Life Beyond the Product Pitch

by Miller Heiman

In today's face-to-face selling environment it's essential to get beyond the old-fashioned product pitch. The fundamental reason that it's essential can be stated in the form of a seemingly crazy proposition: Nobody has ever sold a product. This isn't as crazy as it might sound, and you can prove that to yourself very easily. Think about the last time you bought something. Whether it was something as minor and disposable as a newspaper or as major and durable as a car, what you paid money for was not really the physical, tangible purchase itself, but the expectation of what that purchase would do for you.

In a sense all buyers are futures traders: when we buy, we anticipate the satisfaction of certain needs from the purchase, and it's really the idea of "X need satisfied" that we're paying for. If we've just put down a quarter for a paper, for example, we expect to be informed about the day's events. If we shell out several thousand dollars for a car, we expect a certain level of performance, prestige, or convenience.

In every purchase the expectation of satisfied needs is the key. We can put this in the form of an adage that underlies the entire Miller Heiman approach to selling: No one buys a product per se. What is bought is what the customer thinks the product or service will do for him or her. This idea--this notion of what the prospective client thinks the product or service will be able to do--is what we call Concept.

A customer's Concept is his "mindset" or his "solution image" of what he wants to get done. Today, more than ever before, selling to the customer's Concept is the beginning of all good selling. To define this critical idea a little more precisely:

1. The Concept is already in place. That is, even before you meet a prospective client, it's reasonable to assume that he or she has already formed some idea about you, your company, and your products or services. That idea will be based on the customer's past experiences, and it may be totally off base as far as you are concerned. But it's likely that prospects hold Concepts about you and your product even before you meet them--and it's deadly to ignore these preconceptions.
2. The Concept is absolutely personal for each individual. It is subjective and different for every customer you deal with. No two people ever buy (or refuse to buy) a given product or service for precisely the same reasons. It is never the product or service that makes or breaks the sale, but the individual customer's subjective view of what the product or service can do for him.
3. Your customer's Concept is linked to his or her individual values and attitudes. The basic point is to broaden the traditional sales person's emphasis on "product specs" and point out again that people buy for their reasons. Those reasons are always subjective and internal.

Good selling begins with understanding the prospect's Concept--that is, with understanding pre-established, personal, and value-laden ideas about you and your product.

From Conceptual Selling, by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman with Tad Tuleja. © 1987 by Miller Heiman Inc. All rights reserved by permission of Warner Books, Inc.