Ask a customer why they chose a supplier and you get a tidy list of reasons: better support, stronger reporting, more experience in our sector. The list is genuine and they believe every word of it. It is also, in large part, assembled after the decision was taken.
Needs get you onto the shortlist. Wants decide which name on the shortlist gets the work. Most owners sell hard on the first, never mention the second, and then lose to a firm with a thinner specification and a higher price.
What is the difference between a want and a need?
A need is functional. It is the box that has to be ticked for you to be considered at all: capacity, compliance, a delivery date, the right accreditation, a price within range. Fail a need and you are out. Meet it and you have earned the right to be compared against two other firms who also meet it.
A want is what the buyer actually gets out of the decision. An end to a recurring argument. Their weekends back. Looking competent in front of a board. Never having that particular phone call again. Wants are rarely written on a tender document, and they are almost always what tips the choice.
The sequence is what owners get wrong. The want fires first, usually before anybody has finished reading the quotes. The decision follows. The list of rational reasons is assembled afterwards, because a decision has to be defensible — to a co-director, a spouse, a board, or simply to yourself.
Does this apply in business-to-business?
Owners accept all of this for consumers and reject it for their own market. “Our buyers are professionals purchasing on behalf of a company. They are rational.”
They are people spending somebody else's money, which makes the wants different rather than absent. The dominant want in most business purchases is not gain, it is protection: not being the person who chose badly. Add to that the operations director who wants the complaints to stop, the finance director who wants a predictable number, and the owner who wants to stop being the only person who knows how anything works.
None of those appear on the specification. All of them decide.
How do you find the want?
You cannot manufacture a want. You can only find the one that is already there, and it will not be in the first answer you get.
“What made you start looking now, rather than last year?”
This surfaces the trigger, and the trigger is nearly always attached to the want. Something changed, and what changed is usually the thing they care about.
“If nothing changes, what does this look like in twelve months?”
This makes the cost of doing nothing concrete. Most lost sales are not lost to a competitor; they are lost to the buyer deciding to live with the problem for another year.
“Who else in the business will notice if this works?”
This tells you whose problem it really is, and who will have to be persuaded after you leave the room.
Then listen for the sentence with feeling in it. People change tone when they reach the real thing. That is the sentence to repeat back to them in your proposal, in their words rather than yours.
How to use it this month
- Ring your last three customers and ask why they really bought. Push past the first answer, which will be the justification. The second and third answers are the wants, and they are what your marketing should be saying.
- Rewrite one proposal. Open with the outcome in the customer's own words and put the full specification in as evidence rather than as the argument. Same document, opposite order.
- Add two questions to your first meeting: why now, and what happens if nothing changes. Then stop talking for longer than is comfortable.
- Read the first screen of your website. Count the sentences about what you do against the sentences about what changes for them. Sites that are entirely specification tend to attract enquiries that are entirely about price.
- Separate the two in the pricing conversation. Value story first, justification second. Lead with the justification and you have invited a line-by-line comparison against the cheaper quote.
- Brief whoever answers the phone. “What are you looking for?” gets you a specification. “What has prompted the call?” gets you the want.
The mistakes to watch for
Assuming that because you can list rational reasons for your own purchases, the reasons came first. Look at the last significant thing you bought for the business — the vehicle, the software, the premises, the hire. There is a specification behind it, and there is also a reason you did it that quarter rather than the previous one.
The second is the opposite error: hearing this model, throwing out the specification and selling entirely on outcome and feeling. That loses at the justification stage, because the person who wants it still has to defend the spend to somebody who was not in the room. Wants win the decision. Needs let them keep it.
The third is the one that costs reputation: deciding what a customer ought to want and pushing it. Wants are discovered, not assigned, and buyers can tell the difference between being understood and being handled.
The questions to sit with
- Out of 10, how well could you state what your last five customers actually wanted, as opposed to what they specified?
- What does your best customer get from working with you that they would never write on a tender document?
- When you last lost on price, what was the want you never uncovered?
- Does your marketing sell the specification or the outcome — and which one would your customers say?
You need both. Wants win the decision and needs let the buyer keep it — so lead with the outcome in their words and put the specification in as evidence rather than as the argument.
This underpins the sales and marketing work in Business Coaching. Selling on need alone reduces every conversation to a comparison, and comparisons are won by whoever is cheapest. Read it with State Your Price and Shut Up, which is what to do once the number is on the table, and the Value Ladder, which gives a buyer a smaller way to start. The full set is in the Mindsets library.
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Frequently asked questions
Is selling to wants just manipulation?
No, provided the want is discovered rather than assigned. You cannot manufacture a want; you can only find the one that is already there, and buyers can tell the difference between being understood and being handled. The dishonest version is deciding what somebody ought to care about and pushing it, or inventing an urgency that does not exist. The honest version is asking why they are looking now, what happens if nothing changes, and who else will notice if it works, then repeating what you heard back to them in their own words. If the want you find does not match what you sell, the right answer is to say so.
Do wants really apply to business buyers?
Yes, though they are different wants. Business buyers are people spending somebody else's money, and the dominant want in most company purchases is protection rather than gain: not being the person who chose badly. Alongside that sits the operations director who wants the complaints to stop, the finance director who wants a predictable number, and the owner who wants to stop being the only person who knows how everything works. None of those appear on a specification and all of them influence the decision. The specification still matters, because it is what lets the buyer defend the choice to people who were not in the room.
How do I get past the first answer a customer gives me?
Assume the first answer is the justification, because it usually is, and it will be the tidy, rational version the buyer has already rehearsed. Two follow-ups do most of the work. Ask what made them start looking now rather than last year, which surfaces the trigger. Then ask what this looks like in twelve months if nothing changes, which makes the cost of doing nothing concrete. After each one, stay quiet for longer than feels comfortable. Listen for the sentence where the tone changes, because that is the real thing, and it is the sentence to open your proposal with in their words.