Here are 4 reasons why it is important to help customers make purchase decisions, as opposed to selling.
1. The word selling is ‘dirty’
Unfortunately, selling connotes negative, even fearful images in the mind of the prospective buyer (prospect). Actually, even the statement, “We will transfer you to sales” or “We will introduce targets in your job description” fires images of abject horror in the minds of recipient staff. What they hear is, “They want to fire me.”
But back to the prospect.
Selling erects walls in the buyer’s mind. You’ve heard it said before- customers want to buy, not to be sold to. Selling triggers a defensive mechanism. The buyer feels like he is being made to buy something he doesn’t need. The word sell makes the buyer-seller relationship fear, instead of value-based. It gives the sense of doing something to somebody rather than something for somebody, or with somebody.
Contrast this to helping customers make purchase decisions. Selling pushes; helping pulls.
2. Overcome debilitating cross purposes
Next, if you ask the seller what their objective of the meeting with the prospect is they will say, “To sell”. If you ask the prospect that same question, they will say, “To get information”. Note, they will not say, “To buy”. Buying is a result of reconciling the information received to the pain point felt.
Selling is about you, the sales person, purchasing is about the customer. This cross purpose in objectives is a significant reason why many sales are lost. There’s friction from the word go. To oil the interaction, help customers make purchase decisions – align your objectives to theirs. Seek first to understand before being understood.
And you do this by focusing on what influences customers purchase decision? How? Like the hawker that invites the lady to try on the shoes she’s peeked at with, “Kujaribu ni bure.” (Try them on. It’s free) Or, by taking a doctor-patient approach.
You genuinely seek to understand the prospect’s pain point. You listen with your eyes and ears, probe through questions and clarifications and seek clarity through rephrasing and testing assumptions. Then you will unearth the root cause of the pain and deal with it. Instead of the superficial headache presented, a symptom, and what selling addresses.
3. Closing is simplified
It’s difficult to argue with a doctor’s diagnosis, and therefore prescription. It’s easy to do so if you did not feel heard, understood and reconciled to what your Google search on your ailment revealed.
Closing a sale is friction filled, if the salesperson went in selling guns blazing. The more in B2B sales. If, however, he opened the sale with insight and adapted his pitch accordingly, helping each buyer make a purchase decision relevant to their pain, he dramatically reduces the friction and increases his chances of seamlessly closing the sale. Much as with the doctor, it’s almost a logical conclusion; a natural consequence.
In many ways, the B2B sale is closed from the start, not end, of the customer engagement.
4. Increase customer retention: help customers make purchase decisions
When you focus on selling instead of helping customers make purchase decisions, you risk amplifying their fears. This fear could be of overspending, or of being persuaded into buying something they don’t truly need. Yes, I understand—it’s good sales practice to maximize each opportunity, and I applaud that. But if it comes at the cost of leaving the buyer feeling short-changed, the sustainability of that sale is at risk.
Constantly chasing new unsustainable business is like running on the same spot: exhausting, full of motion, but with little real progress. On the other hand, when a customer feels you genuinely sought to understand them before pushing to be understood, they are far more likely to refer, and return—to do business with you again, and again, and again.
For a salesperson, this reduces the grind of prospecting. For a business, it creates predictability of income—and that’s where true growth lies.
Online reviews help customers make purchase decisions
If still in doubt about aligning yourself to how consumers make buying decisions, think about reviews on online shopping platforms or Tripadvisor. Reviews exist solely to help buyers make purchase decisions with confidence. Chances are, you frown at a 1-star review and quickly scroll past anything with just 2 stars.
How can you help customers make purchase decisions, you were wondering? Well, now you know.
Read: Confidently turn your product flaws into selling points. Here’s how to
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