What Do Your Customers Really Want? | by Svyatoslav Biryulin | Jan, 2023

Understanding their fundamental wants will assist you thrive

Do your prospects want:

• Enticing worth?

• Excessive-quality merchandise?

• Consumer-friendly interface?

• Attentive customer support?

No, they don’t.

What they want is to satisfy their fundamental unconscious wants. Understanding these wishes will help you enhance your merchandise, service, and technique. And also you want it to beat the competitors. On this article, I’ll give you a few instruments that can assist you do it, with free templates to obtain.

A few years in the past, I used to be a CEO of an organization in a B2B market. The competitors was robust. So we continually seemed for tactics to supply our prospects new companies or product options. As soon as I gathered my workforce in a distant lodge by the lake. We had two days to generate new strategic concepts.

And there have been loads of them. I appreciated some greater than others, however all of them have one factor in frequent — they didn’t work. We spent a yr constructing new options and options, together with on-line service (it was 2007 when it was not should have but). However the effort we made didn’t affect our backside line considerably. Considering again, I see that the issues we instructed to our prospects had been excellent. However prospects merely didn’t want them.

That was the primary time in my life that I assumed deeply about buyer wants.

Take a look at the record beneath and say what of the gadgets on it are buyer wants:

• To purchase a hammer and nails

• To go to a restaurant

• To get a reduction

• To purchase a elaborate coat

• To purchase spare elements for an excavator

• To open a checking account

• To obtain schooling

• To ship a message to a pal

None of them is a buyer want.

They’re instruments to fulfill deeper wants behind them.

Let’s think about a few examples.

Why does an individual want a hammer and nails? For example, she desires to hold a bookshelf on the wall. Why does she want the bookshelf? To place some books on it. Why does she want this? To make her room or workplace look good or to place her books so as.

Why does an individual buys excavator spare elements? To make it work. Why does he want it? To carry out the duties for which the excavator was purchased. Why does he want that? To earn cash for his enterprise. And why does he wants this? If he’s the corporate proprietor, he wants it to make a revenue, pay the payments, and strengthen his enterprise. And if he’s an worker, he might need to do his job accurately and meet his targets.

Many psychologists tried to find what motivates us and makes people need the issues they need. Considered one of them was Steven Reiss. His analysis discovered that each one the folks on the Earth, no matter their race, language, faith, beliefs, and place of dwelling, share the identical set of sixteen fundamental wants:

Reiss claimed that all of us share the identical set of wants, however we prioritize them otherwise. And that makes each one in all us distinct.

His colleague, Marshall Rosenberg, created one other record of fundamental wishes. There are greater than 40 gadgets in it, and several other variations of this record exist. However what each scientists’ works have in frequent is that:

1. The variety of fundamental human wishes is restricted

2. These fundamental wants drive all human conduct, together with consuming preferences.

So, no matter a buyer purchases, both for private use or for a corporation they work for, they fulfill one or a number of of their fundamental wants.

There are a lot of methods to stroll in a buyer’s footwear. The CJM, Buyer Journey Map and its varieties are among the many hottest. They assist a workforce uncover what difficulties and pains a buyer has by utilizing a services or products. Eliminating them helps enhance buyer expertise. However they work effectively for incremental enhancements. They will’t assist a lot after we attempt to launch a totally new model of a product or create a brand new one. Or after we want recent concepts for our technique.

I developed a easy instrument based mostly on Riess’s and Rosenberg’s concepts. I take advantage of it for strategic and inventive workshops. I’ll discuss this instrument by instance, and on the finish of the article, you’ll find a hyperlink to a free template for this instrument. It isn’t the instrument for decision-making. However you and your workforce can obtain many priceless insights into your prospects. It’s a good answer for thought technology. It’s for artistic use, not for evaluation.

This methodology allows you to vividly think about your typical buyer psychology, motives, fears, superstitions, and beliefs. However you must do your homework and undertake preparatory work. I often ask the groups I work with to conduct as many buyer interviews as potential earlier than we begin utilizing this instrument. All of the workforce members want to go to a number of prospects and discuss to them about their life and work routines.

This instrument is barely a type, and the potential end result is determined by the content material you set in. If the content material is unsuitable or incomplete, you’ll find your self in a scenario that analysts name “rubbish in — rubbish out.” Strive studying about your prospects as a lot as potential earlier than utilizing these varieties.

Let’s think about that your organization sells spare elements for excavators. And, say, you promote them to 4 various kinds of purchasers — small, common, and huge enterprises (native and worldwide). In any firm, a number of workers participate within the decision-making course of. So, first, we should outline whom we’ll consider in our work.

To establish core decision-makers, I take advantage of the so-called stakeholder map. It is a instrument utilized in design pondering. It appears to be like like a goal.

I divided this goal into 4 sectors, every for one buyer section. Then I used yellow playing cards to unfold all of the decision-makers throughout the sector. The extra a stakeholder influences buying choices, the nearer their card is to the circle’s middle.

The goal within the image is barely an instance; it isn’t a real-life case.

For example, in small firms, a CEO is the one who has the final phrase with regards to spare elements procurement. However in massive worldwide enterprises, CEOs are too removed from this course of, so I didn’t even point out them.

How you can use the goal?

1. Use the template by the hyperlink on the finish of the article

2. Divide your goal into as many elements as you have got buyer segments. Use two or three targets if obligatory

3. Use the yellow playing cards on the left facet of the template. Write job titles on the playing cards and put them on the goal

4. Contain your workforce within the dialogue

5. Guarantee your last goal corresponds to the precise scenario within the firms shopping for your spare elements.

You could have many buyer segments. Furthermore, inside these segments could also be completely different corporations with distinct enterprise processes. You don’t must analysis all of them. As a substitute, concentrate on the commonest circumstances.

Within the second half, we’ll focus solely on stakeholders you set within the first circle of the goal –core determination makers.

Observe the steps:

1. Create an imaginary individual like one of many core decision-makers. Chorus from utilizing actual individuals, your prospects, for this train. First, it appears unethical. Second, it may well lead you astray. As a substitute, create a fictitious character with a lot in frequent with the standard stakeholders. In case your key prospects are too completely different, develop a number of characters for every market section.

2. Give this character the fictional identify, age, and job title.

3. Use the desk on the hyperlink.

The desk consists of unfinished sentences describing this individual’s options. Attempt to end as many assertions as potential. It’s going to make your character’s portrait vivid and believable.

Please don’t overlook about some essential features of this work:

• It’s an train for teamwork, don’t do it alone.
• It’s a artistic instrument. It doesn’t goal to create portraits of all of your direct prospects. A number of vivid examples will likely be sufficient. You’ll derive priceless insights into your purchasers and generate many new concepts. Use them for technique and product growth.