Simply put, target the most amount of your energy and resources into the most promising opportunities available to find the customers you should target and why.

The pie chart to the right identifies the Pareto Principle which simply tells us that we should put forth most of our marketing and sales efforts to the customers that make up 80% of all purchases. Those 80% are the small 20% of customers who make routine purchases. Give them specials, discounts, coupons, sweepstakes, and keep them coming back!

Coming from my point of view, those most promising opportunities are the customers you already have. Learning to explain and understand their behavior will help us get in a better position to sell them. You need to understand what benefits customers are looking to get out of your products and/or services to understand why they buy.

When you understand why they buy, you’ll be able to sell them better.

Benefit Segmentation: Simply put, benefit segmentation allows a salesperson or marketer to discover the benefits sought by a customer when they choose to purchase a product or service from you. Your customers are already buying but understanding why will buy will help you increase your sales.

Customers buy products for a variety of reasons. Such reasons include:

1. Characteristics - What makes the product distinctive from other products.

2. Price - How low it is or the quality they perceive out of your higher priced product.

3. Placement - How convenient access is to the product. Take gas station convenience stores for example. They are always overpriced because of the convenience.

4. Promotion - People buy on emotion and justify their purchases with logic. You need to build up your product or services reputation in order to sell at higher prices.

This is the Marketing Mix. Customers are not looking to buy your products or services. They want to buy what those products or services have to offer them. Many people I’ve noticed in business today will look to discuss features rather than the benefits that result from making the purchase and what it will mean to me.

I, along with anyone else, am looking to buy something because it will make me:

1. Healthier

2. Wealthier

3. Sexier

4. Satisfy Basic Needs

This is especially true with high end products such as “Abercrombie and Fitch” Jeans marked up nearly 3 to 1 compared to Retail Superstore pricing on pants. It is the image and the emotion attached to the “Name Brand” that makes me want to purchase the higher end product.

Learning the technical details of a product for a salesman or marketer is necessary but not the only thing one should learn. I had to learn this the hard way. Just think about it this way. Would you want to listen to professor babble on about business topics on a level you were unfamiliar with? Of course not and neither would I.

Therefore, most salespersons are very knowledgeable about the technical aspects of a product with little or no ‘connection’ with the product. The customer may not be able to see the benefits of the particular features that is brings. The job of a salesperson is to explain the benefits in an easy to understand manner.

Simple Way To Explain Benefits To A Customer:

“Production time has been reduced from 6 to 3 workers. This means that the balance sheet is now showing a positive gain from the salary cost saved”

Matthew Peschong
Minnesota Web Site Design