Your buddy sells exercise equipment in a retail store. He's giving his consumer prospect a presentation of an elliptical machine that has been one of his favorites.

He tells his prospect that the machine is one of the highest rated elliptical machines according to many personal trainers. He explains how well this machine is manufactured, and how well the manufacturer designs their products. He gives a thorough presentation about what all the buttons and gadgets do, and he even tells his customer that his parents own this exact same machine.

After spending fifty minutes with his customer, the prospect walks out the door after he announces that he wants to see what other options are available to him. Argh...

Why Didn’t The Prospect Buy?

Customers choose to buy particular products and services from particular sources for many different and unique reasons.

Identifying the specific reasons a prospect will spend money with you is one of the major factors in determining the degree of selling success you attain. Top sales performers don’t guess why a customer will buy, but instead determine exactly why he would buy, and then tailor their sales presentations accordingly.

Why didn't the customer in our sales scenario buy? Because the salesperson's presentation wasn't tailored to the specific needs of the shopper.

The fact that the salesperson’s parents owned this machine simply didn't matter to the prospect. All the talk about quality barely registered on the prospect's buying radar. And the prospect wasn't impressed with the computer controls on the machine because he believed they were a waste of money.

The Need to Feel Pampered

This is what the salesperson failed to learn about his prospect:

The customer had lost 95 pounds by exercising and eating mindfully over a two-and-a-half year period. At the beginning of his weight-loss quest, he had promised himself a new exercise machine when he reached his initial weight goal of 300 pounds.

After all, the treadmill that helped the prospect lose all that weight was a vintage model he had picked up three years ago at a garage sale. It had accomplished exactly what it was supposed to do: get its user fit. But now that the customer had met his first weight-loss goal, it was time to reward himself for his tremendous accomplishment. This reward would not take the form of an ice cream sundae or a steak dinner, but instead a new exercise machine that would help the prospect lose even more weight (and gain ever-increasing physical health) in the coming months.

What was the prospect’s macro-need for this purchase? The prospect wanted to feel pampered.

He felt he earned that pampering after thirty months of dedication and hard work. And who wouldn’t feel the same way given the same circumstances?

Specific versus Standard

The salesperson was unable to identify this rich and valuable information when the customer visited his retail store. He saw a big guy standing before him, and therefore gave his standard big guy elliptical machine presentation. He's given that presentations dozens of times. He sprinkled his product presentation with health and fitness tips and facts about exercise physiology. He told the customer that he was certain that the customer would love the elliptical machine. The salesperson was so busy presenting that he forgot to ask questions to his customer to find out what his buying motivations were.

Not only would it have been important for the salesperson to identify the prospect's need to feel pampered, but the salesperson should have taken on a pampering attitude in interacting with the prospect. Wouldn't it have been wise for the salesperson to make a big deal of his prospect’s successful weight loss behavior during his presentation? The prospect wanted and deserved that. Connection with prospects in a sincere and genuine way should be the goal of every salesperson everywhere.

The Importance of Questions

Carefully conceived questions would have helped the prospect verbalize his needs and share information about his situation. That information would have been fuel in the sales engine. But as it turned out, the sales engine never got revved up that day in the exercise equipment store.

Not all customers buy because they want to feel pampered, but some do. Salespeople who sell jewelry and luxury automobiles and cruises deal with these customers all the time.

But what about salespeople who sell hardwood flooring, or custom closets, or ATVs?

Yes, many customers who purchased these items (and hundreds of other products and services) made their decision to buy based upon their need to pamper themselves. Take the customer who has tolerated yellowed vinyl flooring in her kitchen for twenty years wakes up one day and decides that it’s time to treat herself to a new ceramic tile floor, so she does. Or, the woman who has been storing her sweaters in cardboard boxes on her guest bedroom floor that gets an unexpected bonus at work and quickly decides to invest in a new closet system in her master bedroom closet. Or, the outdoorsman with aging knees who buys an ATV so he can spend more time exploring the outdoors that he loves. All these customers made the decision to purchase based upon their need to feel pampered.

Is your selling radar tuned in to your prospects' potential need of being pampered?

Selling to Needs

To advance your sales performance, identify the macro-needs of your prospects, and then present to them. If, through probing and investigation, you are able to determine that a particular prospect has a need to feel pampered, then make sure your prospect comprehends exactly how your product or service will meet that need.

Salespeople that identify needs big and small are far more likely to close the sale than salespeople who give generic presentations to their prospects.