Improving Your Sales Team
Understanding buyer behaviour
Today’s public is far more sophisticated when it comes to buying products and services than it was a decade ago. There’s a wealth of consumer information to help us all become wiser and more discerning buyers - just look at the explosion of price comparison web sites as an example. However, in this technological age, it is easy to forget that business is still transacted between people – those with expectations, emotional wants and needs - and those who can meet them.
Whether you are new to sales or a seasoned winner - keeping your skills up to date is vital if you are to “stay ahead of the game”. A recent piece of research on effective selling came up with a somewhat alarming statistic that 80% of an organisation's business is typically generated by 20% of its sales people – the remaining 80% are little more than order takers and end up creating severe customer dissatisfaction and frustration due to their poor product knowledge, indifferent attitude and poor interpersonal skills.
Top sales people aren’t there by chance - they see themselves as true professionals, who are always learning. They are always sharpening their product knowledge, developing their interpersonal skills and above all, maintaining a positive mental attitude. A key feature of sales winners is their ability to understand buyer behaviour.
So what is buyer behaviour?
It’s a fact that people buy differently and we all have a set of motivational drivers that we use when purchasing something. You may have heard the expression ” put yourself in the customer’s shoes”; this is probably the best way to understand what motivates a customer to buy - and in turn make the sale.
To illustrate the concept of buyer behaviour, think about yourself for a moment and go through this example.
If you won a competition to spend up to £200,000 on a new car, what would motivate you to decide on which car to buy?
The fact is, we each have our own unique list of criteria - however, they will fall into two main categories - practical needs and emotional wants.
Practical needs are the logical, left brain aspects, such as - can everyone get in? Is it reliable? Is it fuel efficient and cheap to run, safe? etc.
Emotional wants are based around our personal motivations and values, such as -status, prestige, brand appeal, success, power and performance, carbon emissions and other green credentials etc
How we buy will be determined by a mix of these practical and emotional elements and depend on the situation.
Another key insight into buyer-behaviour involves understanding a further layer of thought processes that we all go through before buying -
The 4 fundamentals of buyer behaviour
1. People buy people
We tend to buy from people we trust and like - this is why some people react strongly to over-pushy “hard sell” salespeople who are only focused on their own agenda. Consequently developing true rapport with prospects is vital.
2. People buy what they want
People tend not to buy what they are “told they need” – it is critical to take the time to genuinely understand the wants and needs of the customer before matching them with our products and services.
3. Losing or gaining
There are two motivators at play here – losing and gaining. Fear of losing tends to be the more powerful and good examples include items selling out fast or the latest “hard-to-find” toy at Christmas – buyers go to great lengths not to “miss out”
Equally, people buy for peace of mind - insurance is the classic example - we all begrudge paying for insurance - but we want the financial stability such as an income for life or a desired lifestyle in retirement.
4. Matching benefits
People generally only buy when motivated to do so - too often inexperienced sales people trot out a long list of products or services and wonder why customers aren’t interested. Customers are only interested in what our products can do for them – so we have to ask the right questions and then carefully listen to understand their responses – only then can we begin to match the benefits – focusing on those that hit the right buttons for the customer
The most important thing to remember is that you can only sell to people – and to do that - you must develop your people skills. Each sales situation is different, because no two people are alike. Being a people, rather then a pushy, person will set you on the right road to increased sales and reduce time spent on unproductive presentations and costly retention activity.
If you would like to learn more about taking your sales skills to the next level, talk to one of our team today on 0845 026 2266