95% of decisions take place in the unconscious mind*

With somewhere between 50 and 90%+ of new product introductions failing, you’d have thought we’d have come up with a better way to improve the odds of success. Trouble is, innovators seem to keep making the same mistakes: ask the customer what they want, make it and watch them ignore it. Many I meet don’t even bother talking to customers but bring their shiny new thing to market with visionary zeal with little or no understanding of the customer.

We’ve known about the role of the unconscious mind for decades but some reason management teams don’t seem to have changed their modus operandi. The cosy reassurance of research studies, the building or expensive technologies and the hiring of sales and marketing help all without understanding customers is simply a recipe for disaster.

Yet there is something you can do about it, it just requires a different approach. Most importantly, stop asking daft questions about future intentions to buy new things – customer responses are rarely accurate. In fact, any attempt to get their conscious mind to explain decision making is fundamentally flawed. Rather, get to know them in other ways. Hang out where they do, observe their  behaviour, watch their online conversations and talk to them intelligently about the jobs they perform, their dissatisfactions with the way perform it and get them to help you build the thing that’ll ring their bells. This is better for them, better for teams and better for investors.

*from “How customers think”, Gerald Zaltman

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