Integrity Selling Point #3: Understanding People's Wants or Needs

Ron Willingham says: "Understanding people's wants or needs must always precede any attempt to sell." See Integrity Selling; How to Succeed in Selling in the Competitive Years Ahead (New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. xv.

Not understanding this risks making Todd Duncan's sales mistake #6: Arguing, not understanding the customer before trying to sell him or something., is that sales is something you do with someone not to someone. You always have to base your selling efforts on knowing what your customer needs and wants.

But I think Willingham glides over this point a little too easily. Wants and needs are separate. A need is something that a person requires as determined by a third party. A want is a perceived need and is determined by the person.

Example: My teenage son comes to me and says, "Dad, I need a car." I ask him why he needs a car. He says, "I need to get to school, and all the guys have cars." Never mind that we live across the street from the school and only two kids, each of whom lives several miles away from school and have after-school jobs not near a bus line and have gotten special permission to drive rather than take the bus. He doesn't "need" a car, he "wants" a car. Result: I buy him no car.

Now consider this: My son comes to me and says "I need a suit," even though he's never won anything by jeans and t-shirts in his life. I ask him why he needs a suit, he says "I have a job interview." Okay, he needs a suit. Hence I buy him a suit.

But, this difference aside, always understand the person before you try to sell him anything.

What do you think about this? Post a comment to this blog.

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.