People buy what they want, not what they need.
I was in a brainstorming session with a client, and we got into this conversation about wants vs needs.
In business and sales, understanding client behaviour is the key to success.
A common misconception is that clients buy what they need. However, the truth is that people don't buy what they need; they buy what they want.
Case Study:
When I was the country manager for Ruckus Wireless (a Wi-Fi company), we had an excellent opportunity to sell Wi-Fi solutions to the largest mobile operator in New Zealand. We focused on selling them how our outdoor Wi-Fi access point has the best reach and can seamlessly handover mobile phone connections from Wi-Fi to the mobile network. All the technical innovation was good stuff, but we were not getting any traction.
After multiple conversations and meetings with various stakeholders and the wider team, we realised we were selling what they needed but not what they wanted.
The problem was that they would be late upgrading the network from 3G to 4G. With the competitive mobile landscape, they fear that subscribers will cancel and the company will lose market share, impacting not only revenue but also the publicly listed company's market valuation.
Our client wants to neutralise the impact of being late in the 4G upgrade.
So we returned to our whiteboard and packaged our proposal as a "Community Wi-Fi" where every subscriber gets 1 GB of free data daily.
Long story short, we won a multi-million dollar deal and installed thousands of Wi-Fi access points nationwide. And our client not only retained their existing subscribers, they gained new clients and increased their brand loyalty.
How's that for the books?
Let's summarise:
Understand what your client wants. To do this, you need to identify what problem they want to solve or if there is something they want to achieve.
Once we know what our clients want, package and build the proposal how they want it. This involves tailoring your products or services to match what they want to solve or achieve.
Lastly, remember that people buy when the conditions are right. Even when the product is the same, sales results can vary wildly if the buying environment doesn't match people's preferred messaging or action.
In conclusion, understanding the difference between wants and needs and how to leverage this understanding can significantly influence your sales success.
What do you think? Let me know!
📺Webinars
I will host two webinars coming up, and I would love for you to join! 😊 If you have registered, I am looking forward to meeting you!
A 30-minute webinar titled "How to Win High-Value Enterprise Deals" on the 23rd of May (NZST).
⚡️Also, a Lightning Lesson with Maven on "Value Proposition that Win Deals".
Both will be recorded. If the time zone doesn't work for you, we will send you the recording.
⛰️I am off to Tongariro Crossing this weekend! It's my first time exploring the Alpine, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well!
I hope you can take time to unwind and reset in the beauty of the outdoors. It's such a soul-soothing experience.
Thank you for being here!
Ren💜
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