Tag Archives: needs

What they’re asking for vs. what they want

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Businesspeople commonly assume that customers’ requests correspond closely to their underlying needs. If he asks for the S version, he must want a sportier (yet costlier) ride. If she asks for a specific species of tree, she must want something beautiful (yet eventually ginormous). The customer is always right! But I’m here to tell you that the correlation between whatever people ask for and whatever they’re actually trying to accomplish—in business and many other arenas of life—is not statistically significant. And appreciating as much can make business (and life) more negotiable.

To see what I mean, imagine a customer in the process of renovating their kitchen—not that I’ve been there. The friendly contractor asks the dutiful customer: Can you please go to this website, take a look, and let me know what type of countertop material you want? Then, the customer dutifully examines the website and comes back to the contractor with a specific request. Quartzite!

Now what will the typical contractor assume? This customer wants something beautiful and durable and doesn’t mind an exorbitant price, not to mention continuous maintenance . But why might that conclusion be mistaken? Consider three reasons:

  1. The customer doesn’t know what they’re trying to accomplish. It’s a fact. Many people just don’t know what they’re really trying to accomplish, especially when considering a complex, multifaceted, and multidimensional problem like the countertop that will best suit their needs in the long run. So they dutifully examine the website and pick a countertop they think will meet their needs, but it won’t because they haven’t identified those needs very accurately in the first place.
  2. The customer knows what they’re trying to accomplish but doesn’t know how to accomplish it. Many customers, confronted with a website detailing thousands of countertop options, each with several thousand attributes, simply go into cognitive arrest. They simply can’t fathom the overwhelming volume of information, much less the time involved in considering it all carefully. So they simply select the first one that seems, at first glance, to minimally satisfy whatever bar they’re trying to clear. This tendency, commonly known as satisficing, can easily lead to a suboptimal request even if the customer knows exactly what they’re trying to accomplish.
  3. The customer knows what they’re trying to accomplish and how to accomplish it but is too afraid to ask. Many customers, facing a busy contractor booked out months in advance, know they would be best served by something cheap. Formica’s what I need! But they’re afraid the contractor will laugh at them, make a haughty snorting noise, or decide the project’s not worth their time. So the customer asks for something better than what they really need. But wait—isn’t that good for the contractor? Any contractor worth their salt knows it won’t be in the long run, when the bills come in or the customer starts talking to friends who really need a contractor to install some quartzite.

So never assume that requests correspond with needs! And don’t think selling is the only context when that assumption falls flat! Spouses, children, and work colleagues have all been known, on occasion, to make requests that correspond loosely with their underlying needs. Anticipating as much can make life negotiable!

Negotiating like Disney

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Flying home from a magical week at Disney World, I found my wallet empty and my pocket bursting with receipts. Looking into the mirror of the airplane lavatory, however, I nevertheless found myself smiling. How could Disney walk away with all my money and still make me feel like a winner? It struck me that Disney must’ve mastered some major negotiation principle.

Reflecting on what that principle might be, it seemed to me that Disney has discovered how to help people satisfy some of their most important needs, thereby making them more than happy to pay. Considering how to implement that principle when we too are selling something can make life decidedly more negotiable.

What the heck am I talking about? Anyone who has visited Disney World knows that the experience allows people to:

  1. Connect with their past. Many people who visit Disney World as adults also visited as kids. So when they experience the magic once again, they inevitably connect with an innocent and carefree past—a time when they weren’t troubled by $20 parking and $10 hot dogs. Disney allows people to connect with a lost past.
  2. Escape the present. A visit to Disney World entails a diversion into a parallel universe, a trip across the threshold of spacetime. Stepping away from our daily stressors, we encounter a world of smiling characters wishing us a magical day. Stepping away from politics, terrorism, and tweet storms, we encounter a world of garsh at worst and Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah at best. Disney allows people to escape a less-than-pleasant present.
  3. Connect with their future. Many people who visit Disney do so not to savor the pleasure of multi-hour lines on 87-degree February days. They visit to pass their own childhood experiences on to their children, which represent their own personal futures. They want their children to ponder the possibilities of a Small World without the dissonance of “America First,” to experience the elephants at Animal Kingdom before they disappear. Disney allows people to share some unadulterated magic with their kids, and thus shape some aspect of the future.

I make these points not because I’m particularly interested in high-fiving Disney’s marketing department. With an empty wallet and exploding wad of receipts, I’m not. I make these points because we can all benefit from them in our own negotiations, and thus potentially claw back a few lost dollars.

In many of our negotiations, we want to motivate others to pay money for something we own—an item like a used sports car or a service like our labor. And we often go about the sale by overwhelming them with persuasive and rhetorical force. “It’s in amazing shape!” “My unmatched analytical skills…” But what if we instead portrayed our offerings as a means of satisfying other people’s needs—be they the above needs or others? As just one example of the above needs, what if we portrayed our sports car as a means of connecting with lost youth, an escape from present reality, or an opportunity to share the joy of driving with our children? Just a simple example of one offering serving three potential needs, but it illustrates how a simple shift in focus—from our own amazing offerings toward others’ unfulfilled needs—might produce a little negotiation magic.