By the Ocean
Breezy 76 Degrees
5:39 a.m.
How do you make a prospective buyer want what you have?
You don’t. This is the goal business owners pursue when they don’t know any better. They read books about persuasion. They take courses about selling. They look at the experts and try to dissect those approaches.
“How do I make them want what I have?” is the wrong question.
- “What do they want already?” is the right question.
- “How do I position what I have as a vehicle for them to get what they want already?” is the next right question.
Trying to change a human is a fool’s game. Humans change only when they want to. You can’t “make” anyone do anything. That’s why so many humans are miserable. They think that’s the work. To get someone to do something other than what they want to do. This is dumb. And not very productive.
What this means is that, in the words of the great copywriter Eugene Schwartz, (I’m paraphrasing…):
You don’t create demand, you channel demand.
You can’t change what humans want. But you can leverage what humans want.
That’s the challenge. To draw a line for the prospect between where they are and what they want that goes right through your product or service.
This is far beyond the interest or capacity of the average business owner.
Because they still believe in make believe…that if they say the right words, a person will magically START wanting what they have.
That might actually happen. But not because you’ve changed the desire of a human. The transformation occurs because you channeled that existing desire through what you have.
One of the first questions I ask a new client is:
What do they want? “They” refers to the prospective buyer.
The second question is:
What do they really want?
The third question is:
What do they get as a byproduct of getting that thing they want?
All these questions are looking for the truth. Not the truth about how to manipulate a human but the truth about how to UNDERSTAND one.
UNDERSTANDING is what takes the need for slimy selling off the table.
But you don’t find too many best-selling business books about that topic. The masses don’t want the truth, they want to believe that achieving hard things can be easy once you know the secret.
If they’re not buying what you have, take a close look at what they really want.
Do you even know what that is? Is it obvious to them that buying your product or service could move them in the direction of getting what they want?