This post is a synopsis of my lecture today in my three entrepreneurship classes.
It is widely recognized that a product/service must induce emotional engagement by a customer for a sale to occur. Seems simple enough an idea, but in practice it is quite challenging to achieve. Many would say that if you solve a customer problem, you will generate sufficient emotional engagement for a sale. Solving the customer problem is necessary, but not sufficient--especially in a competitive market.
One way to think about emotional engagement is the increasingly popular Golden Circle. Simon Sinek popularized this technique in his Ted Talk in 2009 where he discusses a three-part communications strategy of why-how and what. Personally, I like the fact that a process was being applied to understand emotional engagement and communicate it, but the talk, despite its popularity, was insufficient for me to be able to apply it until recently.
The hard part of the Golden Circle is picking the "why". Everybody can answer the "what"--the product or service--and "how" is also straight forward. The "why" is the key to achieving that comparative advantage in emotional engagement.
Fortunately a recent Fast Company story, "Want Your Kickstarter To Work?", provides such an excellent example of the "why" that even I now get it. Make sure to watch the video in the article, where the concept of "why" is beautifully illustrated.