Want to Be Better at Sales? Understand Your Own Buying Behavior

I’ve been involved in sales for most of my life.

And whether it’s been leading sales teams for highly successful software companies or working with the expansion stage technology companies in OpenView’s portfolio, I’ve experienced the various methodologies and sales processes that businesses can use to drive sales.

But at some point over the course of my career, I asked myself a relatively simple question that’s greatly influenced my own sales philosophy since: How do Ibuy things?

Sitting on the selling side of the table is an hourly routine for most salespeople, but we do buy things ourselves, right? In the end, we’re all consumers of something.

So whenever I buy something, I try to consider four things:

• Why am I buying it?
• What is the importance of the item I’m buying?
• What problem does it solve?
• Do I need it, or would it simply be nice to have?

Most of these questions are going to come up in any sales training program you go through. So, put yourself on the other side of the table and really think about it. If you take what you learn from those questions into the corporate sales world, you’ll benefit from a different perspective.

For example, I would argue that buying a car is similar to buying software. There’s an impending event to buy, a problem or pain point to buy, and a personal decision for both. In fact, that’s the exact analogy that Gene Marks at the Forbes blog Quicker Better Tech made last November.

In his post, Marks recalled being newly married, a time in his life when a Honda Accord served his small family’s needs. Three kids later, those needs completely changed. With five family members, Marks had a pain point to address and an impending event to buy. Enter the Honda Odyssey.

Going back to my four questions above, there was an obvious “Why” in Marks’ case and an increased importance for the item he was buying. It was an instance of need (rather than want) and the Odyssey certainly solved his problem.

Selling from the buyer’s perspective

In essence, the car buying analogy certainly applies to B2B sales. Companies within the same industry and market may have markedly differently needs based on their level of maturity and development. It’s up to a salesperson to understand each of those nuances and think like the buyer. That means knowing why a potential customer would need your product, what pain point it would address and what their own buying process might be.

On that note, B2B search marketing firm Enquiro released an interesting study called the BuyerSphere Project in 2009. Partnering with Google, Business.com, Marketo, Demandbase, and Covario, the company researched the buying patterns and behaviors of B2B companies in the digital space.

Enquiro’s research was a fascinating reminder of how complex B2B purchasing decisions can be. As such, salespeople need to learn to think like a consumer and apply that knowledge to the way they sell.

Think like your customer

Author Bill Stinnett certainly knows something about that. After writing “Think Like Your Customer” in 2004, he’s made a career out of helping companies understand how and why customers buy.

In an article for EyesOnSales, he offered these tips:

• Focus on what they do: There are a lot of wild cards that can come in to play when a customer is considering buying your product. If you think about your own process and the things you weigh before buying something, it will provide valuable insight as you attempt to address their needs.
• Map it out: While most companies follow their own sales process, it’s just as important to understand the customer’s buying process and who will be involved in it. When you buy a car, for example, the opinions of your wife and kids, along with your own personal preferences may come in to play. The same idea applies to a business that is considering buying your software product.
• Sell with specific intent: If you understand how or why you buy things, it will naturally allow you to better understand your customer’s buying behaviors too. Armed with that information, you can address why your product meets their need or pain point and empower them to buy.

Building off of that, my final point is this: As salespeople, we need to learn how things are bought and why people buy them before we can possibly map out an effective sales process and a methodology to support it.

So, why not test your own buying process out at a personal level? Take a step back next time you prepare to make purchase and analyze your thoughts and how you react to the buying process. I bet it will help you be a better salesperson.