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You’ve probably heard the classic sales advice: don’t sell the drill, sell the hole in the wall. It’s a good start. But here’s the thing – nobody actually wants a hole in the wall either. That’s just a means to an end.
What they really want is something hung up. And everything that comes with it. The pride of a home that finally feels finished. The identity of someone who gets things done. The feeling of a space that’s truly theirs.
The same truth runs through every B2B buying decision, even when it’s dressed up in spreadsheets and procurement processes.
Why does one business win the work while another, offering much the same thing, gets overlooked?
Often it comes down to a single habit. We describe what we do. The service, the steps, the deliverables. It feels like the obvious thing to lead with, because it’s what we know best. But your customers aren’t really buying the task. They’re buying what changes because of it.
Think about it. Nobody wants tidy accounts for their own sake. They want the calm of knowing the numbers are right. Nobody wants a website for the sake of it. They want the clients it brings through the door. The task is just the route. The outcome is the reason.
This is one of the most common mistakes we see in B2B. Lead with the job, and you sound like everyone else, which usually means competing on price. Lead with the outcome, and you give people a reason to choose you that has nothing to do with being the cheapest.
This week’s Ideal Marketing Minute walks through a simple prompt. Take one service description and rewrite it around the result, not the task. What does choosing you actually change for the customer?
Watch this week’s Ideal Marketing Minute here.
If that feeling is tricky to pin down, you’re in good company. Our Customer Value Scope is built to uncover the functional and emotional value your best customers really care about, so you can charge what you’re worth without competing on price. And if you’d like to go deeper into the psychology behind why people buy the way they do, our TEDx talk, The Hidden Story Behind Why We Buy, explores exactly that.
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