[Offer Grid] 📬 | Needs and How to Satisfy Them | Issue No. 9 3⁄4

Last week my partner and I were uncharacteristically not home. We drove north to see friends and family. We had stops along the way.

Rather than flying we decided to drive.

I think in another life I was an over-the-road truck driver. I can drive for days. I am in my happy place behind the wheel.

And we live in such a beautiful country, even when seen from Eisenhower Boulevard (the U.S. interstate system).

The week was a string of “todays”. I didn’t know what day it was most of the trip. There was no Thursday last week, so my apologies for not gracing your inbox. I decided to ask your forgiveness rather than your permission.

I won’t bore you with the family pictures. But it was a lovely trip with three generations of family. Very nice.

What I will share, in this brief “catch-up” issue, is what my brain was working on while I was doing all of that driving.

I was thinking about needs as compared to wants. This is what was buzzing around in my head for 3000 miles. This is the recap and the punchline. The ideas are consolidated.

I think most people are familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

If not, here’s the Cliff’s Notes on it:

The theory is that there are identifiable, basic human needs. All humans have these needs.

The basic human needs include food, water, and shelter. Once those needs are met, we need a degree of safety and security.

Next up the chart we need friends and intimacy. We need a sense of belonging. We need love.

Further up we need some kind of prestige and maybe some accomplishment.

At the top of the graph we arrive at our human potential: self-actualization.

Along with Maslow’s cultural mainstay concepts, I frequently hear people talk about “their needs”. As if each person has her own sort of framework of her favorite tea, the perfect cashmere sweater, and no-sugar-added organic chunky cashew butter.

Because I tend to argue with sweeping generalizations, I have always sort of muttered under my breath about what “needs” actually are.

Clearly they fall on a spectrum. I could go my whole life without cashew butter and feel completely fulfilled. Others cannot.

Outside of Maslow, I have seen long lists of needs others have compiled, identifying hundreds of needs.

So I came to my own conclusion:

Humans are motivated by what each identifies as a need. Needs are essentially prioritized preferences.

I write this newsletter to business owners. So, I hallucinate that each person reading is either interested in business, or currently involved in business.

Each of us is in the business of meeting needs.

Business is the relentless pursuit of solving problems for customers and for other businesses.

In business, it is our job to convey needs.

In fact, we create needs.

Needs drive not only consumption, but pricing.

I have a client who is masterful at selling clothing and accessories to affluent women.

She offers them the proverbial retail therapy. Her customers love her for it.

That connection fills a need for each customer.

Often, however, customers don’t know they need your thing. Find a way to tell him he needs it.

If you’ve never seen the J. Peterman catalog (and now website), go with haste and read the product descriptions.

You may discover that there is a spectacular, imported item that you didn’t know you could not live without. If you stare at the drawing (yes drawing, since J. Peterman uses very few product photos, but shows each item as a hand painted representation) and read the artful product description, you might talk yourself past the price.

(J. Peterman only started using photo images when they went online. They never printed photos in their paper catalog prior to this shift.)

There is so much noise in the world. Once people get past the bare essentials of food and housing, they start to want luxuries.

But more than things, people crave a certain feeling in their heart. They crave community, they crave companionship, they crave humanity.

If your store or business offers items that aren’t essential needs, then it’s time to up your product description game.

What would happen if you wrote creative descriptions a la Peterman? Could you raise your prices? Could you sell more?

If you are not selling fulfillment, you’re leaving money on the table.

Sell to needs.

Create needs.

Fulfill human hearts.

And next time someone tells you she needs something, consider that the need may come from her heart. Fulfill that need in your own, unique way.

Best to ya,

Amy

P.S. Another idea came from our long trip. I’ll be resuscitating my YouTube channel. I want to teach and present all of the many hundreds of tips past clients and I developed together. It seems that the economy needs a boost. I plan to help with this elevation one store at a time.

Always feel free to reach out with ideas or comments.