Customers buy things for different reasons. Our job as marketers is to understand the needs that motivate customers to take action, including buying action. Brian Tracy outlines 11 needs customers have to purchase something in his book The Psychology of Selling. Once your customer needs are understood, the goal of your marketing and sales efforts become to convince the prospect that your product or service satisfies those needs better than anything else they get in the market and at that price.

Here are the 11 generic customer needs. Which ones does your product or service satisfy enough to trigger a desire to buy?

1.  Money. Does your product or service help customers make or save money? This could be in increasing their sales or profits, or helping to cut costs. This is a very fundamental need that appeals to most people.

2.  Security. According to Brian Tracy, this can be financial, emotional, or physical, and can go beyond just the customers security (for example, if can be for his family’s security). It is a very basic need that appeals to almost everyone.

3.  Being liked. Everyone likes to be respected and liked by others. If your product or service can help improve a customer’s likability, that could improve their need for belonging, self-worth, or improvement in their relationships with others.

4.  Status and prestige. Many customers want to feel important or valuable. A economy-range car fulfils the need to get from point A to point B. However, a luxury sports car not only has the features that make it faster, but also offers customers the ability to improve their social status – they are subtly telling others that they have excess disposable income and are successful.

5.  Health and fitness. Helping others to achieve their health and fitness goals is a really important need. Everyone wants to live longer and enjoy the benefits of a healthy body. There is a lot of money to be made for a product or service that can help people safely lose weight, break unhealthy habits, and improve their overall health.

6.  Praise and recognition. Everyone wants to be recognised for their accomplishments. It is a basic human emotion – and remember, customers buy with their emotions. If your product or service can trigger enough of an improvement for the buyer to receive praise and recognition from friends, family, peers, management, or others, then you have a better chance of selling to him.

7.  Power, influence, and popularity. People are willing to do and buy most things that will enhance their power and influence. Selling a product or service that helps achieve that will arouse a buying desire.

8.  Leading the field. For some people, there is a lot of merit in being a pioneer in something. Being the first to own or use a product or service carries a lot of value. You’ll see some of these early adopters go to great lengths, take considerable risk, and spend a lot of money to be ‘the first’. Early adopters are the ones that stand outside the Apple store waiting for hours and sometimes days to purchase the latest iPhone.

9.  Love and companionship. According to statisticbrain.com, over 75% of single people in the United States have tried online dating. It is a huge industry with annual revenues of well over a billion dollars. Similarly, cosmetics sells in the hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year. What this tells you is that people want love and companionship and will find it in whatever way they can!

10.  Personal growth. Helping people to achieve their development goals is another very powerful buying trigger. If your product or service helps them become more competent, increase their skills, or gets them closer to achieving self-actualisation, then you can generate a desire to purchase.

11.  Personal transformation. This is again a very powerful need that most people have – the need to re-engineer an important part of their work or life. This could be to improve someone’s ability to transition from a negative to a positive mindset, or to show someone how to overcome tough situations in life.

The next time you talk to a prospect, remind yourself of the needs that your product or service fulfils and how to position it clearly so you have a better chance of turning him or her into a paying customer.

 

Ahmed al-Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies to improve their marketing and sales results by offering more effective ways attracting customers and significantly better products and services. Ahmed has worked internationally in marketing, sales, and strategic planning at companies such as the Coca-Cola Company, Philip Morris International and Dell. Questions or comments can be sent to Ahmed on [email protected].

Related Story