Need More Needs? Finding People Who Are Willing To Buy.

I am solid believer that I can sell anything to anybody, if this someone only has a need of what I am selling. The hardest part of the sale is to find someone who has the need I can satisfy.

Does this sound familiar to you? Always wanted to meet someone who is buying your full range of products? Ever won the lottery?

Let’s take a look of the need in general. There are two kinds of need – needs with a saturation point and needs driven by greed, jealousy and fear – with no saturation. Luckily for us, but unfortunately for mankind, needs in a B2B environment are the latter one.

Let me show it to you from a different perspective:

Let’s say we run into each other at your favorite bar and I invite you to a shot of alcohol, a beer, glass of champagne or a cocktail. Now I give you the choice: Take 1 glass of whatever appeals to you and be happy; or take 100 glasses of the same, which you have to drink in front my eyes. Unless you are a hopeless alcoholic, it is unlikely that you will drink hundred glasses of whatever I buy you. The pure volume of liquid won’t be easy to handle in the fist place. There is a natural saturation when you are no longer thirsty. Or even worse, once your are hopelessly drunk you pass out half way. Like often said, too much of something great is no longer great. Once the natural need reached it’s saturation, the need is fulfilled.

But if I offer you the choice between 1 golden coin or a hundred golden coins, it is safe & easy to predict that you take the hundred. In fact, you would take a thousand, if you could carry them. There is no limit. Money has no limit. The more we have, the better it seems. In the business world we call it profit.

The need for profit makes the world go around. It is based on greed. It has no saturation and no limit. This need also works in the reverse, the fear of loss. The opposite mechanism – the more we lose the worse it is.

Besides greed and fear another human instinct is often overlooked when studying buying motives – status. At your last class reunion, were comparing yourself and your achievements to the achievements and lives of your class mates? You all had the same dreams and maybe similar starting conditions. However, someone who had been less popular in school became a self made millionaire, while the guy with all the girls made it nowhere.

In a different perspective: No matter how well we do, instead of feeling great, happy and satisfied, we rather change the level of comparison. No longer we look at our class mates, we start comparing ourselves to the entire school, the business community, the country or even globally.

We are constantly comparing, and so are our clients and prospects. Businesses are run by human instincts. Status can also be expressed in shareholder value or market share, which refers back to money and profit.

Greed, fear of loss & status are our friends of finding a NEED.

When presenting the features and benefits of the product you are selling, are you going all the way to the foundation of the core need? Does your offer help saving money (greed)? Does it increase revenue (greed)? Does it prevent losing money (fear)?

Many sales professionals are presenting features.

„This machine has twice the output“
„The fuel consumption is only half compared to your current car“
„You will receive more clicks on your website“
„The platinum credit card is more exclusive“

and so on.

Don‘t assume that your prospect is smart enough to calculate the benefit to himself – pin point him down to the core need. After all, greed, fear and status make the world go around.

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