My sister and her family came to visit from Ohio. They’re Catholics and very right wing. They live on a farm and have guns and shoot varmints.

They home-school their children and have a goat share where they sell shares of a goat in exchange for a certain amount of goat milk each month. They do this to get around a law prohibiting the sale of unpasturized milk.

My sister tells me with grim seriousness “Oh you don’t understand…Obama is a bad bad man…he’s not who you think he is. He’s not a Christian.”

Wow, seriously? Now I know what you might be thinking. My sister and her family are uneducated people from the back woods - Deliverance types - but that isn’t the case. The reason they moved to Ohio is so my sister’s husband could complete his PHD degree in applied mathematics. He works on defense stuff for the government.

Can you see what’s happening here. Their world view (as is all of ours) is shaped by their basic needs for survival. It’s easy to see in my sister and her family because their views are so strong.

Their family’s perceptions, are of course, influenced by the worldview of the people with whom they surround themselves. They just happened to land in a part of Ohio that was a perfect incubator for strengthening the views they already had.

Mike is finishing his PHD at the Air Force Institute of Technology. We can assume he is surrounded by other defense minded people.

Ohio is also one of those states particularly hard hit by the economy so naturally, there is also the tendency to blame government.

There are a number of other homeschoolers and farmers nearby.

See how this works. These are just simple (animal) human behaviors to meet our basic needs.

For instance, Ann and Mike have five children. We could make the case that their radical worldview makes them more attractive towards one another and therefore satisfies our basic human need to procreate.

We can also look at their Obama/government sentiments as a fight or flight response to perceived threats. They’ve witnessed many neighbors (other animals in the herd) lose their jobs (livelihood and ability to provide food - survival) and are of course influenced by this.

Their radical Catholicism can also be seen as a response to perceived threats. Perhaps in this case it boils down ultimately to fear of the unknown. And…since you can’t run from death your only alternative is to fight back with the way to eternal life.

Their radical beliefs also ally them with others in their herd which is another basic human/animal need. We need to be connected to others for many reasons protection, esteem, validation, etc… This radical belief system unites them against common enemies ie. Obama, the Devil, Non Believers, Sinners, Foreigners etc…

Yup…even the goat share boils down to these basic needs. Other people in their herd are doing it - shouldn’t they? We see this over and over again. Look at gangs, political groups, “The Joneses.”

Remember when you would get in trouble growing up and say something like “well mom…Tommy and Jimmy were doing it too” and your mother would say something like “well if Tommy and Jimmy jumped off a cliff would you follow them too.” Of course you said no. But the reality is that if we are surrounded by people doing certain actions we are likely to do them too. You can disagree all you want but the science says you will.

So what am I getting at here? Bringing it back to sales and marketing. It’s all about persuasion. What have we just been doing? Looking at the demographic and psychographic profile of one possible market. Yes, even my sister and her family buy things. Foods mostly and lots of that Trader Joes Gluten free stuff.

Anyhow, persuading your target market or customers to buy your products or vote for your candidate or do whatever it is you want them to do comes from understanding basic instincts and the emotions that trigger them.

How do we do this? Perception - emotion. Seriously, things aren’t about reality they’re about perception.  Few people live in the present. We are thinking about the past and the future. We persuade by awakening past regrets, future threats, or painting pictures of how rosy the future looks with our product.

Finally, in order to do this we need to be consistent and persistent.

Now, go ahead and do what everyone else does and don’t leave a comment.

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