Are there any secrets to successful B2B sales? Unfortunately, there aren’t. However, there are precursors that sales professionals can use to identify their customer’s main concerns? These concerns are buying influences that are present in almost every single B2B sales transaction. Some buying influences play a more prominent role than others, but all play a different role at different times for different customers. Identifying these main buying influences will help pinpoint the customer’s concerns and ultimately, help the sales representative close more sales. So, what are these buying influences and how can sales be better prepared once they come up? More importantly, what solutions can your sales team use when confronted with customer apprehension?
Understanding Customer Concerns
Before going into the list of these buying influences, it’s important to reflect on our own concerns as sales professionals. Having worked most of my career as a sales professional, I’ve often had the concern of not closing that big sale, concerns of not meeting sales budgets, and ultimately, concerns of not connecting with my customers.
Perhaps the biggest concern sales professionals have are the concerns of having their decisions questioned by a higher authority. As sales professionals, we sometimes have tunnel vision and become engrossed in our own concerns. Well, our customers have these same concerns and they manifest them in these buying influences. In the end, these concerns determine how customers make purchasing decisions. Your ability to identify these concerns will help you prepare when they present themselves.
The above video provides insight into five fears and concerns of B2B customers. Some of them are covered in this post, some are not. To learn more about these concerns, please go to: Five Customer Concerns That Cost You Sales and Market Share
How to Prepare for the Six Major Concerns all Customers Have
The following six customer concerns are ones most often present in sales calls. However, not all will present themselves at the same time. Some will be more prevalent than others with certain customers. Your job is to understand these concerns and develop answers and solutions once your customer exhibits some of these fears. So, what are the six most important customer concerns to prepare for?
When it comes to making a purchase, every customer has a concern about making the wrong decision. This concern manifests itself in apprehension before the order is placed. Customers who fear they’re making the wrong decision are concerned about how their decision might come back to haunt them. They don’t know when or how, but their biggest concern is that deciding to purchase your product will ultimately prove to be the wrong one.
Solution: Assure your customer that you and your company pride itself on excellence in customer service and support. Make sure the customer knows you’ll be there the entire way – during the order and after the order.
2. Being Questioned
The fear of being questioned is a very strong buying influence for the customer. This buying influence is present in the customer’s concern is that their decision to purchase your product will be questioned by their own “higher authority”. Just like we as sales professionals are concerned about our own decisions being questioned, our customers ultimately have the same concerns.
Solution: Think of ways to help your customer justify their decision to purchase your product. Help them make a strong case that this decision to buy your product is the right one. Ultimately, you’re helping them to justify their decision to whomever they report to. Avoid discussing pricing. Instead, concentrate on other ways the order will benefit your contact and the company they work for.
3. The Unknown
When a sales representative is dealing with a new customer, there’s no bigger buying influence than the customer’s concern of the unknown. A company could have a solid product offering, a great reputation for customer service and be recognized as a market leader, and yet, the customer’s concern of the unknown is still present. This is one of the more dominant of the buying influences and is especially prevalent when dealing with new customers.
Solution: Concentrate on assuring your customer you’ll be there in times of need. Reassure the customer that your company’s main focus is to make sure customers are well serviced and never left holding product they can’t use. Whatever issues arise for the customer, will be addressed.
4. Price
Every sales professional is well aware of the buying influence of price. For some customers, price is their only concern. However, a customer’s concern about price is merely a concern about controlling costs. Once sales professionals understand that the buying influence of price is really a need to control costs, they can then open up a myriad of approaches to reducing those costs, without reducing a product’s price.
Solution: Don’t immediately reduce your product’s price. Concentrate on other methods to help your customers control their costs. Adopt cost-per-use sales strategies that focus on reducing customer costs over time.
One of the biggest issues with sales professionals is how they sometimes personalize the customer’s buying decisions. A customer’s decision to buy involves a myriad of considerations. A sales professional could do everything right and still not win the customer’s business. However, once a sales personal questions the customer’s decision not to buy their product, they’ve forever solidified the customer’s concern of being challenged on future buying decisions.
Solution: Don’t challenge your customer’s buying decisions. Granted, there are customers who enjoy playing sales professionals, but a large number of them don’t enjoy telling someone they’ve lost the business. If confronted with a customer who is using your price to lower other competitive bids, use the “trial-close” or “pre-sell” sales technique.
6. Losing Control
Customers need control. Some customers need to control the entire buying process and ultimately, must control who wins their business. The buying influence of losing control occurs when sales professionals subtly take control of the sales process. Often, this buying influence is sudden and abrupt. The sales process will be proceeding smoothly, and then rather suddenly, the customer will seize control and try and assert their authority.
Solution: When confronted with this customer concern, bring the customer back into the fold. Ask them what their biggest fears are and how you might be able to address them. When a customer tries to put a sudden halt to the process, it’s because they are masking their concern of losing control.
Successful B2B sales requires the ability to be a different person to different people and to identify those customer buying influences that are most prevalent at that moment in time. Identifying these buying influences takes time, patience and plenty of trial and error. However, over time, sales professionals will become more adept at identifying those customer concerns impeding them from closing sales.
The key is to understand why customers are more or less likely to move forward. What concerns them about the decision they are about to make? Once you can answer this question, you are more likely to close more orders.
Perhaps the best source on how to manage these aforementioned concerns is to look at the training modules of Sandler Sales. This is a training course I took several years back and it helped me to become a stronger sales professional.
The above video shows how to handle concessions, scare tactics and price demands in business-to-business (B2B) negotiation.
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