Stop Selling! Help Your Customers Buy and Experience a New Business High

Copyright (c) 2006 Progress-U Ltd.

"Why do people buy?" is an important question many sales
professionals ask. A lot of research has been done on the
psychology of buying behavior. Professional marketing tries
to make use of such knowledge and adapt their campaigns
accordingly to achieve the most effective sales pitch. A
question less often asked is, "When do customers buy?"
Charlie Lang, executive coach and trainer at Progress-U
Ltd. has some answers.

Sales people are often puzzled by the sometimes long
duration of the sales cycle. Sales forecasts often fail
because they are based on a sales person's judgment of how
close the customer is to making a decision. Why does this
feeling so often prove to be wrong? Do sales people
generally have bad intuition?

Having worked in sales management for more than a decade
and having had the opportunity to work with outstanding
sales professionals and sales trainers, I made an important
discovery that confirmed my year-long observations and
provided me with the insight to make sense of what was
happening.

Particularly in business-to-business (B2B) transactions,
sales people usually talk to only a very small portion of
an entire decision-making system (DMS). They believe that
the person(s) (I call them here 'interlocutors') they are
talking to fully understand their buying process and would
be able to make a buying decision. Hence, they rely on the
statements of their business partners to make a judgment on
the duration of the sales cycle and the probability to be
successful.

However, reality is somewhat different. The interlocutors
usually do not fully understand the purchase process. Also,
they are in most cases only a part of the DMS and may have
only limited influence. As a consequence, the statements
made by the interlocutor to the sales people are either
very vague (in case the interlocutor is aware of his
limited influence and knowledge) or simply his personal
opinion (in case the interlocutor truly believes that the
decision is made by him alone, ignoring the existence of a
DMS). Of course, there are rare cases in B2B transactions
where only one person is in charge of the complete
decision-making process. However, this is more of an
exception rather than the rule.

So when do customers really decide to buy? There are two
major triggers:

1. The DMS reached a sufficient comfort level with the
decision.

2. The DMS is under high pressure to make a decision, i.e.,
if not making a decision threatens to create worse
consequences than making a decision.

As a consequence, if sales people are able to support their
interlocutors in helping the DMS reach a comfortable level
with the decision to buy, they can:

- Greatly reduce the duration of the buying cycle (there is
actually no sales cycle)

- Greatly improve the probability of getting the business
because the buyer will recognize the seller as a true
consultant

- Greatly improve the accuracy of their forecasts

Consequently, the task of any seller is to learn the
principles of purchase support and how s/he can help the
interlocutors manage and influence the purchase process of
the DMS more effectively and efficiently.

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Charlie Lang's mission is to change the image of sales
through the completely buyer-oriented Stop Selling!
approach. He is a passionate and professional Executive
Coach, Trainer, Public Speaker & Author of over 100
articles related to leadership and innovative sales. For
more info visit http://www.progressu.com . To receive his
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