).
What makes one .NET programmer different from another?
What makes one customer service representative different from another?
What makes one marketer different from another?
How can someone in a job search effectively communicate this difference? People don’t buy WHAT you do. They buy WHY you do it.
Back to Calling
Simon’s points here echo what Dan Miller talks about in “No More Mondays” with respect to job, career, and vocation. Vocation correlates to WHY you do what you do. Career can correlate to HOW you fulfill that calling (the root word for vocation means “to call out”). A job could be WHAT you do.
It’s worth repeating:
VOCATION connects to WHY
CAREER connects to HOW
JOB connects to WHAT
At any professional gathering, someone asks, “WHAT do you do?” The response is typically what our current job is with an employer. Rarely do we mention WHY.
Check out Simon’s TED talk. (Click here to watch the embedded video.)
Some links above go to affiliate links. If you like what you’ve read here, please use them when you decide to purchase.
Tags: Business, calling, career, Dan Miller, employment, job, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, No More Mondays, Purple Cow, purpose, Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, TED, vocation
