"Why do they buy?" is the most enduring question in business. And although its frequently studied there is no definitive answer. So we can never get our fill of insights, ideas and tactics.
The latest effort, called the BuyerSphere Project, comes from Gord Hotchkiss, President of Enquiro and begins like most others by encouraging sellers to do post-mortems on the wins and the losses and to make their best efforts to see and understand the world through buyers eyes.Written up in Search Marketing Standard and based on marketplace experience validated by more than 4000 online survey responses, here are the 5 major take-aways.
Buying is Emotional. In spite of the trappings of rationality and the highfalutin' language buyers buy because it makes them feel good and safe. The team with the best numbers, best rationale and best prices doesn't necessarily win. This where all those cliches about people buying people and buyers defaulting to buying big boring brand names because it eliminates risk and covers their asses comes from.
To impact emotions you need to understand who you are selling to on a personal level and then scope out the institutional context and the internal food chain that directly affects how good and safe they might feel. This isn't about deck writing, it's about carefully gathering information and observations into a tactical presentation plan that anticipates anxiety and pre-emptively answers the most obvious objections. It's also about enrolling allies and advocates and arming them to support you in their internal sessions.
Selling is Risk Mitigation. Everyone is nervous when things change. Selling is pure change. Buyers seek to understand the offerings and sort out those that are too risky either because they offer new or untried ideas or people or because they will engender internal conflict over turf, methodology, pricing or control. Getting the order is about eliminating perceived risk on several simultaneous levels.
Online Doesn't Stand Alone. While many buying firms have different teams overseeing online and offline marketing, most expect the two to work together and for sellers to demonstrate how their products, solutions or services can be orchestrated across channels and integrated into a broader program. Essentially you must connect the dots and do the math ahead of time for your prospects, showing them how whatever you are selling fits into their landscape and advances their causes. The per se benefits of your thing are secondary to how you fit into their on-going machine and/or game plan. Remember you are being granted access to an on-going enterprise because you might answer an outstanding need or shortcoming. Rarely will you or your product be the "be all" or "end all" for the buyers.
Users Don't Rule. The guys who will actually use the solution you are selling often don't have the final say in buying. Bean counters and senior executives do. That's why so many dumb choices get made. This is partly a function of bureaucratic processes and partly a hedge against users falling in love with or favoring their vendors. Increasingly the bean counters have benchmarked costs, prices and ancillary considerations and force the users to find suppliers who will play ball under these rules. As a seller you have to surface these constraints and expectations at the outset if you don't want to get faked out in the home stretch.
Digital Literacy Matters. Gord uses Marc Prensky's terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" to describe differ age cohorts and their familiarity with digital and interactive services. The older crowd want to get it but never quite do. The younger natives get it naturally and can not only understand it but can intuitively plug it into their worldview. Sellers have to frame the messages in both ways to bridge the gaps and build consensus among buyers. This often requires careful thinking about the way to to present an idea simply enough for the immigrants without boring or offending the natives.
You can get a free sample of Gord's forthcoming book on this project ... here.
