How do you make your buying decisions?
Do you buy what you need, or what you want?
Do you really know the difference?
Let me give you an example:
My little ten year old boy has three wrestling belts (he thinks he’s the heavyweight champion of the world, despite weighing slightly more than a feather).
For the last few weeks he’s wanted the WWE United States Heavyweight Champion belt.
So I looked it up on ebay.
He saw it and said, “Yeh, that’s the one. That’s the United States Champion belt. I want that.”
But I told him he can’t have it straight away. I’m trying to teach him patience.
As time went on he’s been more verbal about it.
He wants it more and more.
It’s got to the point now that he ‘needs’ it.
He has convinced himself he’s just got to have it.
And, you know, I’ll bet there’s a lot of things you’ve got that you bought in the same way.
You’ve wanted it.
And the more time went on, you convinced yourself you needed it.
To the point where you thought you’ve just got to have it.
I know I have.
Now, If you buy like that, isn’t that how most people buy?
Think about how you could use that the next time you try selling something in person, or writing copy.
Here’s a neat little story from Bruce Barton.
He tells how, by just controlling you urges to buy what you think you need, you could actually get yourself a few genuine luxuries.
And how that could impact on other areas of your life.
Cut Down Your Necessities, And You Will Be Able To Afford A Few Luxuries
Most of us do not have incomes large enough to provide both the things we need and the things we want.
We are forced to choose between our necessities and our luxuries. And, very foolishly, we choose to offer up the luxuries.
Thus our existence becomes dull and monotonous.
We can hardly be said really to live: our lives are lived for us cut out and sewed together by the habits and customs of the class to which we belong.
I have established a very good rule, which I pass on to you: Never do anything just because other people do it.
Most of your friends live in city apartments. They pay so much for the use of their rooms, and twice as much for the location and the fine marble hallway.
To live in an apartment like theirs is one of your “necessities.”
If you cut out that necessity, and lived in the country or in an apartment where you had to stretch your legs up three flights of stairs, you would have some money to spend on luxuries.
So with many other things.
Every year, by cutting out a few foolish necessities, I buy myself one big, wise luxury.
Four years ago I bought an automobile. Not much of an automobile. Many of my friends said they would rather not have any automobile than to have one like mine. But it was an automobile.
It has done some wonderful things for me.
For one thing, it has given me my little summer place up in the country.
A modest old white Colonial house, with a brook running behind it, and fruit trees all around a place I had wanted for years, but could not have because it was two miles from the railroad.
But two miles is nothing, even to an automobile like mine.
So I can work in the city and play all summer in the country thanks to my automobile.
It has done some other good things for me. It has improved the country roads between my little white house and town. Before the automobiles began to go by, the roads were very rough. But now all across the country-side mud puddles and deep ruts have vanished as if by magic. The automobile has made the town “dress up.”
And it has made me “dress up” my place, also.
Have you ever noticed how many more flowers are planted around farm-houses than formerly were? Do you want to know why that is ? I will tell you.
It used to make me mad because people who whirled by my place in limousines never stopped to look around. “I’ll make them turn their proud heads,” I said. So I planted flowers and painted my house.
Now, on Sunday afternoons, I lie in the hammock on my porch and listen to people in the cars saying to each other: “What a pretty little place that is! I wonder who lives there?”
That ‘s why there are more flowers than there used to be the automobile has done that.
With a tin pail full of coffee and a basket of sandwiches, I have had more fun exploring the wood roads around my place than Columbus ever had in discovering America.
My automobile has brought my office and my little white house side by side. It has given me a new pride in my place. It has improved the roads around me.
Yes, and it has made me a good neighbor to people whom I have wanted to call on for years, and never brought myself to it, because I hate long, hot rides on the street cars. It has made me a better citizen all around.
Gasoline is very high this year.
I shall have to cut out some other foolish necessity.
Best,
Rezbi
The Copy System
www.directmarketingcourse.com
www.hotbuttoncopywriting.com
www.commonsensedirectmarketing.com
