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Increase your profits by knowing why your customers buy

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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 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 motivators

• To eat and drink – to stay alive!

• To stay warm
• To have shelter
• To be healthy and clean
• To avoid pain
• To ensure general security and protection

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.

About the Author
© Robert Warlow, Small Business Success. Small Business Success is a resource dedicated to helping small business owners be more successful. If you are looking for a regular flow of ideas and tips then subscribe to Small Business Success a free newsletter, which provides you with quick tips, ideas and articles. For more information visit http://www.smallbusinesssuccess.biz

Posted July 24, 2007

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