PULL isn't a "rational argument" (in defense of "Me-search")

Me-search beats market analysis for finding customer pull

Rob Snyder argues that the analytical lens business schools and sales books teach is the wrong tool for the one question that matters most, what is going on in a customer's mind. Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science convinced him that business treats buyers as defective machines that a good enough offer will close. Since you cannot see inside another head, the way in is analogy, starting with your own purchasing stories. That foundation is small, maybe one percent of business knowledge, but Snyder says everything else rests on it.

Takeaways

• Me-search beats analysis for finding pull. Snyder read Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science and concluded the analytical lens business people use is wrong for figuring out what customers want or what their pull is. He is always looking for ways to find pull faster.
• Business treats customers as defective machines. Sales and business books treat customers as machines needing instruction manuals, Snyder says, assuming a customer who sees 10x ROI would be illogical not to buy. The framing cannot work.
• Behavioural economics is irrelevant to why people buy. Snyder says behavioural economics and its biases describe a rational mind and deviations from it, which makes none of it relevant. The host studied economics through business school and heard the same analytical framing throughout.
• The customer's mind holds up everything else. Understanding what is in a customer's mind is maybe one percent of business knowledge, Snyder says, and it holds up all the other pieces. His case study factory, the only way to grow as fast as possible, rests on it.
• A rational founder cannot explain non-buyers. Snyder is helping a startup whose founder he calls the most rational business thinker he has met. The founder is bewildered that customers do not buy what will save them money, so Snyder interviews people who did not buy.
• Analogy is the only route into a mind. You cannot see inside someone else's mind, so understanding another person works by analogy, which Snyder traces to Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Your own purchase stories are the raw material.

How to run me-search on yourself

1. Start with a big purchase and walk through the story. What was your situation, how was it changing, what drove you to act rather than do nothing, and why you chose that option.
2. Move to subtler purchases and then to actions you take. Snyder uses his Honda CRV, a car he never wanted and was pushed into, yet at the dealership he would have done anything to leave with it.
3. Ask people you expected to buy for 15 minutes about why they did not. Snyder says you see how small and irrelevant your logical argument was in context.