Worms, Strawberries, and Strategy
What should we sell – what customers want or what they need?
Dale Carnegie said many years ago:
“Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted.”
Does this idea work in business? Yes, it works perfectly, but that can be bad news.
What do your customers want?
My friend Andre is from Portugal. Once, he fell in love with a foreign girl and moved to her home country. As his family and he himself were in the precision farming business, he decided to study the industry landscape in the country.
And he found out that the market was untapped. Local farmers, die-hard traditionalists, employed outdated technologies and obsolete approaches. Most of them had never heard of the precision farming.
It made him feel happy. As many business gurus advise, he saw a lot of opportunities there. He became very enthusiastic – but not for long.
He arranged dozens of meetings with prospects – from small farms in rural places to major agricultural companies.
They were impressed by the precision farming capabilities but weren’t willing to buy his services. And when he asked them what they wanted, they said they would be glad to receive government subsidies or an interest-free loan.
Although they all complained of difficulties in business, they said they “will think of precision farming” and then stopped returning Andre’s calls.
It drove him crazy.
So, today, Andre is the head of a large IT company’s subsidiary in the country. He rarely remembers about the precise farming.
Customer needs
Customer needs are tricky.
There is a difference between what they need and what they want.
We all need to sleep well, eat healthy food, and exercise regularly. Do we all want it?
My friend had three business options:
To try persistently to sell the precision farming services to local farmers in the hope that one of them would agree, and then the laggards would follow suit.
To try to use their sixteen basic needs and then leverage some of them.
To sell them consulting services for assistance in obtaining government subsidies.
We may think that Andre wasn’t much of a salesperson since he couldn’t demonstrate the benefits of the technology to his prospects. But even sales geniuses can’t work miracles.
Few technologies, products, or business ideas can boast of being immediately liked by customers.
Railways
Post-it notes
Tablet PCs
Segway
All these products were initially rejected by consumers because they didn’t know what to do with them.
People needed them but didn’t want them.
The gap between customer needs and customer values
If a product meets customer needs, it doesn’t necessarily mean it creates much value for a consumer.
It may be too expensive
It may be too complicated to use
It may be radically new
In the last case, we should be particularly careful. Customers may need your solution, but they buy it only when (or if) they see value in it.
Yes! Meet the need, demonstrate value, and facilitate change. Thanks.