Customers Know Why They Buy - Do You?

Still looking for a way to improve your sales performance? The problem is that you’ve been going to the wrong places, talking to the wrong people and reading the wrong books. To get the right answer, you must know where to find it!

The answers that you need to enhance your method and boost your sales will come when you stop relying on bad selling techniques that require you to learn a scripted sales approach, change your company’s sales copy, or try to overcome a price objection. Your customers DON’T care about these things. If you want to really engage your customers and stir up their motivation to buy from you, you must focus on what matters to them. The only way to get customers to buy is to know WHY they buy. Understanding what makes one person buy your product is the key to creating an effective sales approach for them and your next customer.

The first important step in this process is to admit that you probably don’t have a clue why your customers do business with you. You’re so wrapped up in your company’s propaganda of why you are so great that you may actually believe it has somehow touched your customers. This is highly unlikely, and if you believe this, you have clearly lost touch with the REAL reasons people buy from you.

Once you have come to terms with the fact that you don’t know why your customers buy, don’t make the mistake of going to your salespeople for the answer. If your salespeople knew, then your sales would be much stronger! Going to them with this question will only give you another salesperson’s perspective. Your customer’s real motivation for buying has little to do with the shallow reasons you and your salespeople think of (like price or convenience).

The only way to know why your customers buy from you is to go straight to the source: your customer. Only they know the reason they buy your product! The only way you will know is if they tell you. Spend as much time with your existing customers as possible and try to learn as much as you can from them. This may sound hard, but it can be as simple as eating a meal with a few customers throughout the week.

When you’re with them, ask them questions that will get them talking about why they do business with you. Be open to what they have to say and be prepared for some answers that may be tough to listen to. Use questions that will help them describe their needs and desires, and get them to share stories of their experiences with you and previous suppliers.

A great opening question can be as simple as “Why did you buy?” Then delve as deep as you can to uncover your customer’s entire buying process: “What role did profitability play in your decision to select us?” “What role did quality play?” “How much thought was given to YOUR customers when making your choice?” “Can you describe the role our salesperson played in your decision to select us?”

Discovering buying motives should be hard work. The great part is that the process will not only help you understand your customers, it will also get you closer to the sale. While your lazy competitors focus on crafty verbiage and phony sales systems, YOU will be getting to the root of the decision. You understand that the answers are out there, and you will find them, because you will know where to look and who to ask.

Tom Richard conducts seminars on sales and customer service topics nationwide. Tom is also the author of Smart Salespeople Don't Advertise: 10 Ways to Outsmart Your Competition With Guerilla Marketing, and publishes a free weekly ezine on selling skills titled Sales Muscle. To subscribe to this free weekly ezine go to http://www.tomrichard.com/subscribe