Why People Buy

Why people buy anything has been studied for decades if not centuries.

The primary motivators of human behavior are the desire for gain and the fear of loss.

You must understand how to apply those basic motivators to the sale of long-term care insurance by focusing your attention on the client’s “hot button.”

People make purchase decisions for their own reasons. Every buying decision is an attempt to be better off as a result of having made that decision.

Understanding why your prospect will buy begins with needs analysis. You must understand the specific motivators for this person to make a buying decision.

The starting point for their decision will be based in emotion. If they are motivated emotionally, they will seek out the logical reasons to justify their buying decision.

All people act selfishly, but sometimes they miscalculate and don’t serve their own interests. They attempt to maximize their gains and minimize their losses from purchase situations.

They do this by decomposing the product into benefits such as product features, price and reliability as well as segmenting the benefits into categories such as financial, service and personal.

Your job, quite simply, is to help them sort this information into the categories that motivate them to make a purchase decision. You accomplish this by providing honest information about how your product can help them improve their lives.

You must focus your attention completely on the prospect. If you do this, you will uncover the key benefit from that prospect’s perspective (the only perspective that counts!).

You will also uncover the key issue, the major objection that would hold them back from making a purchase decision.

If you are truly focused on the prospect, asking questions skillfully and listening attentively, you will learn their “hot button” regarding their purchase decision.

Identifying what your prospect wants in terms of their hot button and their specific needs enables you to assess their perceptions of your offering.

This enables you to focus the conversation on these specific issues and avoid trivial information that may not be relevant to the prospect – where you risk your credibility and loss of trust.