There are six key rules in The Effective Sales Process section of my book ‘42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness:
#6 – Target Your Customer
#7 – Know How Your Customer Buys
#8 – Know How Your Customer Makes Decisions
#9 – Develop Your Customer’s Buying Milestones
#10 – Develop Your Optimized Sales Process
#11 – Create a Playbook.
In this article I will focus on 2 rules which are critical for all salespeople or anyone touching the prospect, client or customer. These rules are crucial for understanding your customer.
Rule #7 – Know How Your Customer Buys
Whether they’re aware of it or not, all buyers go through a buying process.
Salespeople need to understand how their customers buy. Specifically, how do they actually purchase the products you sell? Our customers are always making decisions about products and services via a tangible buying process, whether they know it or not.
In fact, businesses and consumers go through a defined or non-defined buying process. It’s a natural progression toward an end-purchase. If we understand that particular buying process then we can more effectively sell to it.
Several years ago some friends referred me to Palo Alto Metro Sports for new running shoes to fix my pronation problem (caused by my ankles rolling out when I jog). When I walked into the store the salesman approached me and asked me if he could help. I described by problem and he proceeded to clarify and explain to me what pronation was and showed me two columns of shoes on the wall that addressed advanced cushioning and stability.
At the same time he asked me questions about how often I jog, what kind of surface I ran on, how far I ran, in a sense qualifying me while asking me also the price range I was looking at, certain brands, etc. He then said “I’ll go in the back, find a 2 or 3 pairs of various shoes that fit the type of shoes you’re looking for. You can try them on, go outside, run up and down the runway. They’ll be in your price band. You can then figure out which pair works best for you and we’ll get you out of here in a few minutes. How does that sound to you?”
Well it sounded great. What he was doing was stepping me through a shoe buying process, and essentially taking me through his matching sales cycle. At any point I could have said, “Whoa, I’m really just looking – I’d like to check over at the Stanford Mall.” But I said “Bring me out some shoes and I’ll give ‘em a try.” I purchased a pair and have since purchased all of my running shoes from Palo Alto Metro Sports.
Now that’s purchasing at a consumer level. Most of us, whether we’re buying refrigerators, other household items, cars, etc., go through a process and if forced to, can specify the various steps of that process. This process can be documented and applied to any business purchase as well.
In the following chart you can see that there is a Customer Buying Process that shows a progression through different stages.
2 Rules for Understanding Your Customers
From the author of “42 Rules to Increase Sales Effectiveness”
This works for a very simple sale like selling shoes as well as the more sophisticated multi-million dollar complex sales efforts. Those that understand this will be way ahead of the curve.
Ask yourself, "Do I know how my customer buys?
Rule #8 - Know How Your Customer Makes Decisions
"What's the process for making decisions and who would be involved?"
We have established that all customers go through a Buying Process and that we should know at a broad level the steps they take to buy. Salespeople need also understand how your customer makes buying decisions. Specifically what are the actions, behavior and processes they go through to make the final buying or purchasing decision?
If a buyer goes through a natural process of initial interest, awareness and then information gathering and education, there is a point to ask a fundamental question that gets at how they are going to make a decision to buy or not.
You would love to ask "Mr. Prospect, how and when are you going to make a decision?" Now the answer to this question is great information you'd like to have, but there's a better way to ask the question. I call it the Magic Question.
The Magic Question has a few variations but always contain the P Word. That word is Process.
"Mr. Prospect, what is the process for making a decision on this and who would be involved?"
Terminology can vary whether it's a consumer or business sale. As mentioned, this often goes on before people even know consciously that this is happening. Good selling maps a selling process to an understood buying process. If we know where the customer is going, we can map a process to it and take them along while we manage the sales cycle.
Just as the good shoe salesman proactively stepped me through the process, so good salespeople know where their customers are going, how their buyers buy and move them along appropriately.
The effective way to
ask the question is:
There are two fundamental truths behind this very powerful question.
1. Every individual or company has a process or steps they go through when making a buy decision. 2. There is always at least one and often more than one individual involved in a purchase decision. You need to know who they are.
This powerful question kills two birds with 15 words. It's quite remarkable. Try it. It's magic. Prospects love to tell you their process for decision-making, but you have to use the "P word".
Since all companies have processes in place for assessing and purchasing products, equipment and services, they will often melt with this question and open up the proverbial kimono and provide you with very useful information about people, process, decision-makers and power-brokers.
I was calling on Mary, a manager-level contact of an enterprise organization. Mary agreed to meet with me after a series of phone calls to collect preliminary data and set up a discovery on-premise sales call. When I met her and spoke to her I realized she was junior in status and would be the front
screen for other key people in the decision-making process. She was very protective and controlling while implying that she was the Big Cheese on this project.
Attempting to ask her a question about the decision-making process, I asked her a question which I immediately knew to be a disaster as soon as it left my lips. I asked, “Mary, are you the decision-maker on this?” I believe the problem was not only in the raw bluntness of the question but also my tone and body language. It was as if I was implying “Mary, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
I could see Mary bristle as she sat up and decisively claimed “Yes, I am!” I was immediately backed into a corner to deal only with Mary and not able to go around her without further offending her.
A much wiser, softer and effective question would have simply been: “Mary, what’s the process for making a decision on this type of project and who would be involved”. By the way, I did get the deal that quarter, but it took me another year to get Mary to loosen up with me.
Take another self-test as you think about your key opportunity. Ask yourself: “Do I know how my customer makes decisions?”
In summary, we’ve just addressed 2 key sales rules about understanding the customer. Armed with this information and powerful question will go a long way toward a more effective selling process.
Be Smarter, Be Better. MXL Partners - for High-Achieving Sales Teams.