Why do people buy?

Been a hectic couple of weeks so sorry there has been no blog from Mark or me since early September. At the end of our last blog, we promised to write a blog on Competency Models. Well that is going to have to wait at least one more week because this week we wanted to talk about some fundamentals of selling and buying.

Pretty simple question this week - "Why do people buy?"

There are a couple of threads at present on some of the LinkedIn groups about salespeople needing to understand their own business and that of their clients really well if they are to be successful. Of course we agree - if you do not understand your own business, your portfolio, your key metrics and if you do not find out that information about your clients then you will struggle to convince people to buy from you.

But let's go back to the very simple question of "Why do people buy?"

Our view is as simple as the question. People buy for their own reasons - it is that simple. People buy to be better off as a result of making the decision to buy something. In a B2B world it may seem that your customer buys your product to solve a problem and of course that is true - to an extent. What is certain is that the decision maker will have more than just logical, business reasons for buying from you. There will be all of the emotional reasons tied up in the decision too. These are "their own reasons".

So what are "their own reasons' and how do you get to understand them?

Well guess what - we are back to one of our favourite subjects - you get to understand "their own reasons' by asking great questions and really listening to the responses. By the way I saw a great line last week which read "Listening is not the same as Waiting to Talk".

So listening, really deeply listening will uncover "their own reasons".

So when a CFO says to you "I may buy from you if you can save me some money" that sounds like an obvious thing to say for a CFO doesn't it? But if you can get deeply into his/her personal needs for saving money (looking good in front of the boss, saving our business from disaster, not repeating that mistake I made last year, earning my bonus by saving the business £s, etc, etc) then you are truly getting to "their own reasons"

So bearing in mind all buying decisions are emotional and for the personal reasons of the buyer we want to remind you of some basics:

1. Always ask questions that get you closer to the real, emotional, personal reasons for wanting to solve a business problem
2. Talk about the benefits to the customer of buying your products.
3. Do not talk about your products.
4. Ensure that your client is emotionally better off by buying your product
5. Listen intently to uncover the real "hot button" emotional reason for wanting to solve a particular business problem that can be addressed through the benefits your product brings

As always we are interested in your views so please post a comment

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.