You can’t always get what you want…
The Rolling Stones got it right when they sang: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you’ll find, you get what you need!” Very often we, or our customers, are asking for something because we know what’s possible. We can’t ask for what we don’t know is possible. Apple was really good at selling us things we didn’t know to ask for.
Listen to this new 9-minute episode for some ideas on how you can ask a better question to find out why someone (maybe you) wants something. And then you can propose something even better.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
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– “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.” Why am I singing lyrics from Rolling Stones? Check out this episode and see. Hey, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another edition of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. And the reason I was singing Rolling Stones lyrics, “You can’t always get what you need “, is the song reminded me of life and business. There are so many times when we go to try to get something that we want that’s not available to us for whatever reason. It’s out of our price range, it’s out of stock or whatever it is, and we might end up with some thing else which is really what we need.
The same thing applies with your customers. Very often, your customer is going to ask you for something and they can’t get what they want. It’s not available, supply chain issues, legal reasons that they can’t do it. And I’m thinking of like fireworks or they want to do shots at the bar or stuff like that. But if you get to the root of why they’re asking for what it is, you might find what they really need. And that’s where this lyric really comes in. You know, “You can’t always get what you want but you find sometimes you get what you need. And actually, if you try sometimes you’ll find you get what you need.” Okay. I know the people who are lyrics crazy about that are going to get me on that. But here’s the reason. What is it that you really needed it? Why are you asking that?
People ask for things that they know exist. What they can’t do, is ask for things that they don’t know exist. This is where Steve Jobs and Apple was so, so good early on still somewhat now, but certainly in the early days. If they had asked, people asked Steve Jobs, you know, did you ask people what they want? And he said, no, no. They didn’t ask people what they want because they can’t imagine what’s possible. A very famous quote from Henry Ford, back in the early early days of the early 1900’s, when he made the model T, somebody said, did you ask people what they wanted? And he said, No. If I asked them what they wanted they would’ve told me they wanted a faster horse. Because that was transportation to them. So when your customers come to you and say can I have something, instead of just saying no or even just saying yes sometimes, it’s get to the root of the why. And this is for ourselves as well, I just went shopping I’ll talk about this in another episode when just went shopping for a sports jacket and ended up with a sports jacket but not at all like the one that I thought I was going there for. Was it what I needed? Yeah. It’s going to serve the purposes of what I need, it wasn’t what I thought I wanted, and I’ll talk about the sales process in that, in another episode.
So you can’t always get what you want, but you might get what you need. Getting to the root of the why you think you need what it is or why your customer thinks they need whatever it is is going to get you to a point where you can get even better very often, a better result with something else. And that’s the key, It might be something else, It might not be what they asked for, what they want or what you want, but you can get to the result, which is what you really needed. And I think about if I look around my office here there are different products that are things that maybe I thought I needed, but what did I really want? I’m actually using a different microphone than I started with my podcasts because the other microphone, which is great, a Blue Yeti, it picks up too much sound around, and if there’s other stuff going on outside my window, or inside the house here, you’re going to pick up that noise, and I got a different microphone. I still have the Blue Yeti, those of you watching on video, there it is, it comes right off the wall on a, on a boom mic, boom, stand over here. But the reality is, what did I need for this? I needed a different mic. What I didn’t need, and I’ve seen this with other setups. I’ve seen other people that have multiple cameras and all kinds of crazy stuff going on and I’ve chosen not to do that.
The same reason I use just one monitor. I’ve in the past had multiple monitors, and for me, one big, what is this, 27 inch monitor, that’s what I need. I find myself sometimes even having to look, to turn my head to see the sides of the screen, because it’s close enough to me that I can’t even see the whole screen sometimes if I get too close to it. So do I really need bigger? No. I think about when we got, when moved into this house, what is it about 12 years ago. And we were getting a television to go up above the fireplace. And my sons were trying to get us to go bigger and bigger and bigger, and there’s only so much wall space there, you can go before you’re getting wider than the fireplace is wide. And I said, you know, from where we’re sitting if we have to turn our heads a lot to see the edges of the screen, we’re too close or the screen’s too big or both. And since the sofa can’t move any further back the TV had to stay where it is. So it’s a measly 60 inches, which is funny because I remember the days when 32 was huge, you know, and now 60 inches is like, oh, that’s cute, you have a little tiny TV there don’t you?
ou can’t always get what you want. So think about the next time you say, I want something, what you really want is the results of that. What are the results of having that, and can you get results that you want with something else? Sometimes you’re forced to like I said earlier about price, where you’re thinking well, that’s out of my price point. You know, I want that, but I really can’t afford that. What do you really need? What you need maybe is the results of that, or maybe you don’t need it at all. That’s something the pandemic has proven to my wife and I maybe some of you as well, when you’re living on less you know, what did you really need was probably different than things that you wanted. So again, I can look around my office here and see the light that’s in front of me is a ring light with a soft box on it. You can go to my website, alanberg.com, look at the resources page on there and you can see all, all of my video equipment. I literally bought that, I was in Marshalls one day, I’m like Marshalls, TJ Maxx and it’s a 9″ or a 10″ ring light on a stand that goes up about five feet. But I don’t like the ring showing up in my glasses, so I got a soft box, which is a photographer, videographer thing where it kind of diffuses the light there, so you don’t see those rings in the reflection in the glasses. Not an expensive setup, right? I’m getting the results I want.
Could I have spent more? Absolutely. The lights that I have mounted on the wall, came on stands. Stands were fine when I needed the them occasionally. But again, with the pandemic I found that they kind of never went away. And one day my wife and I were like we’re tripping on these light stands, I need to do something. So I made mounts and mounted them up on the wall. Again, I made the mounts, I went to home depot, I bought some parts, I made the mounts. I’m handy that way. And I didn’t see anything that I really needed to buy that was expensive because all I was trying to do was get the lights up on the wall, they were up on the wall. What did I need? I got what I needed. Is it what I wanted? Oh, no. I had some ideas for crazy things that I could have done, it wasn’t necessary. For this particular thing, it wasn’t necessary.
I’ve mentioned this book before, “The Paradox Of Choice”, some decisions you maximize some decisions you satisfice, like it’s good enough, that was good enough. When it comes to buying things like my this microphone here, or my computers or whatever, I might spend more because I want to maximize that decision, and my needs are a little bit greater. So next time a customer asks you for some something, do they want it? Or do they need it? And what is the result that they’re looking for? And can you suggest something to them that might even be better than the results that they’re asking about? Because again, they’re only asking about results that they know are possible. What they can’t ask you for, is results that they don’t know are possible. So next time you hear the song from Rolling Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, think about this, think about the podcast, Let me know any topics you’d like to hear, thanks for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora:
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