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The Power Of Need: Persuading Utilizing Your Prospect's Needs
"Nothing has more strength than dire necessity." ~ Euripides
“Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.” ~ Euripides
In sales and marketing, the most basic strategy is an ability to fulfill a need. How can we use this strategy to persuade affluent clients? After all, they seemingly have no needs? Wrong. Everybody needs something. Determining what that something is and if you’re able to fulfill it is the process of criteria elicitation.
Think about what is consciously on your mind. You’re reading this article, so it’s possible these words are all that you’re thinking about. But if I was writing an article about bananas, then you’d start picturing a banana, or thinking about bananas. If your doctor told you you had to start eating bananas or potassium, you’d probably think about them even more.
And unless we were involved in the growing and harvesting of bananas for a living, there would be really no use for us to think about them too very often, though when a doctor advises you to eat one a day, you’re going to have them in the conscious part of your mind more often.
The part of the brain responsible for consciousness is the Reticular Activating System. It is thought to be the center of motivation and arousal and is involved in most of the central nervous system’s activity (including sleep and wakefulness). The reticular activating system is what helps us pay attention to things that we need to pay attention to and put away those things we can afford to disregard.
Our conscious minds can hold seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. the rest is stored in our other-than-conscious minds for retrieval when needed.
When you’re driving down the freeway, singing along to the radio, you’re probably thinking about what you’re going to do when you get to your destination, you aren’t thinking of using the bathroom, unless you need to. You aren’t thinking of getting some water, unless you’re thirsty. You aren’t thinking of stopping at a gas station for gas, unless you’re running out. You aren’t thinking of stopping for food, unless you’re hungry.
It becomes a different story when you all of the sudden need one of them. Gas becomes so very important if you’re on Empty. Water becomes important if you’re dehydrated and your A/C isn’t working. When food becomes a need, all of the sudden you start seeing fast food signs telling you what’s available to eat, when before you may not have been paying more than a slight passing attention to them.
Why don’t we have to contend with these needs all the time? Because they aren’t relevant all the time. We can safely store them in our other-than-conscious until we require them, until they are again relevant.
This speaks a lot to criteria (the values, wants, and needs of a person). By eliciting a person’s criteria we can bring to bear those subtle aspects in a person’s reality that apply to their criteria. When you elicit the criteria of your affluent prospect, you speak to their values at even a higher level and essentially you are fine tuning their reticular activating system to your advantage (and to their’s).
Criteria elicitation is our compass in satisfying our prospect’s and client’s needs. Once we have that, the persuasion naturally follows.