"Aim to help customers achieve their goals."

Trechos retirados de um excelente texto, "So you Think You Know your Customers? de Nader Tavassoli, publicado por International Commerce Review, Vol. 10, nº 1 Spring 2011

"A single customer may belong to multiple goal segments
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Goal-based approaches to market segmentation – rather than a customer-segmentation approach focused on demographics, for example – have long been argued to lead to more meaningful segmentation schemes.
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However, even when segments are defined according to goals (needs) the next logical step for many marketers is to assign customers to discrete segments.
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However, products and services are not bought and consumed to satisfy personas, if there even is such a person as a Barry. Barry is a different person at work, at play and at home. He is a different person on different days of the week.
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Barry who shifts between independent goals. The implications of seeing consumers as a bundle of goals can be profound.
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Individual consumers can be members of multiple segments if they buy and consume ice cream to satisfy different goals. Unilever has Solero in its arsenal to compete against Coke for refreshment seekers and Magnum to compete with Häagen Dazs for indulgence seekers. On both occasions Unilever is competing for Barry’s custom. To take this point further, Barry might be value conscious in buying family sized Carte D’Or packages on promotion, but not shy away from a full-priced Magnum at the corner shop when he wants to reward himself.
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Consumers and customers choose products and services to attain goals and not for the attributes of the offering. Depending on which goal is most active, their preferences and choices can shift dramatically.
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Using ads, packaging or salespeople, companies try to illustrate a competitive advantage by credibly demonstrating some sort of superiority of product attributes – faster, whiter, smaller, less fatty and so on. This is product-focused selling. Goal-based selling does not exclude a discussion of product features, but its primary goal is to shift the customers’ mindset towards goals that put these into the best light; that activate latent goals that suit your brand at the critical moment. Next, the sales person needs to identify a discrepancy between the desired versus actual state, and demonstrate how the product or service is a means to close this gap."