A common misconception about your customers is that they know exactly what they want. 


Surprise, they don’t. And they lose money by not doing this.


Your job as a marketer or salesperson isn’t just to sell the product. You might think it’s straightforward: The customer wants a TV, so I sell a TV. This is wrong and I’ll explain why.


Perhaps you recall the famous scene in 'The Wolf of Wall Street' where Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, says 'Sell me this pen' to his colleagues during a dinner. This moment is crucial, as it lays the cornerstone for how to sell anything effectively.


Another example is when a customer comes into a hardware store to buy a drill. What the customer is looking for is a solution to his problem: he needs a hole in his wall.

No one buys a drill because they want it on display in his living room – well maybe someone out there is – but let’s ignore that guy for now.


Here’s where you come in: selling not the drill, but the end result, aka the need.


Don’t start a machinegun word spree firing all kinds of technical specs in the direction of your customer’s ears – they couldn’t care less if the thing has a rotation speed of 310.6 miles per hour – they just want to know: will this thing not break down when it touches the wall and can it make a flawless hole.


That hole is what they NEED, so you’ll sell them on the NEED. 


Let me tell you how you do that.


Turn Dull Everyday Products into New, Exciting, and Rare Items


You sell what people want to buy. If you look at it through this lens you can make everything – and I mean everything – into something exciting and worth buying.


Imagine, you need to market vegetables or fruits, kinda boring innit? Well if you put it that way, yes that’s kinda lame.


But…


What if you target the people who are concerned about their health, who need their body to perform better because they are athletes, and whose brains need to function better because they’re scholars? 


How to make fruits and vegetables cool? SUPERFOODS!


Superfoods? Yes. You create something that sounds new and exciting. Something that has just been discovered – it was there right under our noses but we didn’t know, but now we do – you can now turn yourself into a superhuman with these superfoods, want to buy some?


Way too often you see businesses sell on price. It is the weirdest shit. There is always someone willing to go to almost zero to compete with you, and if you join them, your business will be sinking faster than the Titanic being dragged down by the Kraken himself.


How do you convince your customers to buy what you sell? Let’s dive into it.


Find a Way to Make Them Need it


Sure some people want some coffee and they go to a coffee shop, they’re the ones who need minor convincing, but how do you persuade the others?


You need to place the idea inside their heads and plant a seed so to speak.


Find a way to make them need it, paint the idea that resonates with their situation, and sell them on the need. Are you tired? Need energy? We have nice hot coffee for you inside.


Good to remember: people do not always buy something they want, but they always buy what they need.


If you have never done this, you may think: how can I come up with ideas for this? What does selling a need look like?


Let me help you with that.


How to Come up With Unlimited Ideas 


You are not the first and certainly not the last one that has this question. 


But you’re in luck. 

Because there are unlimited examples all around you, all day, every day. They may not be all the best examples, but if you understand the principle I just taught you, you should be able to turn every product or service from a want into a need.


From now on, you can analyze every offer you see. Everywhere you go there are opportunities. At your local coffee shop, clothing store, bar, or restaurant, they all have something to sell.


You should ask yourself these questions: 

  • What are they selling?
  • How do they try to sell it?
  • Are they selling me features, prices, interest rates, products, ingredients, etc?


After that, you should ask yourself questions like:

  • If I owned it, how would I improve it?
  • How can I sell the need?”


If you do this, you’ll have unlimited practice, and thereby you’ll become familiar with finding ways to turn any product or service into a need. 



What to do now?


When you first start on this journey it can become a long trip with lots of trial and errors. We live and breathe marketing techniques and tactics, it’s our obsession, and it’s all we want to do!


So, if you conclude that this takes too much time or effort for you to do it yourself and you're thinking of delegating it to someone who does this every day, feel free to contact us and see if we’re a match. 


Contact us at here


ps. If you want more tips on how to improve your marketing feel free to read our blog

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