How To Differentiate Between What The Customer Wants & Needs

Do you know what the difference is between a need and a want?

A lot of people think that they are the same, but they are different.

When selling it’s important that you understand the difference between needs and wants because you need to appeal to both impulses during the sales interaction.

And understanding this element of sales is always one of the most important areas that any Sales Training course will cover.

Let’s take a closer look.

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What is the difference between Needs and Wants?

Look at needs as those things that are vital for survival and a want is something that you desire.

Wants are almost always linked to an emotion that the want gives you.

You need food to survive right? But why do you have that expensive cut of steak?

The answer is that you want it, you’ll love the taste, maybe how it looks and if you’re on a date then you want to impress your partner. They are all wants.

The need would be to put calories in your body for survival. The want is everything else.

Needs were famously codified by psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs is often depicted as a pyramid, with physiological needs at the bottom and more emotional and spiritual needs towards the top.

The needs are further split into “deficiency needs” (things without which life can be intolerable) and “growth needs” (those things which help us develop and improve our lives).

The implication of this model is that we must satisfy those needs at the bottom of the pyramid before we can work on the upper tiers. Common sense confirms the truth of this – you haven’t time to worry about “self-actualization” if the rain is pouring through your ceiling.

Most of our selling is aimed at “growth needs” (although safety products, food staples, mortgages etc might also target the lower part of the pyramid). These are products and services which help people live fully realised lives, where their ambitions and desires can be satisfied. Many of these upper tier “needs” can also be described as “wants” since, at least for a limited time, we can do without them. However, it makes sense to sell your product or service across as many tiers as possible.

In short – when a want and a need are aligned then you have a lay down sale!

Customer Needs

In terms of selling think of needs as MUST-HAVE-DO-OR-DIE criteria. These MUST be fulfilled. Wants are everything else.

When selling to someone listen very closely to the language that they use because it will reveal all and what is most important to them.

Here’s an example:

“The car needs to have 4 doors because of my kids and Bluetooth because I travel a lot and want to sync my phone with the stereo. It must be economical too because I travel more than 20,000 miles per annum to and from work. Bit of poke would be nice, and I’d like heated seats and a wireless charger”

So, let’s look.

The MUST-HAVE-DO-OR-DIE items were:

• Four doors
• Bluetooth
• Miles per gallon

These MUST be fulfilled first before anything else so as a salesperson these would be your go to items to cover off before you look at the other items which were nice to have wants.

They were:

• A bit of poke
• Heated seats
• Wireless charger

So those 3 items could be negotiated but the 3 must have items would not be. Now if you had a car to sell with all 6 features then it should be one of those sales that is easy to close that I mentioned earlier if the price was right.

If you had the 3 must have items and say 2 of the nice to have items, then you could have a sale if you included something else.

Different Types of Customer Needs

There are many different needs which a customer may cite when choosing a product or service. Much will depend upon the unique priorities of each customer but there are consistent and common themes.

Here are some of the most frequently cited needs, beginning with product-orientated needs:

1. Functionality and Fit

It may seem like a no-brainer, but it bears highlighting – your offering must fit the customer and solve the problem they are facing. A sports car is a bad fit for a family man (unless he’s buying a second car for track day escapades). A compact car won’t work well for someone who is unusually tall. You want the customer to instinctively feel “this is right.” Listening to what their needs are and finding a solution that really works will close the sale.

2. Price

People may be willing to go a little higher than their initial budget would allow (most frequently with property purchases) but every customer has a breaking point. Pitching in with a price that preserves your margins but meets the customer’s reasonable expectation is key.

Remember that it isn’t necessary about offering “low, low prices.” For some luxury items, customers expect to pay a premium and may be suspicious of a price tag that’s pitched too low. Would you buy a £100 Rolex?

3. Design and Experience

The look and feel of the product are very important to customers. For one thing, the products we buy often makes a statement about the buyer. What values does your brand promote? Convenience? Beauty? Environmental friendliness? Luxury? Do these values align with the product’s design features and the experience of using it, and do both align with customer needs?

4. Reliability and Performance

You probably thought about n car, reading that header, didn’t you? Cars sell on these needs very frequently. People rely on their vehicles for work, play and getting in the weekly shop. They also enjoy showing off their acceleration, corner handling, safety features and fuel efficiency.

However, both these related qualities apply just as well to a raincoat, an accountancy platform or laptop. People don’t want to keep renewing their products repeatedly, or constantly repairing or upgrading them. Reliability may not be a sexy sell, but it’s a proven one.

There are four main needs that services, in particular, frequently fulfil:

5. Empathy

This is too often overlooked, but people want services that understand them. This is most frequently exemplified in customer service encounters. Will your customers have the best possible experience when they call for assistance, or email to change a booking?

6. Openness and Fairness

Particularly with regards to subscription contracts, customers expect to be treated fairly, offered any discounts they are eligible and not hoodwinked into opting for extras they do not need. Fail to do this and your sale could go badly wrong (cf. the British scandal around insurers’ PPI payments, which were deemed to be sold fraudulently and had to be repaid to over 64 million customers to the tune of over £40 billion to date).

7. Options

Sounds like a simple ask, doesn’t it? But product and service designers know you can’t give every customer everything they want. Within reasonable limits however, services which can be tailored to each customer satisfy the human need for control.

Perhaps it’s in the way subscriptions are structured, or there may be a suite of options that customers can add into their package (a common strategy for cable TV providers and car manufacturers). Customers want to feel free to make the service work for them, rather than having to work around its limitations.

8. Information and Accessibility

Services which are open and accessible to all are the most popular. Going over and above locally mandated disability access requirements can often convey a brand advantage, particularly when this is advertised and sold.

Accessibility is also about making services easier to understand. Mobile contract providers have historically struggled with this, offering far too many variables and options for some customers to understand, leading to the growth of price comparison websites. In a sense, this is the flipside of options – offering too many alternatives can cause paralysis in a customer who is wavering.

When customers need to learn about their service or product, how available is the necessary information, via chatbots, blogs, demonstration videos, FAQs, and other functions? Poor customer service has been cited as a major component of consumer choice, with 58% of customers changing service providers after experiencing it, according to a Microsoft report.

Those eight categories contain most (but not all) of the needs that customers most frequently cite. But what of wants? How are they different, and how can they be leveraged by salespeople?