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No matter what you want to do to be successful, everything you do to be successful requires you to either satisfy needs and wants of others or create demand in which case you’re still satisfying others’ demands or needs and wants.
What is “Demand”? The idea is, you’re appealing to others. Sometimes these are very subtle and sometimes the most subtle things can have the most positive or negative effect. Sometimes these could be very difficult to do. Some classic examples would be: Through ads, through customer satisfaction and Dating or Marriage.
What are Needs & Wants? “Needs” = food, clothing or shelter and “wants” = something that someone desires.
We will focus on “Demands” because it’s very precise in the economics and attributes of the product, the characteristics of the individual and what brings on the desire or that demand to have that product at that price. Most companies will teach their people to sell on emotion, the “want”. If you want to immune yourself from that try this practice that’s worked well for most people, if you see something that you like, always walk out and think about it the next day. By walking out, at least 95% of the time you’ll realize that you really didn’t want that product. You were being sold on emotion. By the way, almost nobody goes back and returns things that’s why they’re always guaranteeing the return policy.
Let’s look at subtle effects of the classic examples mentioned above:
- Ads: The success or lack thereof preventing people from smoking. They focus on health problems – that has nothing to do with why young people demand cigarettes. They never think that this will ever happen to them. Interestingly enough Phillip Morris was successful in that they targeted the image, comradery – they made it undesirable. “Demand is an individual process.” If you have a product out there, you have to think about the group or the person that wants to buy your product. You want to make sure that you focus on their needs & demands not what you think is important. What people care about is what that product can do for them.
- Customer Satisfaction: The customer’s perception of quality. Using Dan McFadden’s measurement techniques, I extended it and applied it to a new area, how the service writer made you feel blew away a lot of the negative things that may have been done to your vehicle. The way the service writer treated you was actually more important than getting your car fixed. Since they showed compassion to you and made you feel listened to, you may feel that they tried their best and can just about forgive any errors.
- Dating or Marriage: In a small area of the store were men’s and women’s magazines. Most men were leafing through the men’s magazines, I was browsing through the women’s magazines. Why? I was doing market research! Most women’s magazines teach women to never meet a guy at the bar. Same goes true for a marriage – think about it as customer satisfaction – listen, build trustworthiness, honesty and make them feel that there’s no one more special than they are. That’s what it’s all about.
When you look at this from an economic perspective, it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about dating, marriage, customer service or creating demand for your product they all have the same concepts that all wrap into demand.
“If you want to immune yourself from that try this practice that’s worked well for most people, if you see something that you like, always walk out and think about it the next day. By walking out, at least 95% of the time you’ll realize that you really didn’t want that product.”
Once you get good enough at this, you don’t even have to walk out. Just walk out “mentally” – or in other words, imagine how you’ll feel a day from now after you bought the thing. Will I still be using the thing? Will I even give a damn about the thing? No? Well I won’t buy it then.
I barely buy anything anymore because I do this!
Very well said and done, Mark. Over time, you do largely walk out in your mind. Hope others heed your advice! We actually never make an exception so all emotion is eliminated and any decision is made in our own environment, usually home, not the sales floor. If it really sounds great and may even seem to replace something or save money, it will be there tomorrow. It’s somewhat like the blackjack dealer, they follow a simple rule and never deviate.