All sales organisations try and address problems, or solve pain points and that’s routine. However, sometimes in the heavily prescribed selling activity do we forget to make sure we understand what the one thing is that could motivate the customer to deal with us?

I once worked with a sales person who could never get the customer to consider a system that helped reduce ‘Churn’ (customers defecting elsewhere). When I spoke with the customer I asked one simple question. “What do you get rewarded for in your job” – they replied, “Acquiring customers and that’s all!” … hmmm so the motivation this person had was purely getting new customers in the door, his bonus depended on that!  Selling him a system that helped stem the flow of customers to the competitor – he could care less about!

Another example was a call centre manager. No way was she buying anything we were trying to sell, she had no issues and no pain!… Eventually she said “Look, I get paid on number of calls handled, not the quality or the accuracy of information we can supply to the customer!”

My dogs, I assume love me, but the truth is I feed them, and they need me to serve up the food and that’s their true motivation!

If you guess what a customer’s motivation is and then ask them you may well be surprised when they are truthful… it may not be what you assumed at all!

I reckon that it is well worth making an effort to understand a person’s motivation. Usually people are quite frank about this and their answer helps you positively address their problem or sell them what the truly need to succeed. When we can do that, we will find we have very loyal customers!

Tony Whale