There are four reasons why someone buys something from you:
1. It makes them money
2. It saves them money
3. It solves a problem
4. It fulfills a need
As you go through your learning activities–building the relationship, establishing rapport and credibility with your clients, you must discover and know what their motivation is for buying from you. This requires you knowing how they envision your product or service supports that motivation. If you don’t know what that is, you don’t know enough to close the deal.
An effective sales professional takes the time to learn about what drives and motivates their customers and prospects. Through effective listening and learning and more listening, the customer will begin to identify their issues, challenges and needs in their business (B2B sales) or their life (consumer selling). Once this information has been effectively and diligently collected, the true sales professional can effectively focus their conversation on how their product offering fulfills the specific motivational need. One cannot sell to what they want the motivation or the benefit to be. You can only sell to the motivational behaviors of the buyer. Understanding what that is requires taking the time to learn and identify what the customer’s motivational needs are first.