The Wife and I thought we would have ourselves a nice little Saturday
this weekend, so we got up, made a delicious breakfast, and took the
dog for a stroll. Everything was going swimmingly as we decided to
then dip our toe in the baby shopping waters and see what that world had
in store for us. We parked in the spots reserved for expectant mothers
(a nice perk), stepped across the threshold, and our lives will never
be the same.
I once attended a sales training course where the instructor taught us that all buyers can be broken down into four categories: Power, Fame, Safety, or Relationship. Without infringing on copyright laws of the course it can be broken down as follows:
Sure there are times where someone can be a combination of Power
& Fame, or Safety & Relationship but the concept is that if you
can figure out what box the buyer fits in, then you can target your
presentation and sales pitch accordingly. This is a little lesson that I
come back to in a variety of ways in both business and life since. The
guy that taught the class also did not wash his hands after using the
bathroom so take it for what it’s worth…
This lesson smacked me in the face as the electric doors slid open to the baby-warehouse-dew-jour Saturday morning. The baby industry takes the idea that their market – new and expecting parents – are all Safety buyers to the Nth degree.
One way to argue this approach is that they are right in that a parent’s priority is first and foremost the protection of their offspring, and thus that is their purchasing focus as they consume goods. The opposite argument would be that their approach is the equivalent to profiteering on the naiveté of the clientele. As with most things I would think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but
I once attended a sales training course where the instructor taught us that all buyers can be broken down into four categories: Power, Fame, Safety, or Relationship. Without infringing on copyright laws of the course it can be broken down as follows:
- Power buyers make purchases to strengthen their position in business or in the world at large.
- Fame buyers buy to make a splash and for ego driven purposes.
- Safety buyers will spend today to prevent a future wrong tomorrow.
- Relationship buyers purchase things because they trust the seller or to help the seller out.
This lesson smacked me in the face as the electric doors slid open to the baby-warehouse-dew-jour Saturday morning. The baby industry takes the idea that their market – new and expecting parents – are all Safety buyers to the Nth degree.
One way to argue this approach is that they are right in that a parent’s priority is first and foremost the protection of their offspring, and thus that is their purchasing focus as they consume goods. The opposite argument would be that their approach is the equivalent to profiteering on the naiveté of the clientele. As with most things I would think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but
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