This Peter Drucker quote about What Customers Buy will give you a headache.

“The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it sells him.”

• Did you sell a car? Or a slice of family happiness?
• Do you save your customer money? Or help them afford a holiday?
• Do you sell insurance? Or do you help risk managers keep their jobs?
• Did you sell a cheap product? Or a simple product the customer can buy without thinking too hard about it?

If you haven’t researched your customers, you’re selling what you think they want not what they actually want. If you’re lucky, you’ll still get sales – but not as many as you would have done. If you’re unlucky, you’ll bomb.

Yes, it’s another marketing quotation that comes down to research. Find out what your customer really wants; it may be the product you’re selling. But it’s just as likely to be a place he wants to be.

Take a look at Clayton Christensen’s Jobs To Be Done framework.