Why should it matter that you know why people buy from you?

The “why” matters because the reason people buy influences the way you sell and market your product or service. 

There are always at least 2 reasons people buy: internal reasons and external reasons. 

Let’s say you’re a web designer. The external reason people come to you is because they want a new website; however, the internal reason is the way the external reason makes them feel. Your prospect may be losing sleep over how to fix the site and make it drive more sales. Losing sleep and worry are the internal reasons.

When you understand that people buy from you for both internal and external reasons, then you won’t start out a sales call by presenting your company’s technical qualifications. What your prospect needs first is for you to ask them good questions about their goals, so you can know their internal and external reasons for what brought them to you. You can talk about your own qualifications later. Don’t start with you. Start with them.

One of my team members tells the story of a friend of hers in the mid 90s showing a early laptop to her elderly parents and all he talked about was pixels, speed, and storage because that’s what mattered to him. Those things didn’t matter to her parents and it was language they didn’t know. The conversation was way over their heads! Needless to say, they didn’t rush out and get a laptop. Had he thought more about his audience, he might have shared about word processing to keep up relationships over the miles. Maybe they would have seen the usefulness of a laptop for their own needs.

When our selling starts with our buyer’s internal and external needs, there is nothing manipulative or sleazy about it. When what we offer meets those needs, It’s good for both parties and that’s the virtuous way we always want to conduct business.