In this episode of the Savage Marketer Podcast:
Doug Harrison was the founder of the Harrison Group, which he established in 1996, and where he served as CEO. The Harrison Group was a research and consulting company that became the leading resource for monitoring the hearts, minds, and spending of the wealthy and affluent populations around the world. The Survey of Affluence and Wealth has clients in the travel and hospitality, automotive, financial services, retail, professional services, and digital media industries receive branding, targeting, customer service training, and portfolio guidance from dedicated teams.
Doug helped formulate a groundbreaking study of ultra-wealth that has reshaped the way leading companies like Coca-Cola, Amazon, and Microsoft target critical audience.
Savage Marketer Key Discussion:
Doug Harrison: The big companies, the top affliction that I run into is what I characterize as the self-absorbed. And the self-absorbed are individuals that they've done the work on their brand, usually there's a value proposition, there's like three pillars that support the brand. And I call those my three shiny apples. And the three shiny apples, the salespeople all get trained on it. They walk into their clients or prospects, and they're like, here, I'm this, come see what I have, come see my three shiny apples. And what they don't realize is that the customer is actually looking at the basket of apples. And the customer is looking for one bad apple that they can see from any place that they can learn about it because if I can find one bad apple, chances are there's a whole bunch of additional bad apples underneath. And so, people will just reject the entire proposition. Because another mistake companies make is they think that people are out trying to buy stuff. And the reality is people are out trying not to buy stuff. What they do first and foremost is they manage risk. And so, while sellers are thinking about their selling benefits and why they should have it, they need to spend as much time thinking about the risk elements they pose to their customers, because it only takes one risk element to wipe out a whole bunch of positive benefits.
Jeff J Hunter: So in other words, the self-absorbed is, they're thinking about how amazing they are. They're not thinking about what the customer thinks about their risk.
Doug Harrison: Exactly. One of the things that we've learned about great brands is great brands have four qualities. The first is that they're masters of the category in which they operate. It's clear they understand what they do, they do it incredibly well, they're masters. The second quality of a great brand is they're clear and their customers are clear on the deal terms or the value proposition that they provide. The third element is that there's inherent scarcity. That you just can't get this anywhere, so figuring out what you're clear about what is scarce about the proposition you offer. And then the fourth is that there's consistency. And the consistency kind of goes into my bad apple example because individuals are gonna learn everything they can learn everywhere that they're gonna look. And the question is will they draw a consistent conclusion of excellence about you? Or are they gonna see things that are like, hmm, risk element, I'm out!
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