Why Do People Really Buy ?
If you’ve got the guts, ask one of your customers why they buy from you. The answer may surprise you. Or scare you. Or disappoint you.
The reason I mostly hear is - No reason.
Can you believe that ? Somebody just bought over $100,000 worth of product from me for no reason. Me neither.
There’s usually an obvious reason and a real reason.
I just heard one of you ask why I would even care why they buy. I’ll answer that, before we go any further.
A wise young man named Stephen Pierce said it better than I’ve ever heard it explained.
” Knowing what they buy will make you a living. Knowing why they buy will make you rich. “
Unless you take time to analyze the sale and find the real reason behind the purchase, you’ll never reach your full potential as a salesperson.
Check on Amazon for any sales books by Donald Laird and you’ll find some great sales advice written by someone who looks at it from the psychological angle.
Laird once noted that in selling, it’s fundamental that you get to the reason behind the reason. You have to get down to what drove the purchase.
His case studies get to the bottom of the purchase. For instance - when we buy a car, we say we want to get from here to there. What we really want is to get there fast, while everybody looks at us and wants to be us.
We buy a Bowflex, saying we want to improve our health. We really want to stay attractive to the opposite sex and make the other men who see us quake with fear from the rippling of our giant muscles.
There are millions of reasons for you to find out why people are buying from you.
Customer Relations: Learning Versus Teaching
The fabulous Sethmeister had a post about a couple of Radio shack employees and the new way they run off their customers.
My first two thoughts were, (1) Why in the heck would you venture into a store that lost it’s usefulness a decade or two ago and (2) I don’t agree with his last statement.
I do however, agree that they should have anteed up a power cord with a smile and sent the customer home happy.
In his “listen-and-learn last paragraph”, where he usually teaches us a valuable lesson, he says,
” Here’s the short version: If you try to teach a customer a lesson, you’ve just done two things:
a. failed at teaching a lesson
and
b. lost a customer “
I’m sure he meant this as it pertains to this particular instance, but if not, I’ll have to disagree.
I teach my customers lessons all the time and they thank me for it.
If you’re a salesperson and you aren’t teaching your customers a lesson now and then, you’re shortchanging them and your sales numbers.
You need to be on the lookout for what your competition is trying to sell your customer and help them learn what to not buy into.
One way to do this would be thru white papers. If you need help with this, click over to my blog friend, Michael Stelzner’s blog and learn from one of the best.
I also try to teach them how to interact with the rest of my company ( customer service, truck drivers, AR,etc ), so they can make the most of our shortcomings.
Some of you will say they shouldn’t have to learn how to best use us, we should be perfect. To that I say - What planet do you live on ?
We hire from the same gene pool that you do. We aren’t perfect and never will be. Do we strive to be ? Yes. Do we weed out the less-than-perfect ones ? Sure we do. And we get another imperfect product of a world full of imperfect circumstances in their place.
The best case would be if we, as a company, would learn from our mistakes and from our customers.
But sometimes we hire people who have the deadliest trait known to man, as it pertains to assisting customers, the disease known as - KNOWITALLITIS.
Yes, one of the worst, most incurable diseases a human can have, KNOWITALLITIS is rampant in today’s gene pool of those looking for a job in sales and customer service.
One of the ‘most likely to succeeds’ I ever saw, was infected with this ugly disease.
He had all the tools that were needed for sales success, but he was never able to shed the traits that this disease reflects in a persons life.
He knew it all, he would not learn, heck, he wouldn’t even shut up telling us all he knew long enough for us to force the medicine he needed down his throat.
When a customer tried, in vain, to tell him what they wanted or needed or were ready to buy, all he could do was tell them all he knew about what they needed and wanted.
If you’d tried to write him a note with an order on it, he would have shoved it aside and would have kept on telling you even more about what he knew you needed.
That’s a far cry from another salesman I know. He never says more than his customer needs to hear. He listens at least twice as much as he speaks. He also sells about twice as much as everybody else in his company.
He learns from everybody and so should you. A professional salesman should learn from the wind, the rain, his dog, the cereal box at breakfast. Everywhere. Everything. Everyone.
The more I read about successful people in the past, the more I learn that they learned from everybody, instead of trying to teach everybody they came in contact with.
Try it sometime. Ask someone for their advice and then use it. You will have made a friend for life. And you might learn something.
If Shakespeare Were In Sales …
While our old friend Willie has been quoted on every subject under the sun, I’ve only once heard him quoted as inspiration for a salesman.
A man in Indianapolis, who found out my fondness for sales messages, once told me this:
” Assume a virtue, if you have it not.”
At the time, this man was being paid a LOT more than I was, so I figured he must know more than me. Even if he didn’t, it was worth looking into.
