Want to be better at Sales? Understand your own buying behavior

I have been involved in sales for most of my life. I work with our expansion stage portfolio companies’ management teams offering sales and marketing support on a daily basis. Sales Process, Sales Methodology and the typical stuff you would expect. I have been through various methodologies and sales training over the years and I realized something at one point that helped me.

How do I buy things? Sitting on the selling side of the table is an hourly routine for most sales people, but we do buy things ourselves…right?

Think about these things the next time you buy something:

1. Why am I buying it?
2. What is the importance of what I am buying?
3. What problem does it solve?
4. Do I need it? Nice/Need to have?

Most of these questions are going to come up in any sales training you go through….right?

Put yourself on the other side of the table and really think about it… I bet you don’t!

Take these “learnings” into your corporate sales world and see what happens. I bet you have a different perspective.

My point is this; we need to learn how things are bought and why before we can possibly map a good sales process and a methodology to support it. Why not test buying out at a personal level?

I would argue that buying a car is similar to buying software. There should be an impending event to buy, a problem or pain point to buy, and a personal decision for both.

Take a step back next time and analyze yourself and how you react… I know it will help.