I was listening to an Audible book recently during my drives to and from the office …

And a particular moment really caught my attention,

Made me think about the way many businesses try to create new customers.

The book is “The Stand In”

Fun listen, pretty light.

Professional curiosity drew me in at the beginning, because I found the writer does a good job of capturing some real human behavior.

Deep flawed features which most of us experience at some point.

Anyway

The story is about a single woman living in a big city.

You see her live a pretty normal life, working a 9-5, wishing she could do a little more with herself, hating her job, etc.

On the inside the author digs into this person’s desire to enjoy life but also stay in the background.

She doesn’t want to be famous or get noticed. She wears drab clothes. Takes jobs that shouldn’t get a lot of attention. She just wants to live a happy comfortable life.

But,

Turns out she looks a lot like a famous celebrity …

And that celebrity, who is vastly overwhelmed by attention and obligations, finds our hero and offers her a lot of money to be the celebrity’s secret body double at public events.

(Ok this isn’t the most delicious literary work, but stay with me … this echos how people often behave when it comes to buying products/services)

There’s a moment…

Our hero character’s reaction to this offer is a resounding “hell no!”

Why would she want to put herself in a position which she could never see herself in, which scares the daylights out of her, etc…

She meets up with her best friend, they break out the wine, go over all the possibilities, agree it's a bad idea, and that should be the end of it.

And the next morning, she sees a text from this celebrity, thanking her for accepting the offer.

Bewildered she looks at her texts and then she realizes ..

“OH NO! I had wine courage last night and said yes!”

First of all, I love the phrase “Wine Courage” because it illustrates so well those moments …

But secondly,

I realized.

This is what most marketing tries to do.

It tries to get you to the point where you have “Wine Courage” in order to push you into a decision.

Not that you’re literally getting drunk.

But rather that you’re being pushed into a position where you make a decision you wouldn’t normally make.

I look at situations like this and think …

Without the heightened and manipulated emotion … would the prospect still buy?

Or are they being pushed into a decision outside of their normal behavior?

What happens in the short AND long term when your business relies on people making decisions outside of their normal behavior?

Obviously this works (or has worked) to a certain degree.

Plenty of business has been built on this approach.

I'm not even saying this is wrong (I just think there are more effective ways to build business in the long term these days)

But what if, instead of pushing people to make a decision outside of their normal behavior …

You lead them to a place where their normal behavior is in alignment with making that decision?

Which do you think is more powerful in the long run?

Which would you rather do in your own business?