I was reading a LinkedIn discussion thread, it started with a premise that people love to buy stuff. I’m not sure that’s true, at least in B2B. But Bob Apollo and Scott Santucci started a great sub-discussion. I wanted to expand on this.
Too often, because we focus on our jobs and achieving our goals, we lose track on why customers buy, instead focusing on selling. While it seems trite, while we may attempt to sell, it’s useless, possibly counter productive activity, until the customer chooses to start their buying journey.
But why do buyers buy? What gets them started buying?
Fundamentally, buying can only happen when the customer has a need to change (but not all requirements to change drive a need to buy). That change is driven by the need to solve a problem, to address an opportunity, to improve on what the customer currently does.
But we lose sight of this, we focus on what we need to do and not what the customer needs to do, why they are doing it, or what they are trying to achieve.
What happens when we start focusing on what the customer cares about, rather than what we care about? What happens when we shift the focus of our conversations to what the customer is trying to achieve, and why they are trying to achieve it?
People don’t buy because they love buying, they buy to achieve something. We are always more effective when we focus on what the customer is trying to achieve and how we help them do that better than any other alternative.
Selling doesn’t have to be more complicated than this.
Leave a Reply