Sales Training: 3 Steps to Understanding Buying Behavior

Sales Training: 3 Steps to Understanding Buying Behavior:

Sales Training Article: 3 Steps to Understanding Buying Behavior

By John Kenney, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI)

Fact-finding sales calls are a basic part of nearly every B2B sales process. The calls start well, but often end in disaster. Well-trained sales reps identify buyer's needs by asking a series of scripted questions. This exercise can uncover useful information for the rep, but it provides little value to the customer. For many buyers, the 'discovery' sales call is the second, third or fourth interrogation with the same questions by yet another competitor. No wonder one of these sales calls was recently recognized as the "Worst Sales Call of 2011."

How often are you shut out of a major opportunity at the beginning of the sales cycle, simply by a lack of understanding buying behavior - the way your prospects conduct their discovery? Shift your focus to learning how your prospects discover solutions to their problems. End the interrogation sales call. If you can learn how your target market makes buying decisions, you will participate in more deals.

Here are the 3 Steps:

1. Interview recent new customers to identify their discovery process

Focus on net new customers because they have not developed a trusted relationship with your sales team that can bias their discovery practices towards your solutions. Customer discovery journeys differ. World-class sales organizations generally complete a series of six or more interviews to identify common themes and practices on the buyer's journey. Multiple products, services or channels may require more and different interviews.

Question: What was the trigger event? Before any buyer begins the search that ultimately leads them to your solution, something happened that made it imperative to learn more about your product or service. Understanding the origin of the buying journey helps you to refine your Ideal Customer Profile to better target future buyers.

Question: What is the first thing the buyer did? The two most common actions are to launch an Internet search or pick up the phone and call someone. The latter action results in a referral and quickly engages the buyer in your selling process where your sales team can contribute to the buyer's discovery process.

Buyers who start with an Internet search often do not engage with a sales person until they have completed an investigation of potential solutions using the online resources that you and your competitors provide. This is where the buyer-seller disconnect happens because buyers are more educated than you think.

Stay tuned for the next blog posting for the rest of this article!

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