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Sales Success Tip-Does Your Prospect Have a Need or a Want?

Written by: Greg Beverly

Article Overview: Understanding the difference between a need and a want will cause your conversion rate to soar!

Sales Success Tip-Does Your Prospect Have a Need or a Want?

Ask yourself this question…how many things are on your current "need to do" list? How long have they been there?

Here's a part of mine: I need to pressure wash my deck. I need to trim the tree in my front yard. I need to organize my ipod so that my music and educational programs are more accessible. I need to clean off my desk. I need to clean out the garage. Each of these items has been on my "need to do list" for quite a while.

However, yesterday I wanted to take the afternoon off, go for a bike ride and then hit the pool when I got home. So, I did. My guess is that your life and your priorities are similar. They may not contain the same items on the list, but I'll bet your list of "needs" stays static much longer than your "wants" list.

What does any of this have to do with sales? Just this, but it is very important, so pull up a chair and listen very carefully. Your prospects will buy what they want, not what they need.

Here's a real world example. Several years ago, while I was still under the delusion that once a prospect knew what they needed to do, they would do it, I visited with a business owner recently who had called me to inquire about sales training for his staff. He was spending thousands a month on lead generation and was getting good traffic, but his sales were stagnant. In other words, his staff was failing to convert the new traffic into sales. Once we tested his results for a week and it became apparent that his staff was failing miserable in converting the leads into sales, he readily admitted that he "needed" to provide them with some training. He himself must have told me five times during the conversation that he "needed" to go forward with the training.

Yet, he never did. Instead, he spent $7500 on a new phone system for his office. Can you guess how much that helped his conversion rate? Sadly, today, that phone system belongs to someone else.

Bottom line, for whatever reason, he "wanted" a new telephone system, although he certainly didn't "need" it. Actually, all it did was provide a hole for him to flush his money down. Had I known then what I know now, I would have known that even though he "needed" my service, he hadn't yet decided that he wanted it, therefore, I lost and so did he. It was my job to help him come to that conclusion through effective questioning, something I had yet to master.

What do you want? Increased sales, increased commissions, a bigger bank account? Maybe, maybe not. If you really wanted it, you would be taking steps to get it. Are you, or are you like the 97% who know they "need" to do things to improve their life, but they never really get around to it.

You can learn from my mistakes. Understand the difference between "wants" and "needs" and learn the questioning process you need to use to turn that need into a want and you will see your sales soar!

Related Articles
  Sales Call Objective
  Prospecting Sales, How does it Work?
  Getting to the Real Decision Maker
  Why this Common Sales Mistake is Costing You More Sales than You Realize
  Eight Steps to Nailing a Sales Call

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