Roll up, roll up: buy my amazing belief suspender.

In the midst of marketing HOMYZE, we are obsessed with getting to know (and find) our customers. We want to know what it is that they are thinking. When? What is most relevant for them at that point in time? What do they really want? How can we give that to them?

And it is comforting to realise that customers are people too! And all of us people, make decisions. And at the end of the day, we want to feel like we made the right decision. So, I had a think about how I make decisions.

I like to read, to listen, to observe. I like to make my own sense of situations. I also like to try things, or in start up parlance — to test hypotheses. But not everyone is like that. Some people are more able to listen to others’ advice without thinking:

What assumptions did they make when they said that. Do they know about contributing factors, X, Y and Z. Especially, Z. That one’s a killer.

One of these traits is not better than the other.

On the plus side (or in my defence), a degree of skepticism is always helpful — things do not happen without questioning the status quo. Unless you think things can be different then you are not going to push to effect the change you desire.

But in the best version of the latter, you have an ability to filter the teachings of others and take only those rules that apply into your accepted wisdom. You’re very lucky! For me, I always feel that it is a leap of faith too far. I really do think that there is no substitute for learning by doing, and giving people the opportunity to fail.

So, each to their own.

But there is a best case scenario. Preferable to both would be Coleridge’s original (verbatim) notion of a “suspension of disbelief”. It is this to which I aspire, and it this which I think characterises the best, most exiciting product innovations out there.

Coleridge stated that a suspension of belief required “a human interest and a semblance of truth” and it is this that entrepreneurs must deliver … to bridge the gap between the extant and otherwise. It is selling suspension of disbelief that allows entrepreneurs to get employees, partners and customers to embark on this journey with them (or to help build the vehicle that facilitates it).

And both these parts are a requirement.

First, there has to be human interest. Or it has to be in the human’s interest. It is a lot easier to sell something if it is sold in a human form. There are many ways in which this can ring true (or 7, if you subscribe to Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots) and they can be applied at both company and product level.

For example, we have the hero’s journey of the startup founder, whose Startup — David — is ready to battle the Goliath of Incumbency[opolis] (as Booker would call it, the ‘Overcoming the Monster’ story-type). For this, the most likely audience is the employee or Co-Founder .. your comrade in arms.

For consumers, we may more often utilise ‘The Quest’ (our journey of discovery has led us to this product Nirvana), or a ‘Comedy’ (the joyful peace of mind that elicits’ ‘Can you believe people still do this any other way?’). In both cases, it is a feeling that is sold — and it appeals to someone based on their own incentives such as exultation or satisfaction. So this in their interest, we are just giving them the opportunity to facilitate their decision.

The second part of this is the ‘semblance of truth’, and it is this with which entrepreneurs (and marketers) may more often wrestle. You should only be selling something that you can deliver (both literally and figuratively).

All entrepreneurs have an ‘end goal’ outcome, but that likely require things that do not yet exist (products, features etc.). The entrepreneur’s ‘semblance of truth’ is giving customers the company’s north star, so that as situations allow, their products will continue to deliver on this guiding principle.

I think most people will have noticed the tendency toward ‘authenticity’, truth and ‘realness’ that permeates marketing today. We less frequently hear products claim to be the ‘best ever’ or recommended by ‘9 out of 10 *insert relevant profession here*’. Now, products try and insert themselves into your conversations (or brands try and engage you in conversation). And personally, I think this is refreshing (but it is also more risky on the brand’s part since to have an interesting conversation, you have to occasionally stray into controversial territory!). A lot of this is a function of the hyper-targeting that can now be done with marketing. It is just a lot easier to find your niche today.

So what does this mean?

Well, for HOMYZE, when we put these things together:

1. Sell something that you can deliver
2. Be real

We get our Company’s core values.

What HOMYZE is actually selling is the fact that our customers will always be treated well. Not just fairly, or appropriately, but actually well.

We have constraints: technology, budget etc. but none of this will affect that we still believe we are the best option out there. And we are doing what we can to reduce these constraints. We think we have the best technology in our market (and we are innovating to expand its parameters more quickly than any of our competitors); and we will hopefully have less limited budget at some point in the future. But no matter what we will try to be the best option available to our customers at any point in time. We operate in a world that is not entirely within our control, but we are honest about this with our customers and this is a longer-term investment in our brand value. We want them to choose HOMYZE, but we want them to choose us based on (more) perfect knowledge. It is this which we believe separates us from competitors. After all, our mission is based on reducing rather than exploiting the knowledge gap that is usually present in the home services and construction industries.

We want to be our customers ‘good decision’.