Everyone buys for different reasons and with different priorities. When you made that purchase, who made the final decision? Was it you, or the person selling it? Was it the words they used that pushed you into committing to the buy, or did you take the step with certainty?

Well of course, if the purchase was a good one, it was you who made that decision. You were motivated by what you wanted to take away from doing business with that person. It wasn’t the mass of reasons for buying that may have been sprayed at you by the seller. How could they have known what truly motivated your decision? Maybe what you wanted to buy was peace of mind, or a product that delivered lots of action, or to save time and money; or maybe you were investing in something that would help make you money. Whatever the case, it was the result you wanted to take away, not the specific product or service in question.

Buying without remorse

And what about when it wasn’t such a good purchase? Have you ever experienced “Buyer’s Remorse?” Have you ever said, “I didn’t really want it but I was pressured into buying it.” How did you feel about doing business with that person the next time? If you’re like most of us, it wasn’t a good start to a long-term relationship. As a consumer, being pushed into the wrong buying decision may result in lost money or inconvenience. As a business, it can result in a poor, perhaps fatal, return on investment that means money wasted and productivity lost.

But what about when you experience a “Good Buy?” When you’re with a good salesperson or with someone who’s a great influencer, it all seems to go so well – they don’t seem to pressure you at all. It’s just a pleasant conversation that ends in a desire on your part to buy their offering, or to accept their ideas. Sometimes they even seem to accurately know what you need better than you do. Occasionally you’ll even end up buying something completely different from what you had intended, but you’re actually much happier with the result. Do you go back to that person the next time? Do you recommend them to other people? If they ask you for a reference, do you give it to them? Well of course you do.

If a seller is well prepared and professional, they might even be able to give you evidence that their offering can actually do what they claim it can. You can feel this “locking you in” to believing in, and championing, them long after you met or discussed it.

Why do we make selling so hard?

Well, it’s probably no surprise to you now, but when you are selling something – whether it’s goods or services, or maybe just an idea, the person on the other side of the table is no different from you when you are buying something. They have their own unique way of making buying decisions; they have their own list of what, in the longer term, they want to get out of the transaction; they don’t like being sprayed with annoying or irrelevant information; and most of all, they won’t come back if you tick them off.

So where’s the problem? If we’ve all experienced being the target of both good and bad selling, why do so many of us do it so badly ourselves? We do it over and over again … and we make it SO hard!

Why do we become different, and far less effective, than we normally are? Isn’t it much easier to turn someone into a Willing Buyer who tells you what they’d like to purchase? Then you can start discussing how they can complete that purchase and stop focusing on “Closing.”

Inevitably, we get nervous, we talk too much, and we force the prospect to go to the effort of selecting what they actually need from the mass of information that we’ve not been able to filter for them. And what’s the effect on you (especially when times are hard)? You end up stressed because you can’t measure how effective your “spraying and praying” will be or by the wasted time on lost causes that were never going to buy; then you make the oh-so-dangerous assumptions, guesses and self-delusion that can take hold when people are under pressure to close sales and create new prospects.

Wouldn’t it be just great to get rid of all that stuff and at the same time improve our use of time and our effectiveness? Maybe by an order of magnitude?

Take the pressure off

It all begins with taking the time to step back, take a deep breath and evaluate whether your communication with other people is truly Two Way, and then investing a small amount of time in making it so. In tough times, you need to give your business every chance you can. It’s no longer sufficient to simply go through the motions of “putting yourself in their shoes” to understand where they are coming from.

What truly motivates that person; how they filter any information they receive; what “model of the world” they use to make sense of what’s going on around them – these are all key things that can make your approach to “influencing people to buy” far more effective.

To make you even more productive, you can add an insight into how others observe your interaction and how other stakeholders are affected by the sale or the decision. This could include customers, colleagues, family members and competitors –  the list can be long or short, depending on the situation.

View the accompanying video for a simple yet extremely effective exercise for gaining this insight into the motivations, concerns and agendas of the individuals you are trying to influence or sell to. This exercise is a fundamental step in learning how to turn “Selling” into “Buying.”

This piece is the first in a series that will give you solid tools and insights that you can use every day to survive and thrive in today’s tough markets, and to become a far more effective and comfortable influencer, seller or business partner.

Find out more about how this exercise is the first step in Turning Selling Into Buying.

Your business

You need to be very focused on your target market and very clear about what you bring to the table for them – why they need to meet with you, and what they miss if they don’t.

• What are the core competencies of your business?
• What is your target market?
• What is the profile of your ideal client or customer?
• What are the primary challenges you address or solutions you provide for your target market?

Your strategy

You need a mix of passive “marketing” activities and active prospecting activities. The marketing activities should augment the prospecting activities … not the other way around. Once you’ve developed your strategy, make a firm commitment to not only implement it, but also to stick to it. It will be the backbone of your business.

• What is your strategy for reaching your target market?
• How many avenues for “getting your message out” have you identified?
• Have you considered costs and time while exploring the options?

New clients

Remember, people “buy” for their own reasons, not necessarily yours. Don’t create roadblocks that will prevent them from buying.

• If your product or service requires a large commitment of time, money or involvement from potential customers, is there a way for a prospect to “ease into” becoming a client?
• Can you provide a short-term study or a pilot program, for instance, for a smaller financial or time commitment?

Existing clients

Keeping existing customers and growing your business with them is as important, if not more so, than finding new customers. Be aware, your best customers are at the top of your competitors’ prospect lists. Don’t take them for granted.

• What will you offer existing clients to add value to the relationship?
• What are your plans for leveraging the relationship to find new opportunities?

