Selling involves at least two people, a buyer and a seller. This is a rather obvious statement to make yet most of the sales training I received in my early years devoted 100% of the time to studying sales techniques and none to studying buyer behaviour. I was always told that the key ingredient to success was empathy - the ability to put yourself in the buyer's shoes - but no one ever explained how I was to achieve this.
I was told that there were a number of 'SECRETS to SUCCESS' which the top salespeople used to produce enormous levels of sales, and that all I had to do was learn and apply these secrets, to achieve the same success. However, it always seemed to me that these secrets consisted of a series of clever techniques designed to trick the prospect into buying, because he or she did not have the courage to say "No".
Whenever I tried these 'tricks', it was always with people who not only had the courage to say "No", they had the conviction to suggest some alternative uses for my product which I had not previously considered. Then I discovered the truth. Top salespeople do not use these tricks.
There is only one real secret to success in selling
Treat every prospect as if they are about to become close friends.
People like to buy from people they like, and in times of difficult economic conditions this almost becomes a condition of sale. Build firm relationships, create friendships, become a welcome visitor and you will never have any real problems in selling.
How do you do that? Well the first step is to understand the buying process in detail. Learn to look at your product, yourself, your company and the world through the eyes of your prospect. This is what is meant by empathy. Break the process of buying down into understandable sections and study each section with reference, first to your prospect, and second to your product or service.
One of the best ways to learn buyer behaviour is to study your own behaviour. Every day you make buying decisions, you interact with salespeople in order to survive. You are constantly faced with making decisions to buy or not to buy, or you may be involved in influencing and advising others on their buying decisions. Most of the buying decisions are likely to be in your personal life. Some are very simple decisions requiring only a few minutes attention such as buying lunch or a snack. Others are more complex, involve consultation, and discussion with other people and may take months to complete, like the purchase of a new home. Some decisions are automatic, repeating a previously successful decision, others are new and require creative thought and some element of risk.
Many of us are also involved in the process of making buying decisions at work. They may be as simple as an office equipment purchase, or may involve months of evaluation such as the purchase of new capital equipment. Within our work environment there is a much greater likelihood that the decision will involve others and you may often find that you are either seeking the opinion or approval of other people before making a decision, or your advice or approval may be sought.
This is all important experience in the process of buying, experience that you can draw upon to help you to understand the buying process from the perspective of your prospect. You may also find that sometimes you make a purchase on behalf of someone else. Buying a present, buying in order to sell the product on to someone else, making a bulk purchase on behalf of a group of people. There are often situations when we all become involved as an intermediary, and therefore we need to take account of different considerations in making the best decision.
All of these different experiences we have in buying, deciding not to buy, or in influencing buying decisions are valuable. By exploring our own experience we become better able to understand our prospects and therefore be much better able to satisfy their needs. Remember particularly your experience in making decisions not to buy, because these are by far the most common decisions everyone makes and the decisions you will most need to avoid if you are to be successful.
Before we move on to look at the buying process in detail, it would be helpful to make this as practical an exercise as possible. The purpose in looking at buyer behaviour is to help you identify sales opportunities and establish rapport more effectively. In Part 3 we will look at how to segment your market, how to identify target groups of prospects and how to use the skills of target marketing to get your prospects and clients working for you. But let's start the process now. Targeting is so important today that some repetition on the subject will actually be valuable.
We are going to look at the buying process, not from your position as a salesperson, but from the perspective of the buyer. I want you, therefore, to try and step out of your sales role and try to see things as your prospective buyer might. Treat the exercise as if you were the buyer using the Buyer Behaviour worksheet to record your notes. . Photocopy the worksheet for your own use in analysing your market.
For the first occasion of undertaking this exercise, pick a customer or prospect you know quite well. Select someone who is representative of a market you would like to penetrate or a group of prospects that you would like to make clients. For example, if you sell to the hotel and catering industry, you might pick a hotel manager or the owner of a free house if there is a market of such prospects.
Don't pick the manager of the local sports and leisure complex if there is only one in your area. ( I am not suggesting that you should not prospect there, but you can look at it as a one off opportunity later.) The purpose of this exercise is to identify markets rather than analyse one-off prospects. By studying one prospect who is representative of a market, the effort in the research is transferable to the rest of the market. Furthermore, people in similar positions within a defined market, such as hotel managers and local innkeepers, tend to know each other. You will be able to obtain referrals from one to the other as you will see later. There is more to building a target market than this, and we will explore the task in more detail in Chapter 16 in Part 3.
For this exercise, to make it easy to follow and to make it
immediately practical, pick a buyer whom you know; one who is
representative of a similar group of buyers with whom you would
like to do business, and who you know to be the primary decision
maker for the purchase of your products and services. Try to make
it someone you get on with quite well so that you can give them a
call for more information if you need it to complete the
exercise. .When you have selected a prospect, write their name
and company on the top of a copy of the Buyer Behaviour Model
Worksheet and read on.
Print out the Buyer Behaviour Model Worksheet to assist you in understanding your client or prospect