Some people are buying cars because they are in love with a particular vehicle. Others, though, are simply purchasing solutions to their transportation needs.

Those might sound like the same thing, but I don’t think they are. A person can walk onto your lot asking about a three-row SUV, but the SUV itself may not really be what they’re shopping for.

Maybe they have a third child on the way. Maybe they’re suddenly responsible for getting an aging parent to appointments. Maybe their 12-year-old sedan has become unreliable, and what they’re actually looking for is the confidence that their family won’t be stranded somewhere.

The vehicle is the product. The solution is what that vehicle allows the person to do.

I think this distinction matters because it changes the conversation a salesperson has with a customer. If I’m focused primarily on selling the car, I’m thinking about horsepower, trim levels, incentives, payments and whether I make the deal happen. If I’m focused on solving the transportation problem, I have to understand the problem first. That requires me to ask better questions, listen more carefully and understand why this person decided that today was the day to walk into a dealership.

And sometimes the answer might surprise the buyer. The customer asking about the $52,000 SUV may actually need the $43,000 one. The person convinced they need a pickup might be better served by something else entirely. Helping someone discover that doesn’t mean you’ve talked yourself out of a sale. It may mean you’ve given them a reason to trust you with one.

Early in my career, I probably spent too much time learning how to sell cars and not enough time learning why people needed them. There’s an important difference between those two things. One makes you better at presenting a product; the other makes you better at understanding a person. The best salespeople I’ve known eventually learn to do both.

In the sales process, its a good habit to try looking past the vehicle they say they’re shopping for. Find out what changed, what problem they’re trying to solve and what a successful outcome actually looks like for them. You may still end up selling them exactly the car they came in asking about. Or, you might end up selling them what they really need.