moneyFYI
Financial Freedom Is Merely Organized Common Sense
Understanding What People Buy
If you sell and deliver what people want, you will succeed. If you instead try to sell what they need, you may have difficulty.
Some things don’t sell well
Foremost among these are safety, security and cost-saving. If your offerings are in any of these fields, you will find it necessary to build a narrative that makes cost, safety or security something people want.
I have personal experience with security and cost-saving. Both are challenging areas to work within because there is little immediate payback for spending the money. Future savings and future protection are heavily discounted in terms of value. People use a process called hyperbolic discounting when assessing the future value against immediate costs.
Under this method, a value of $1.00 to be received 90 days from now might be worth 90 cents in the present. Something worth $1.00 two years from now could be worth 5 cents in the present. We don’t often use exponential discounting, which relates to the value of money in the future. Something like $1.05 in the future is worth $1.00 today if the yield requirement is 5%.
It is smart to get a handle on how your customer relates to future value.
Need is not like want
You cannot have people pay you for need resolution until they want to deal with that specific issue.
For example, term life insurance cannot benefit the owner financially. Most people are unwilling to die to make their plan work efficiently. When you talk need instead of want, you have trouble. You want your family to be unstressed financially is an easier discussion. It also leads to the idea of financial independence and what you can do about achieving that while living.
Bill Watterson makes the point
Want outsells need by an order of magnitude. Because want is in the present and need is in the future. The future is not so compelling.
Find a way to make the future a want.
I help business owners and professionals understand and manage risk and other financial issues. To help them achieve their goals, I use tax efficiencies and design advantages to acquire more efficient income and larger, more liquid estates.
Please be in touch if I can help you. don@moneyfyi.com 705-927-4770
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