Increase Your Profits by Knowing Why Your Customer's Buy
Robert Warlow
Small Business Success
Whenever you go into a shop or pick up the
phone to place an order, something has prompted you to take action and buy.
Have you ever stopped to consider what that prompt was? What thought went
through your mind, which led to you putting your hand in your purse or
wallet?
It's all down to motivation – what motivates
you to buy. Understanding your motivation and that of your customer's will
help increase sales and profits! So, let's spend some time examining what
motivates people to buy and how you can apply this knowledge to help make
your business more successful.
Motivation – 3 basic drivers
Any
purchase boils down to satisfying a need, want or desire. These are 3
distinct stages. You usually have to satisfy your needs before you can
progress up to wants and desires. Let's have a look at each of them in turn.
Needs
Abraham
Maslow, in his work on needs, highlighted that at the basic level, before we
can consider 'bettering' ourselves, we have a set of requirements that are
essential to survival. The most basic of these needs include food, water,
heat and shelter. This is mass-market appeal, from the big supermarkets down
to your local corner shop. Sell into the 'needs' category and you are
looking at high volume low margin. Other than the odd special promotion, you
rarely see the local shop advertising; they know that they will always get a
core trade because they are satisfying needs (a bottle of milk at 9 o’clock
at night!).
Unless
you have a huge market penetration, you will never make a fortune. Find
another market if you want a high-living lifestyle!
Wants
You're
getting warmer now! You are getting into the realms of people who have
satisfied their basic requirements and can afford to step up the ladder to
satisfy their wants. These are 'nice-to-have' items – not essential but they
make life comfortable. A car, a TV, a CD/DVD player – generally a decent
standard of living. To capture the market of satisfying people's wants you
will have to work a bit harder on two fronts.
Firstly, the customer can take it or leave it. He may not really need it at
the end of the day, so you have to clearly highlight the benefits. Secondly,
there is always someone else offering the same product. In this day and age
you could argue that wants, to many people, have become needs, so there is
an element of mass-market selling in this sector. You are up against many
other businesses offering your product; you have to advertise, make people
chose you over your competition.
You
will make a decent living and create a decent business. But as a reader of
Small Business Success, you should want more than this! To achieve greater
success, you have to find a product that satisfies desires!
Desires
Desires
spring from emotions. Big, profitable sales are achieved on the back of
emotions. Why? Because if someone has a burning desire to satisfy, then
logic more or less flies out of the window! Someone buying on emotion will
pay a high price – excellent profit for you.
If you
are in the business of satisfying desires then you are probably selling
niche products or services, something, which doesn't have mass-market
appeal. You are focused on people who are happy to pay a premium to get what
they want. A businessman's heaven!
Understand the real motivator
Having
identified the 3 buying motivators, the next step to sell effectively to
these groups is to see what the underlying need, want or desire is. Getting
an idea of what drives your customer to buy means you can tailor your sales
message accordingly.
The need motivator
The want motivators
-
To be sociably acceptable – “everyone has one”
-
To look and feel good – sex appeal!
-
To save time or money
-
To improve general comfort levels
The desire motivators
Although some of these can be similar to the want motivators, desire
motivators are more driven by emotion and so the need to achieve is more
passionate – money is almost no object.
-
Sex appeal
-
To improve social standing – not just keeping up with the
Joneses but to be better
-
To demonstrate love
-
To gain prestige or to impress
-
To be popular
-
Regaining a forgotten youth
You can see by comparing the various motivators that selling to the desire
group can be easier and more profitable. They have more money and so you
don’t have to try hard to sell your product. All you have to do is uncover
which motivator is pressing them to consider purchasing and exploit it!
There’s nothing better than being in a niche market.
Steps to take
Here
are the steps you can take:
-
Identify which of the motivators you are out to satisfy –
needs, wants or desires
-
Speak to your customers and find out which of the specific
motivators is driving them to buy
-
Tailor your sales and advertising pitch to match
Spend some time thinking and studying this and you will be richly rewarded.
© Robert Warlow
Small Business Success
www.smallbusinesssuccess.biz
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