Support mechanisms

What new processes, resources, or infrastructure will be required to support your business development efforts?

• Will you need to establish new systems or bolster existing systems to support your marketing, prospecting, or product delivery processes?
• Are there new technologies that will allow you to maintain more immediate contact with your customers and keep them better informed?
• Will you need new hardware or software to support your efforts?

While you may not have the answers to all of the above questions, they can serve as a starting point for designing your action plan. It’s never too early to start building your future. Begin to plan for and put systems into place now. (Learn more about how you can find Rich Rewards in a Poor Economy)

Are you still a leader?

Which brings us to the importance of leadership. True leaders have vision, belief in a cause, and the wherewithal to overcome indecision and commit to a course of action. A true leader is driven by something bigger than personal ambition – a corporate cause and the value their organization brings to the market. Personal ambition may motivate an individual, but it won’t motivate others to follow.

Leadership is about taking a position to further the cause, knowing that it will draw criticism. It’s about ducking the bullets and firing back. It’s about conviction and keeping the vision in focus. It’s about making tough decisions and following a direction.

Can’t decide which strategy would be the most effective, bring the fastest results, or generate the biggest return? Stop thinking about it. Continuing to “think about it” is like allowing a prospect to “think about it” when making a buying decision. Both lead to the same place – NOWHERE.

Not making a decision … is a decision: a decision to do NOTHING.

Are you afraid of making the wrong decision and perhaps making things worse? It would be wonderful if every decision you make was the “right” decision. But, many “right” decisions aren’t reached until a few “wrong” decisions are first tested. Every “wrong” decision inevitably reveals a lesson which, if applied, makes the next decision a potentially better one.

Regardless of how many lessons you learn before you “get it right,” by making a decision to do SOMETHING, you start the process of moving forward and making progress. So, stop THINKING, make a decision, and start ACTING.

While your competitors are sitting in their offices, worrying about the state of the economy and losing market share, demonstrate your leadership and set a sound foundation for the future by continuing to be out in the marketplace with new strategies to make contacts, develop new relationships and close sales.

Too often when times are good and new business is relatively easy to find, business owners and managers slip their grip on the reins. Less effort is expended on keeping the sales team lean, hungry and focused on prospecting and qualifying new business. The organization is already at a disadvantage before a market downturn rears it’s head, since it lacks the ingrained habits and behaviours its sales team needs to quickly adjust when closing sales becomes more difficult. This leaves management distracted by internal operations and scrambling to put the organization back on course when the economy sours, leaving more nimble competitors unchallenged in the marketplace.

So what should your business be doing now that it should have been doing all along to ensure your sales people are effective revenue generators and not just order takers waiting for the phone to ring? Consider the following points:

Always be qualifying

In a tight market overcrowded with aggressive competitors, the more effort you put into qualifying the prospect, the more you will differentiate yourself and the more quickly you can develop and close the opportunity. If the prospect measures up to your qualifying criteria, you can move forward, if not, you can move on to another opportunity.

What information should you uncover? Concentrate first on the quality of the fit between what you have to offer and the prospect’s problem, challenge, or goal. If the correlation is low, or you know that another company competing for the business can provide a better fit, it’s likely time to look for another opportunity.

When you adopt an “Always be Qualifying” strategy, poor quality prospects will be eliminated early and you’ll find yourself presenting to high quality prospects with whom you will almost always be closing.

Read more about closing versus qualifying.

And the answer is …

A text book strategy to obtain more information in order to understand a prospect’s true intentions and needs is to answer a question with a question. But apply this principle judiciously, otherwise, you may be perceived as manipulative or deflecting a question because you haven’t done your homework and can’t answer.

There are situations where it is OK to directly answer the prospect’s question. The rule is: answer the question when it can’t hurt you or it can help you.

It’s OK to tell a prospect what you do or how you can help from a conceptual or big picture standpoint. That can’t hurt you. What you should avoid is providing detailed explanations for specific solutions to problems that have yet to be fully defined. That will hurt you. There will be plenty of time for specifics and details if the opportunity progresses far enough along for a formal presentation or proposal.

Read more about giving the right answers.

Is your message relevant and believable?

You won’t capture a prospect’s attention with features and functions, regardless of how “Revolutionary,” “Tested,” or “Enhanced” they may be, unless, first and foremost, your product or service addresses a specific problem, concern, or challenge the prospect is grappling with. Discretionary spending for enhanced features is dead.

Your message must focus on those problems, concerns, and challenges. If you’re a telecommunications provider, rather than tout “widest coverage,” ask a problem-focused question. For instance, “Are some of your loved ones outside your calling area?” Rather than promote “lightening fast Internet connections,” ask; “Does it take longer to download your e-mail than it does to read it?”

To make the features and functions believable, tell the prospect HOW you deliver what those features and functions promise. Do you provide the widest cell phone coverage because you have more cell towers than any other company? Do you guarantee the fastest deliveries because any shipment with a destination over 250 kilometres away is shipped by air and delivered the next day? Is your software never obsolete because you provide free lifetime updates? If so, make those facts part of your message.

Read more about how to be relevant and believable.

Attitude Drives Results

Successful sales people have a diligent work ethic that is undaunted by the prevailing market conditions or the news of the day, no matter how bleak or depressing it may be. They remain consistent in their business development activities –  prospecting for new opportunities by networking, obtaining referrals, and doing something relatively unheard of today – making cold calls. That’s right – cold calls via telephone and in person.

Don’t adjust to existing market conditions by changing proactive business development behaviour. Instead, change focus and redirect your efforts to different opportunities. Bottom line, there’s still business out there and somebody’s going to get it. Why shouldn’t it be you?

Read more about having the right attitude.