Sales Tip: Don’t Make Milkshake Mistakes If You Want to Increase Customer Purchase Rates

Many sales people have such a distressing thing, that is, they always feel that their products are very good. Customers also like it and will come to buy it, but the whole amount just can't go up.

I have also done market research and made some improvements to the product, but I can't always get good results. There are also a lot of advertisements, but the probability of customers repurchasing is still quite low. Do not know the specific reason why?

Sales Tip: Don’t Make Milkshake Mistakes If You Want to Increase Customer Purchase Rates

What is the milkshake error?

There’s a term called the “milkshake error,” which comes from the book Cognitive Surplus, which has a very interesting story.

Said that McDonald's wanted to increase its milkshake sales, and hired a group of researchers to do market research, almost all of which focused on the product.

There was a guy named Gerald Berstell who chose to ignore the milkshake itself and instead conduct research on customers. He sits in the store for 18 hours a day, watching who and when buying milkshakes.

He made a surprising discovery: a lot of milkshakes are sold in the morning, and it's clearly not the right time to drink at 8am.

He also found three interesting phenomena: first, buyers are usually alone; second, they hardly buy any other food except milkshakes; third, they never drink milkshakes in the store.

Later, he interviewed those customers and found that these people faced a long and boring journey and needed something to refresh themselves while driving.

This kind of thing won't be too full, but it can carry hunger, and it doesn't need to be held with both hands. After all, it is inconvenient to rush on the road in professional clothes. It also can't be too hot, splashed all over the place, or too greasy. At the same time it has to be tasty and take some time to finish.

None of the traditional breakfasts met these demands, and those customers substituted milkshakes. Suck the shake through the straw, usually for 20 minutes. This solves the problem of boredom on the way to work.

Knowing what customers really want, the way to increase milkshake sales is to go straight to the customer's real needs and make the milkshake thicker so the customer will last longer to suck.

Mistakes that focus only on the product and ignore the customer are called "milkshake mistakes." This is a very easy mistake to make in sales, and it is also an important reason why many products do not sell.

If you want to increase customer purchase rate, don’t make milkshake mistakes

What the milkshake error taught us is that many companies segment the market by customer or product feature, trying to differentiate by adding new features and functions.

Consumers, however, see the market in a very different light. He has something to get done, so he's always on the lookout to "hire" the best product or service to help him get things done. Marketers must take the same perspective as they do.

Many people pay too much attention to the product itself when selling products. They always feel that it is necessary to make the product perfect, and they always use Jobs' perfectionism to motivate themselves. But he ignored that there is only one Steve Jobs in the world. It is the customer who really buys your stuff. You have to put your mind on the customer.

"Some problems are difficult to solve, not because we are not good enough, but because our thinking is limited." For example, take a small radish to fill a huge hole. At this time, some people will attribute the gap to the radish that is too small, but the fact is that the person filling the hole has a problem.

It is necessary to understand that when you designed this product, it may be wrong to want to solve the pain points of customers. If you design the product according to the original pain points, and the sales volume does not increase but declines, then you must know the reason.

When selling, to avoid milkshake mistakes, don’t focus on the product itself, but communicate with customers more to understand what their real needs are.