Jake Prieur explains three primary reasons customers buy: (1) revenue gain — your product enables customers to make more money; (2) cost reduction — your product lowers their expenses; and (3) emotional contribution — non-monetary factors like prestige, risk mitigation, or peace of mind. He emphasizes determining which of these your product delivers and which your customer values to align sales messaging.
There's an old saying in poker, you don't play the cards, you play the person. Now this applies to many facets of life, but undoubtedly applies to the sales process as well. It's not so much about what you sell, but rather who you're selling it to. You might have the best product in the world, but if the person you're selling to doesn't value it, it's an exercise in futility. Let's talk about the three things people value. What are the three things and the reasons why people buy from you? Number one, it's revenue gain. This is a straightforward it makes a ton of sense. If you can create revenue for your customers, they're likely to buy from you. For example, if you own a staffing agency and provide talented workers to your client, there's a much higher likelihood that they now have the capacity to take on new business because they're fully staffed. Congrats, you've now created more revenue for them. That's one of the primary ways or reasons why anybody would work for you or with you is because you're creating revenue. More revenue, more value for them. The second one is cost reduction. It's not always about creating new revenue. Sometimes about are you saving your customers money? For example, if you provide software that allows your client to digitize their new employee training process, there's a high probability that you're able to save them money by reducing the amount of hours spent training new employees. That is of huge value to your customers because you are saving them likely thousands of dollars each month or each year. That's your second reason for customers buying from you. The third one is emotional contribution. This is a harder one to value because it has to do with emotional things. It has to do with non monetary factors. Emotional contributions to value are the non economical things that have the ability to significantly increase or even decrease the perceived value of a product. These might include risk mitigation, peace of mind, personal gain. There's a lot that could factor in here. These items are far more difficult to quantify, but they also have the greatest amount of power when it comes to influencing a purchase. Think of it this way. If an actor wanted to work with Steven Spielberg, they might do so because of the prestige that it might bring them or the notoriety. They would probably do it for free just knowing that they took part in a Steven Spielberg movie. Or if you're a Fortune 500 company and you are trying to sell a new product or develop a new product and you hire a McKinsey & Co. To audit the launch. You're hiring them because you know that they're much more likely to launch this thing better and there's also prestige that comes along with it. So when you're selling it to your your board members or your CEO, you have the peace of mind knowing that they're going to do the job really well. And so that's the third reason why people might buy from you. Now what's really important is whether you're not you're creating new revenue for your customer or cost reduction or it's an emotional contribution. It's of cruc importance to know which one of these your product creates as well as which one do your clients actually value. You do not want to be selling revenue gain when they're all they're looking for is the cost reduction. You're totally missing them and missing the point. So know your customers well, know what value your product brings and you'll be able to see your sales increase dramatically.
