Selling was something that buyers tolerated much more in pre-Inter-net times because they had no alternative. Some sellers were better than others, but it was clear that the seller had an agenda as to how to influence your requirements. Today, using these sales approaches with knowledgeable buyers is the equivalent of putting obnoxious-ness on performance-enhancing drugs. It will be more like an arm-wrestling contest than it is like the buying experience that people crave and are starting to demand. This is and will continue to be a challenge until more organizations and salespeople embrace the con-cept of empowering buyers. Sellers that don’t relate to buyers quickly run the risk of not being invited to bid or merely being leveraged to get the best possible price from a seller who does relate to them.
At a minimum, sellers should consider a step that we call interest qualification when they first encounter a buyer (especially when it is a reactive contact). In the case of the second, the third, or even the first Audi salesperson, most buyers would appreciate questions about how familiar they were with the A6 before launching into the infor-mation on the overhead cam, 18-inch wheels, ski pass-through, and other such data.
In a B2B situation, this involves validating any research that a buyer has done by asking early in an initial call what the buyer has established as requirements for whatever offering he is interested in.
Once those requirements have been uncovered, a logical next step would be to get a sense for what value the buyer perceives he would get from the offering being considered. Our belief is that if a buyer doesn’t readily know, the seller can offer a list of business goals that can be achieved through the use of her offering. A seller gains cred-ibility by doing so, especially if it helps the buyer realize that there are additional areas of potential savings or value that he had not considered.
Once a business issue that the buyer would like to affect has been identified, the seller has earned the right to ask the buyer a more detailed question. It would be reasonable to now ask what requirements or features the buyer believes would enable him to accomplish his stated goal. A seller will gain tremendous credibility if he is then able to ask some intelligent questions to add capabili-ties to the requirements list. At the extreme, he may also be able to have the buyer conclude that some of his requirements do not belong on the list.
Summary
Interest qualification facilitates better alignment by recognizing that today’s buyers are likely to already be in Phase 2 of the buying cycle.
Giving them a chance to express their preferences to date rather than going directly into selling mode affords buyers some control over where the call is headed and minimizes the chances that they will feel that their time is being wasted or that the seller is trying to manipu-late them. If buyers are unaware of their requirements, the seller can begin to develop their needs by treating the buyer more as a novice than as an expert.
Buyers who have done research, developed requirements, and determined preferences are a reality. Vendors that embrace and align with this change stand to reap the windfall of capturing the lion’s share of revenue from competitors that cling to old habits. Nurturing curious buyers electronically is a challenge. If you are successful at doing so, it would be a shame to have a buyer contact one of your sell-ers, only to be subjected to sales techniques focused on developing the requirements for a nonexpert buyer. It is a road to a negative buying experience and the potential of not even making the short list of ven-dors being considered.
6
S TAGE 4:
REASSURANCE
Y
ou have completed your evaluation of cars, and you feel that a Ford Fusion is the best alternative. A key criterion for you is fuel economy, and the Fusion is touted as getting 30 miles per gallon with regular gas, which is twice what your SUV delivers using premium. You’ve done the math based upon the 22,000 miles a year that you drive. A large part of your justification for buying the car is that you’ll have no repairs for at least a couple of years, and your fuel costs will be cut in half.The problem with these calculations is that the finances make sense only if the new car actually delivers 30 mpg for the type of driv-ing that you do. The EPA sticker is not somethdriv-ing that you want to rely on. You could ask the salesperson, but he wants you to buy the car and will probably say whatever he has to. You could ask for customers you can contact, but you wouldn’t know what type of driving they do. You finally decide to rent a Fusion at a low weekend rate and see for yourself what mileage you can reasonably expect. When you get 32 mpg with the car, you are confident in your decision.
In making a buying decision, cost versus benefit calculations pro-vide an understanding of the potential payback, but they are based upon assumptions. Proof is verifying that whatever you are buying will perform as advertised in your environment, or at least will meet your expectations.
Once a buyer has established a preference for a vendor or a solu-tion, she will seek both logical and emotional reassurance that she is making the right choice—that she’s leaning in the right direction. We say that she is seeking emotional reassurance because much of the observed behavior at this stage of the buying process is not based on rational logic concerning whether the decision is right or wrong.
Rather, it is based on supporting a preference, or decision, that has already been tentatively made.
In 2006, Michael Lovaglia, professor and chairman of the sociol-ogy department at the University of Iowa, received recognition among bloggers for putting forth what was called Lovaglia’s Law, in which he proposed:
Lovaglia’s Law: The more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it.
It’s an interesting hypothesis. On the surface, Lovaglia’s Law seems somewhat absurd, as one would think that the reliance upon empirical evidence would increase commensurate with the importance of a decision. However, upon reflection, we can think of countless examples of large personal and business purchases that have been rationalized. Did the buyer really need that Rolex or that Porsche?
People have an innate need to appear logical to others. Having said that, buyers often make emotional decisions and then back into the reasons. Assume that you’re at a party, and you see a guest that you don’t know arrive in a Mercedes 600S. When you meet that per-son, you mention that you admired his car and ask how he came to choose that particular model. Because you don’t know each other very well, the reasons offered will almost certainly be logical: safety, resale, reliability, and so on. Had you known this person better, the real rea-son might have surfaced: “I look a lot handsomer in this car than I did in the Buick I was driving!” This emotional buying decision can be justified to others (and sometimes to the buyer himself) with logical reasons.
Robert Sutton is a professor of management science and engi-neering at Stanford Engiengi-neering School who, along with Jeffrey Pfeffer, coauthored the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Non-sense. Sutton wrote:
Clearly, the more important the decision, the more people involved stand to lose and gain, and the more strongly they push for outcomes that enhance their self-interest rather than are best for everyone involved.
While logic and hard facts play a role in the buying process, it seems clear that emotions and rationalization are important factors as well.
What is the buyer seeking at this phase of the buying cycle? The buyer is seeking assurance or, put another way, confidence. The buyer
“needs” the confidence to proceed to the final step, and confidence is an emotion. As a result, confidence evolves from a B2B buyer’s belief that the purchase will empower her to achieve a goal, solve a problem, or satisfy a need and that others will perceive it as having been a good decision. The question that a selling organization has to worry about is how the buyer develops this confidence, and how the seller can ensure that the buyer develops confidence in its solution.