The needs and the wants (and why we all just want to be rescued)

Many moons ago and during what now seems like another lifetime, I underwent a huge number of training courses in preparation for and the development of my sales career. Some would teach you fact-finding techniques, others how to uncover client hot buttons but they all did one thing (along with ensuring you spent too long in the bar the night before with your colleagues…), they all talked about needs and wants.

Needs were the boring, had-to-do’s:

“I need to go to the dry cleaners”

“I need to pay the electricity bill”

“I need to stop talking drivel”

Wants, on the other hand, are much more interesting, and a little bit sexy in the notion of a demand being on the table:

“I want champagne, not 3 for 2 dodgy Spanish table wine”

“I want that pair of Manolo Blahniks, dammit”

“I want ice cubes sending to my room now!”

There’s a bit of the prima donna in the wants, but apparently and according to the very best sales training courses, it is the wants and not the needs that will cause a person (i.e. your prospect) to take action.

Of course, in my twenties and as a fresh-faced eager-to-please sales recruit, I took all this on board without question. Off I went into the blue commercial yonder, keen to do business and full of unbridled enthusiasm.

Some twenty years down the line and I realise that the sales techniques of yesteryear are still being applied sadly. How many times do I have to practically hang my phone up when someone calls to try and sell me advertising? It’s not a great feeling, I can assure you; cold calling to me was like the sales version of having a root canal. But it appears some companies are still stuck there right back in the eighties, refusing to use up-to-date and more subtle techniques to attract custom (another post, another day, methinks)

They clearly need to up date their methods, but they obviously don’t want to.

So, at the risk of pushing the envelope beyond what is an acceptable use of paper, I would hazard a guess that the old needs and wants theory may be a little frayed around the edges, too.

“Why so?” I hear you ask.

Why? Because I now realise that many of the things we tell ourselves we don’t need, we actually do. And most probably in spade-loads.

I’m thinking here about taking time to sit and clear your mind every day of the constant mayhem that rages through it and about promising yourself that once a week you will have half an hour of “you-downtime” to do whatever takes your fancy. And most of all, I’m talking of learning to accept a helping hand when you are mentally and emotionally spent.

We don’t actually “need” any of these things on paper, but I will stick my neck out here and say that because we’ve probably shunned them for so long, we both need and want them now.

There is, as my friend Natalie will tell you, an episode of Sex and the City to mirror every eventuality in a woman’s life (and possibly for many men, too).

The episode “Where There’s Smoke..” sees the four girls discussing over brunch (as they do…as all girls do…) why firemen seem to be the archetypal female fantasy.

The very pretty yet seemingly naïve Charlotte blurts out “because deep down women just want to be rescued”

The other three sit motionless for a moment, catching each others’ eyes in the uncomfortable and silent acknowledgment of the truth.

Now I’m not too sure about when that episode was filmed, but I’d take a stab at around eight years ago at least, and as ever, we've moved on and our needs and wants have moved with us. I don’t believe women want to be rescued anymore; I think we need to be.

Of course the real challenge for a man here is, as we know, being able to identify when to switch into “fireman mode” and to haul you over his shoulder.

As a dyed-in-the-wool sales person I would recommend uncovering the need, and the want won’t be too far behind.