Businesses exist to plug identified holes in the spectrum of human needs with products and services. This is the reason why a business needs to consistently reinvent itself to maintain its relevance. Businesses exist to meet needs. Their job isn’t to create needs for their customers. Customers—humans—do a fine job of that on their own.
The job of any business or brand is to make its customers aware of their existing needs. When this is done successfully, they trigger motivation in their customers. This motivation leads customers to take action.
A Variety of Customer Needs
Some of these needs are innate or biological. All of us are born with them. They represent survival needs like food, water, breathing, shelter, and safety. Humans don’t like feeling out of control. We constantly seek to gain better control of our environment. Other needs are social, like the need for love, friendship, connection, or belonging.
Still, others are learned or acquired in response to the culture or environment. These needs include external esteem needs—what other people think of you—and internal esteem needs—what you think of yourself. These needs are rooted in achievement—the need for personal accomplishment.
… and needs create tensions
Your customers start off with an unfulfilled need, want, or desire. When a need is unmet it creates internal tension. When you’re stuck in traffic after drinking five or six glasses of water, the tension to find a restroom escalates with each passing moment. When your colleague buys a brand new, top-of-the-range car and you don’t have one, your need to feel good in comparison to others (external esteem) can create an internal tension.
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Tensions build drive
Internal tensions build energy within your customer. She might want a new lifestyle, a new way of expressing herself. Her thoughts go to the object of desire. She notices things that she desires and doesn’t have. Each thought triggers an emotion. Each emotion adds to the energy reservoir. This energy produces motivation.
Motivation creates behaviour
When the energy behind the motivation builds to a sufficient level, it triggers certain behaviours. Mind you, customers’ behaviours vary, and are based on their personalities and lived experiences. But, their behaviours stem from three primary sources:
Previous learning: the customer learned to act a certain way, in a given situation by watching his or her parents in early childhood, people in his or her social network, or characters on television, in books and films. You can look at your own life and see that these are true of you, too.
Cognitive process: if the customer is consciously aware of the tension, he or she can evaluate how to resolve the tension by determining the best course of action or by simply letting the tension go.
Archetypal images: the internal tension can trigger specific emotions and images in the customer’s psyche, activating an archetype that leads to set patterns of behavior.
Most times, the behaviours that are triggered lead to fulfilling the needs, thereby reducing the tension.
… still, the motivation cycle lingers
The process, however, doesn’t end there. Although the customer’s tension may be reduced, it’s not eliminated. Their needs, as Maslow discovered, are never fully satisfied. The tension of the unmet need builds energy once more. And the cycle continues.
… customers’ needs change
Just like your needs and your criteria for fulfilling those needs tend to change over time, it is important for you to understand that, so do those of your customers. When your customers achieve a particular goal, they intuitively set new and higher goals. Your customers, just like you and your organisation, are on their own developmental paths, and the human in them keeps them going, on those paths.
Do well not to forget that change is consistent and constant with your customers. The question is: are you adapting and changing with them? That is one reality check that any business owner or manager cannot ignore or forget.
From customer insights to business growth
If you want to motivate your customers to do business with you, first understand their tensions. This means getting to know your customers on a deeper level. Getting to know your customers’ tensions isn’t always easy. You can’t necessarily ask your customers directly. Many of our tensions are not conscious.
But what happens when you do uncover the answers? What are you going to do with these insights? Will you use this knowledge to exploit them or elevate them? Will you simply focus on closing the next sale or seek to build long-term loyalty?
Last line: These are big questions that only you, as the leader of your enterprise, can honestly evaluate and act upon. However, I do not think you should be shocked when I say the former choice―transaction/exploitation― is the default position. Infact, the latter choice―elevation/loyalty― takes intention, discipline, and creative execution. The end reward is that it guarantees greater sustainability and long-term profitability.
Choose wisely.
