Give Them What They Want!

I can't emphasize it enough: you have to sell people what they want, not what they need -- and certainly not what you want, or what you think they need. This is a mistake many well-meaning entrepreneurs make, but you can't afford to fall into this trap... or your business will fail.

Here's a good example of trying to sell people what you want: back in the days of computer bulletin board sites (just before the Internet), one woman had put together a BBS for people to call in to do a survey. She wasn't getting many calls. The problem was that she was trying to get people to call in regarding a subject that she wanted to get information on, not something they wanted to get involved in.

That's crucial: you've got to give people a subject they want to be involved in -- for example, the top things in the news today. Forget what you want, and definitely forget what you think people need. Your interests aren't necessarily theirs. Give the people what they want. Otherwise, your efforts will end in defeat... unless your wants and their wants just happen to coincide.

Just about every product or service has something within it that people want, but some products are much hotter than others. If you want to make the most money, try to find those products in the "hot spot." It may not be where you think it is, so look closely. I know a gentleman who owns a small manufacturing company, who struggled for years to get it off the ground. He told me that when he first got started, he didn't know very much about marketing or selling. He wrote a brochure for his product, and sent 400 of them out. He was so in love with his product that he honestly expected all 400 people to order it. He was shocked when he didn't get one single order -- and he learned a valuable lesson. You can come to love your product so much that you don't stop to realize that other people might not love it like you do-that in fact, they probably won't, unless you tell them why they should.

In order to really succeed, you have to hit the points that are most beneficial to the prospect. Tell them exactly how your product helps them. Always keep in mind the fact that the key motivators in marketing are health, wealth, and happiness. Wealth, of course, can be related to greed or making more money. Health has to do with longevity and living a more productive, rewarding life. Happiness is more of a state of mind, but it relates to pleasure; it can also relate to love or sex. The great offers incorporate one or more of these factors, if not all of them.

These are the major motivators in marketing, but you can plug in many, many motivators under them. The idea is to show people how they can achieve those things with your type of product. Also, remember the flip side of each motivator. The flip side of wealth is that you can sell people products that will prevent them from losing money. The flip side of health is that people want to avoid discomfort and pain. With happiness, the flip side is that they want to avoid unpleasant circumstances and situations. In this sense, marketing is always a two-sided coin.

Often, when inexperienced people think about ways to make money -- that is, when they start developing their plans on what they're going to do or sell -- they focus on ideas that are centered around what people need. But as writer Robert J. Ringer pints out, "If you have a business that sells people things they need, you might be able to make a nice living; but if you have a business that sells people something that they want, you can get rich."

All people are selfish and self-motivated. We really want what we want, while we often turn our backs on what we need. Some of the basic needs, of course, we have to have: food, clothing, and shelter, for example. Otherwise, most people are motivated by what they want, not by what's necessarily good for them or by what they really need. Never, ever forget that while writing marketing copy or otherwise selling your products and services.