Are You Selling the Way Customers are Buying?

Forget the sales cycle you were taught. Your prospects don’t know or care about your sales cycles. They have their own cycle— a buying cycle—a process they go through when buying products and services. Understanding how businesses buy, and executing your sales strategy based on that understanding can dramatically improve you sales.    

We’ve been taught that a sales transaction progresses through a set of steps: prospect, qualify, craft a solution, and position your product or service favorably to your competition, present your solution, deal with objections, and finally negotiate a successful close.    

But customers were never taught this. If your sales activities are incongruent with prospects’ buying activities, it’s as if you’re speaking different languages, and in so doing you risk making missteps that can cost you a sale.   

Identifying the Buy Cycle 

A business’s buy cycle is not much different from the way we go about making a significant purchase in our personal life, like a television. You first become aware of a need — your current television just isn’t doing it for you anymore. Maybe it’s because you visited a friend’s house and saw one that puts yours to shame. Something has changed to make you dissatisfied with the way things are.   

Next, you gather information on different types of televisions, brands, and retailers. You’ll surf the net, talk to friends, and seek out subject matter experts. You’ll then sift through all the information you’ve gathered, discuss it among your family, figure out what they want from a new television, come up with a list of options, and shop around, and eventually make a decision. You’ll then go back to the retailer of your choice to negotiate the best deal you can.   

Corporate buyers go through a similar process. They first become aware of a need (perhaps due to your company’s marketing or to an outreach by one of your sales people), which leads to a desire to address it. They do their research, assemble their team (of coworkers), specify what they want from (benefits), and in (features) the solution they select, invite vendors in for presentations, evaluate the presentation, eliminate some vendors, select one from the remaining, and negotiate the best deal possible. Prospects give off certain verbal and visual indications when you’re not on the same page— both those that signal you’re ahead of the prospect and those that signal you’re behind.

For example, in your initial meeting while doing your discovery, you ask for the names of other players who will be involved in the evaluation. If you haven’t developed the relationship to the point where your contact feels comfortable revealing that information, you may get a quizzical “you’re a bit premature with that question” look, or he might simply say, “we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”   

On the other hand, if you’ve been able to convince the prospect to buy, but you’re only in the discovery stage yet you continue to “sell,” you’ll see finger strumming and hear sighing, meaning, “stop selling me— I’m ready to buy!”   

Aligning the Cycles   

As you can see, the seller’s sales cycle looks nothing like the prospect’s buy cycle. So what can we do with this knowledge? Knowing how an organization buys helps you plan your strategy for that account and gives you insight into how you add value.   

For example, when selling to, a well established insurance company, the buying process may be deliberate, cautious, and drawn out. Representatives from as many as five different departments may have to weigh in (and need to be sold), and when they do make their selection, the negotiation may be a formal, methodical process. When selling to such an organization, patience will be an asset you’ll want to pull from your tool box. If, on the other hand, you’re selling to a fast-growing, high-tech start-up, the pace will likely be quicker, the decision-process more straightforward and streamlined, and negotiating more shoot-from-the-hip.   

How do you determine what the buyer’s process is? Simply ask one, powerful, open-ended question: “Tell me how you go about evaluating and purchasing products and services like ours?” or “What’s your process for evaluating and purchasing products and services like ours?” Then sit back and listen. His response will be his company’s or team’s buying process.   

If the prospect isn’t sure how to respond, guide him by asking additional questions such as, “Are there others involved? If so, how will you (plural) determine what factors to consider? Is it decision by consensus or does the group make a recommendation to one person, who then makes the selection?”  

Your ability to pick up on each prospect’s buying process, and to adapt your selling style, pace, and process to it will go a long way to determining how successful you’ll be at closing more sales.