” Assume a virtue, if you have it not “, he said again, after seeing my eyes wide and mouth hanging open. ” That one quote is worth it’s weight in gold to any salesman “, he said.
I needed more to get a grasp on the concept, so he explained it to me in simple terms. You know I like simple.
You assume that the prospect knows everything there is to know about the product. This is very complimentary to them. When explaining the products uses, you never run the risk of talking down to or patronizing the prospect.
You preface your remarks with phrases like:
” Of course, I don’t need to explain this to you, but … “
” You already know this, but … “
” I don’t have to tell you this, but … “
Then you go ahead and explain the product and all of it’s possibilities in the simplest terms you can find.
I’ve found that when I sense someone feeling like I’m trying to talk over their heads, or if I’ve said something that they might consider condecending, I can sometimes gloss it over with a phrase or two like this, as I continue to educate them on something they should already know.
You can also use this to instill a sense of you believing them to be a big player, even though you know they aren’t.
” We only make this offer to the leaders in the industry … “
” This only works for those that are ahead of the curve .. “
You can use some of Shakespeare’s finest sales advice to put you ahead of the curve or to become a leader in your industry… but I don’t have to tell you that.
If Paris Hilton Were In Sales …
Take any young, rich, badly educated heiress with no morals and change her role to one of a salesperson and what would happen to her ?
Well, in my enormous opinion, she’d talk mostly about her favorite subject … herself.
If she did sense the need to talk about the customer, which is highly unlikely, she’d probably say, ” Now then, let’s talk about you. What did you think of my latest video ? “
Unfortunately, there are WAY too many salespeople out there who are just like this. They’re enamored with their product or company.
Their favorite word is “we“, not “you” and that turns the sales process completely around, 180 degrees away from the right direction.
Smart salesmen know that there is only one topic that’s worth talking about and that’s what your product/service can do for the customer.
A lot of customers, I’m not one of them, will be courteous to stupid salespeople who do this. They listen to you talk about how many you can make, how much you like making the product, how your sales are great, etc.
But in his mind, he’s wondering what this has to do with him and his business.
I just read about a salesman who recently passed to the next world. He was a prize winning botanist, too. He won several honors, was awarded a college degree and been a cult hero to those in his hobby.
His customers never knew any of this, because he never bothered talking to them with facts about himself.
Or maybe he was smart enough to know what his customers wanted to talk about … themselves and their business.
Louisville Geek Dinner
Here’s one for any of you within driving distance of Louisville.
The second coming of the Louisville Geek Dinner will be held on Thursday, November 16th 2006 @ 6:00pm EST.
It’s a social networking event for those who love technology.
And it will be held at the Fox and Hound Pub and Grille, close to Oxmoor Mall.
There’s no cost, except for whatever you choose to spend on food.
Making Calls vs Taking Calls
We just hired a long time friend of mine to be a salesman. He’s been in our industry for a couple of decades, in another capacity, for a supplier of ours.
I got the task of changing how he looks at the big picture. The company he used to work for has a different race to run than we do.
The first thing I told him was now he has to make calls, not take calls.
As a product rep, he waited for the phone to ring, to rush to the needs of the distributor. Now, as the distributor, he takes calls from customers and makes calls, looking for more customers.
If he waits for the phone to ring, as he’s used to doing, he’ll starve.
If he makes calls, everytime he thinks of a way to help a current customer, he’ll do well.
It’s funny how different it is on the distributor side, versus the supplier side. One has a million incoming calls to their cellphones.
The other better make those million calls.
The Art Of The Compliment
One of the greatest books on salesmanship doesn’t have the word sales in the title or in it’s contents, but it’s been said that if you’ll read the book every 6 months for the rest of your career, you’ll become a much better salesperson.
The book is Lord Chesterfield’s Letters To His Son. It was published well over 200 years ago, to be used as a guide for his son to use to become a better person, a gentleman and a success.
Salesmanship wasn’t the intention, nor was it even mentioned, but the rules the brilliant diplomat/author put on paper to help his son thru the various social contacts and situations, form a perfect guide for the salesperson who wants to master the human side of his profession.
One of the topics that Lord Chesterfield stresses in many of the letters is the necessity of using compliments to please others.
” Sincere praise is always good. You will easily discover every man’s prevailing vanity by observing his favorite topic of conversation, for every man talks most of what he has most a mind to be thought to excel in. Touch him there and you touch him to the quick. “
The lesson here is for the salesman to listen while the prospect talks, make a mental note of what he is most interested in, and then, when the opportunity arises, steer the conversation towards that topic.
It will take a tremendous gaffe to get a prospect/customer/client to ever leave you, if he feels important, comfortable and desired while you’re together.
Compliments, not flattery, will go a long way towards more sales.
I found my copy on Alibris.com and there’s still several there. Amazon has several versions, too.
