What Buyers Want (and How to Make Sure They Get it From You)
Before we share the specifics about what buyers want, let’s introduce an idea to frame how you think about interacting with them. You’ve probably heard of win-win – where two parties work together to achieve something they both want. In business, win-win is incomplete.
When a “sale” is made, winning is not only for the buyer and seller. There’s a critical third win – a sale for your company and its stakeholders – that completes Win3 (we call this win-cubed). If you’re selling your own services, this third win is critical for your financial success.
In order to achieve the win-cubed, let’s look at the research to know what customers really want. Hint: it’s a lot more than price and convenience. Of the top six things buyers identified, the top three were:
- Someone to connect the dots for them (to separate the signal from the noise);
- To participate in the process (buyers are active, educated, and involved); and
- Transparent leadership. (We’ll share the remainder of the top six later.)
How do we connect the dots for our prospects, work with them to achieve Win3, and show thought leadership? We stop talking at them and instead work with them. We call this collaborative selling.
Work With Your Buyers for Better Results
The collaborative selling approach means we have relevant, value-filled, two-way conversations with buyers. We work with them – we don’t talk at them. Collaborative conversations have a deeper purpose, which is to lead buyers through their decision process conversation by conversation so that they make decisions and take actions. Let’s face it, if they don’t make decisions, they never get a solution for their problem, want, or need.
A critical skill in collaborative selling is right-sizing information. Right-sizing is adjusting the level, amount of information, time, and relationship so the buyer gets what she needs in the way she needs it to confidently make a decision. Here’s a note to put on the side of your computer monitor: right-sizing along the whole sales conversation keeps you and your buyer moving forward.
Where and how do we start right-sizing?
