Just because you can see it doesn’t mean the customer will do it.
People don’t just wake up one day with a need, with a desire to buy something. Something must happen. A “cause” must be added to our current “condition” to get our attention. It needs to have enough jolt to cause a reaction. The reaction must be big enough to generate a desire to do something different.
People buy because something has changed or because they want something to change.
Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion describes this phenomenon as follows:
If a body is at rest or moving in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless a force acts upon it.
Energy starts the pendulum swinging. Energy stops it.
Students of human behavior call this movement off our baseline condition and back again the “Hedonic Treadmill.” I call it Motion, Pain, and Need.
- Motion is the change that got the buyer’s attention.
- Pain is the response and reaction to the change. The response is either desire (I want more of this, and I don’t know how to get it) or aversion (I don’t like this and don’t know how to make it stop).
- Need is a stated intention to act. Think of this as the buyer’s “exam question.”
To use a car as an analogy, Motion is the starter, Pain is the (emotional) engine, and Need is the wheels.