Do you want to have qualified leads, pouring in? What would that do for your business? How many leads do you need to achieve the goals you set when you started your business? How long will your business survive with the number of leads you are currently getting? If any of these questions excite or scare you, then you really need to understand how NWP can transform your marketing.

What does NWP stand for?

It is difficult to do justice to a full day workshop, that my customers say helps transform their marketing, in a short article. I will however try to give you the main points from it.

The acronym NWP is pretty straight forward. No matter how complex a product that someone is considering buying, they like to break their purchasing rationale into three simple components. Namely;

  • Needs – They justify their purchase based on it being something that they need, like some nappies.
  • Wants – They justify their purchase based on something that they want, like a six pack for the spouse picking up the nappies!
  • Pains – They justify their purchase based on a pain they wish to avoid, like a car that is not going to break down.

How do you classify a buyer’s needs?

Most buyers feel that they like to make purchases based on their needs. It might be a new PC, which they need for the office, because a new person is starting to work for them.

Say for example you are trying to sell new Laptop computers. A good target market based on the above criteria might be, to latch onto people who are currently hiring. You could check out the Recruitment columns in the papers and online hiring websites, and send a mailer to all people who are in the market for new hires.

How do you classify people’s wants?

In reality however, over 90% of purchase decisions are based on people’s wants. I mean, how many of you grew up drinking tap water, yet we all still pay huge sums of money for water in bottles. Yes we do need liquid to stay alive, but do we really need designer label water?

Buyers will respond to advertising far more based on their wants, rather than their needs. If people bought solely based on their needs we would have far more Skodas sold than BMWs, but that is not the case.

90% of purchase decisions are based on people’s wants.

How do you classify people’s pains?

The obvious example is the reason that people visit the doctor or dentist. People visit them either because they have a pain, or to prevent pain. In business there may be other pains, like buying a new printer, because the current one, messed up on that important document you really needed to print in a hurry!

In some instances, someone may want a new printer because; they are fed up with the pain having to walk down the corridor to get the printout from the shared printer. Is this a want or a pain? In reality it is a want, but smart marketing will stir up the pain, about the drawbacks of not having a personal printer.

So how do you take advantage of buyers NWPs?

By stirring up these three emotions! By making people who want something, feel that they can justify it with a need, and by presenting them with the downside of non-ownership or a continued pain.

And as with all good marketing, the best way to get a prospect to buy into your proposition, is to ask them questions, and since it is marketing, where you can only have a monologue with your prospects, you must help them answer the questions!

One of the best examples of these is the recent McDonald’s advert during the world cup;

  • “Feeling empty inside, since Ireland did not qualify for the world cup?” – Good pun here, stirring up a two pain s – regret and hunger.
  • “..Then have an extra size Big-Mac tm ” – thus feeding the want or in many cases Greed
  • “..you owe it to yourself” – thus helping the average greedy, fat potato couch justify this massive, mega calorie heart bomb as, something they need !

Conclusion

For each of your offerings, you need to devise 3 questions in each of these categories. Questions that stir up your prospect’s needs, wants and pains.

If you have difficulties doing this exercise, either from a “wood for the trees” perspective, or you just need someone to push you in the right direction, maybe our workshop could help you.

People upon completion of this workshop, not only know exactly the questions to ask, but they also know precisely how and when to ask them. This means they get qualified leads, and they can also close them!

But our workshops are not for everyone, you need a single-minded commitment to succeed, if you are to gain maximum benefit from them.

To see if your business would really benefit and get value you can add to your bottom line, then sign up for our free sales and marketing assessment. This way we will know together, whether or not I can help your business reach the levels that you really desire.

This article was written by Peter Lawless, founder of 3R Sales and Marketing – www.3r.ie. For previous articles like this, visit 3R’s Articles. Alternatively, subscribe to Success our free monthly Information Bulletin with sales and marketing articles.