If Your Customers Had A Million Dollars
The key to getting them to spend it is to make them feel GREAT!
October 2007 By Robert Ain
If your potential customers had a million dollars, how many of them would spend it buying products and services from your business? Could you sell them a million dollars worth of stuff? Are you prepared to sell the better products and understand what it does for your customer?
Ira Friedman in his July Essentials column talked about the success of Viking appliances and buying expensive, prestigious products. He makes some great points, but there is one point he did not discuss—Why do customers buy luxury goods? It is because it makes them feel GREAT.
You can make a strong case that a Viking induction cooktop has higher performance than a Sears induction cooktop. The Viking has separate power driving each burner and since Sears uses shared power devices for their burners, the Viking will have hotter burners when all the burners are being used. Therefore, the Viking performs better under multiple burner cooking. But does performance really matter or is it the implied performance that is the true measure of success? Let’s look at other products.
In the watch business, real performance is not usually the issue. In fact, a strong case can be made that the Rolex is more expensive initially, more expensive to repair, does not keep as accurate time and is certainly more expensive to acquire than lower-priced watches. So why does a customer want the Rolex rather than the Timex?
The reason is that acquiring a Rolex makes them feel great. It gives the wearer a sense of achievement in their ability to purchase this expensive watch. It is a status symbol.
Part of buying luxury is feeling great about that purchase. That expensive car, watch, appliance, piece of furniture each induce this exhilaration.
The question for you is which brands do you sell offer a luxury good attitude. Do these brands have the potential for customers to spend a million dollars?
How do we know customers want to buy prestigious goods? Let’s look at lottery winners. When they get the big bucks, do they buy a Ford Focus? Take a vacation in South Bronx? No, they want to impress their friends and themselves. They buy great, expensive products.
The question then becomes, how do you convince customers to buy prestige, that is, buy more expensive products? Let’s go back to Ira’s Viking example. Why do customers want to acquire great-looking kitchen appliances? As Ira pointed out, they don’t necessarily even use them, but the performance is implied in the look and feel. A Viking cooktop looks massive. It looks like it is built to last with big knobs. No sleek electronic touch panels like the Sears induction cooktop. So the product has to look like it cost more—it has to have the look and feel of something expensive.
Ira Friedman in his July Essentials column talked about the success of Viking appliances and buying expensive, prestigious products. He makes some great points, but there is one point he did not discuss—Why do customers buy luxury goods? It is because it makes them feel GREAT.
You can make a strong case that a Viking induction cooktop has higher performance than a Sears induction cooktop. The Viking has separate power driving each burner and since Sears uses shared power devices for their burners, the Viking will have hotter burners when all the burners are being used. Therefore, the Viking performs better under multiple burner cooking. But does performance really matter or is it the implied performance that is the true measure of success? Let’s look at other products.
In the watch business, real performance is not usually the issue. In fact, a strong case can be made that the Rolex is more expensive initially, more expensive to repair, does not keep as accurate time and is certainly more expensive to acquire than lower-priced watches. So why does a customer want the Rolex rather than the Timex?
The reason is that acquiring a Rolex makes them feel great. It gives the wearer a sense of achievement in their ability to purchase this expensive watch. It is a status symbol.
Part of buying luxury is feeling great about that purchase. That expensive car, watch, appliance, piece of furniture each induce this exhilaration.
The question for you is which brands do you sell offer a luxury good attitude. Do these brands have the potential for customers to spend a million dollars?
How do we know customers want to buy prestigious goods? Let’s look at lottery winners. When they get the big bucks, do they buy a Ford Focus? Take a vacation in South Bronx? No, they want to impress their friends and themselves. They buy great, expensive products.
The question then becomes, how do you convince customers to buy prestige, that is, buy more expensive products? Let’s go back to Ira’s Viking example. Why do customers want to acquire great-looking kitchen appliances? As Ira pointed out, they don’t necessarily even use them, but the performance is implied in the look and feel. A Viking cooktop looks massive. It looks like it is built to last with big knobs. No sleek electronic touch panels like the Sears induction cooktop. So the product has to look like it cost more—it has to have the look and feel of something expensive.
