Through my many years in the sales profession and my unofficial observations of human behavior I have found one fact to be true. People often worry about their needs. They think about the future consequences that they may suffer if they cannot find a way to fulfill these needs, but they rarely act upon them. Conversely, people take action when they find something they want. For some reason, the urgency of a desire is greater than that of a need; the masters of the selling game know this instinctively.
Take the following example: Paul is trying to sell a life insurance policy to a prospect. The prospect contacted him a few weeks ago and told him about how much he needed to sign a policy. He talked about his wife and children and how they had no plan in case of his untimely passing. But since that initial conversation, Paul has been unable to get his prospect to actually sign up. Paul had an appointment with the prospect where he went over figures and plans and was surprised when he said he needed to think about it. They have had several conversations since but his prospect has still stalled the actual sign up.
If his prospect had already told Paul how much he needed to secure life insurance for his family, why was it taking him so long to act? His wife’s income is not sufficient to support the family, they have a mortgage of over 80% of the value of their home and their three children are still quite young. He needs to ensure his wife could survive financially without him, he needs to ensure their mortgage would be paid off if he ever passed away, he needs to ensure that his children would be well taken care of no matter what. He needs all of these things but the consequences of not having them lay far off in the future in some distant place that doesn’t have much effect on the present.
Should Paul’s prospect see more urgency in this need, for example, watching these consequences take effect in someone else life, it may move him into action. Perhaps if he were to receive a phone call from a relative needing to borrow money because, without her husband, she can no longer pay the bills, he would be able to see the situation in present terms.
So what should Paul do? Wait until a close relative of his prospect’s passes away? No. He should seek to turn his proposal from something his prospect needs into something he wants. Create that urgency himself without waiting for some third party circumstance to do it. He should also move from speaking about facts and logic to speaking about emotion and feelings.
When Paul masters the language that can bring urgency to his proposal, he will learn how to turn his product or service from a need to a want. This will increase his performance as he will find that people will act upon their wants while they only worry about their needs.
Alvin Day is a Sales Training and Personal Empowerment coach who has helped many sales professionals reach and exceed their goals. For more on Alvin Day’s Sales Training tools and resources visit www.theultimatesalesmanual.com.