What Motivates a Buyer

By Jim Hingst

This story appears in the October 2017 issue of Sign Builder Illustrated.

Learn to be a mind reader.
If you want to improve your sales performance, 
take the time to understand
 what motivates your prospect.

Sales tips on how to better understand what is in the prospect's mind.

People make their buying decisions based on a number of different motivations.  If you can discover what makes a buyer tick, you can craft your sales proposal to satisfy his particular needs. This makes all the difference when you are in a highly competitive situation.

When you are wearing your sales hat, a big part of your job is to understand the psychology of the buyer. Understanding the buyer goes a lot deeper than analyzing his business needs. It requires that you size up his personality. Some extroverts are driven by a desire to express themselves. Others buyers, who are more cautious, are motivated by fear making a bad decision and a need for security. 

This may come as a surprise to you, but money is rarely the most important factor in making a purchase, even in B2B buying. Basing our buying decisions on dollars and cents is just too rational for a man’s or woman’s impulsive nature.

Of course, nobody wants to pay too much for a product. Buyers usually want to get the most value for every dollar spent. And I will concede that there are a few automatons among us that value money above all. In many cases, buyers with analytical personalities are involved in either engineering or finance. Here’s how to deal with them in a sales situation.

Usually the analytical buyer wants to know all of the minutia of your proposal, especially the financial aspects. Pragmatic buyers in many cases are also interested in dollars and cents. For these types of buyers, you need to provide them with a financial justification.

In selling fleet graphics I usually emphasized the lifetime cost of a graphics program, because I was generally the high priced vendor and I felt that I needed to justify my pricing. What lifetime cost represents is the total cost of owning a product.

When selling truck graphics, lifetime cost is not simply the cost of the graphics alone and the longevity of printed vinyl markings. It also entails the cost of application. Let’s face it, some vinyl films are much easier to install than others. In costing graphics installation, many professional decal installers factor this into their pricing of a job, and, by all rights, they should.

Customers, who apply their own graphics will also need to consider the cost of application. While the do-it-yourself may seem economical, there is nevertheless a labor cost associated for their personnel to complete a job, in addition to the downtime cost for their trucks to be out of service.  When vinyl graphics are especially difficult to apply, the waste factor is another hidden cost, which can be significant, especially, if their workers are unskilled.

I cannot think any instance when it makes financial sense for a customer’s shop personnel to install vinyl graphics. My argument to someone motivated by money, is that professional installation is faster, so there is less interruption of the customer’s business. What’s more, a professional decal installer knows how to do the job right, so there is less chance of failure and the installed graphics will look better. That’s should appeal to the buyer who fears failure.

While the cost of application is important, the cost of removal is often ignored by many buyers. When I worked for fleet graphics companies, I found that some vinyl films removed from truck surfaces very easily with little or no adhesive residue. This was a big selling feature, because the graphics removal can be time consuming, unpredictable and expensive.

Many buyers also know the dangers of buying cheap. Who hasn’t heard that you only get what you pay for? The problem of buying on price is that you could be wasting money on something that doesn’t satisfy your needs. If you are a professional buyer, the problems resulting from a bad purchase go much deeper. Buying a product that is inadequate or that fails reflects badly on the buyer’s competence. These types of mistakes could be hazardous to a buyer’s career.  While money is important, the need for security is often greater.

If you can discover any dissatisfaction that a buyer has with his current graphics supplier, you have a great sales opportunity.  In fact, the bigger that a problem is, the better it is for you. This type of buyer needs a solution fast, especially if he is answerable to a superior. His motivation is pain avoidance and while his decision will be well thought out, it will be made without hesitation.

Many professional buyers will carefully analyze your proposal. My recommendation is to avoid these people if you can. When I had to deal with someone in purchasing, my proposals were thorough for a couple of reasons. In many cases, a professional buyer will screen you from the people actually making the final decision. When this happens, your only contact with the real decision makers and influencers is your proposal. 

The first pages of the presentation or sales proposal are a summary of the program complete with pricing. More often than not, it is easier to get any discussion of pricing out of the way early in a proposal. Once you have done that, everything else is a detailed explanation of the program.

In the supporting material, you want to accomplish two objectives:

1.       Create doubt in the mind of the customer by alerting him to potential problems if the job is not done correctly; and

2.       Satisfy the customer’s need for security with an explanation of how your sales proposal avoids the pitfalls.

In explaining how you will handle your customer’s program, you will want to emphasize your experience in manufacturing and installation. Case studies of complex programs provide the evidence supporting your claims. The goal is to build the prospect’s confidence that you have the expertise to handle their program.

If your company has a long history of manufacturing excellence and financial stability, you should use this to your advantage, especially if you are competing with smaller companies. By stating that you are not a fly-by-night organization and have the resources to correct any problem in the unlikely event that some mishap were to occur, you raise a doubt in the mind of the buyer, whether your competitors are capable of the same support.

Fear and the need for security are not the emotions that can motivate a buyer.  For those business owners with a great sense of pride in their companies and their accomplishments, good looking graphics on their trucks and in their stores satisfying their need of expression and can bolster feelings of self-worth. I am not insinuating that there is anything wrong with a healthy ego.  Not at all! Just be aware that some buyers crave the attention and desire the best that money can buy. These people are usually easy to spot. You can tell what their tastes are by the cars they drive and how their offices are decorated. All you can do is to give them what they want.

Conclusion

While people would like to believe that all of their purchases are based on rock solid logic, what really triggers their behavior is quite different. You have probably heard that people make decisions on emotion and justify or rationalize their actions with logic. This especially applies to buying behavior.

Taking the time to understand the personality of your prospect is the key to determining his or her emotional needs. To better assess the personality traits and motivations of your prospect, the skills that you need to develop and hone are:

1.       Learn to ask insightful, open ended questions to best engage the prospect in a conversation. As self-help guru Tony Robbins says, “if you want better answers, ask better questions.” The same type of questions that I would ask when interviewing a business owner for a story, I would ask when having a conversation about a company’s graphics program. 

2.       Improve your listening skills. While the words that the prospect utters are important, you also need to learn the art of reading between the lines of what is said as well as reading body language. 

3.       Focus on the prospect. To gain a true understanding of the personality of the prospect and his motivation, you need to remind yourself that your sales interview is not about you, your company or your products. It should be all about your customer. Do you really think that a prospect wants to talk about you – of course not. He wants to talk about himself.

How Cross Selling can Grow Your Business

By Jim Hingst

This article appears in the April 2017 issue of Sign Builder Illustrated.

I cannot think of another business with so many cross selling opportunities as sign makers have. If you are unfamiliar with the term cross selling, all it means is selling a current customer, such as a truck  graphics account, other products and services, such as posters, window graphics and window displays, wall graphics, hanging signage, tradeshow graphics, banners and, of course, signs.

You would think that cross selling would be a fairly obvious sales strategy, wouldn’t you? In fact, the embarrassing truth is that many sign shops and screen printers ignore selling additional products and services to their current customers. Instead of harvesting the low hanging fruit, many sales people chase after the Holy Grail in hopes of making the big sale.

One executive for a very large truck graphics printer expressed his frustration complaining that his sales people would drive 50 miles to pitch a prospective truck decal account but wouldn’t walk 50 feet down the hall of an existing truck graphics customer to sell them graphics for their stores. 

Cross selling is more important than just increasing revenues. Though, that’s not a bad reason to do it. It is equally important because it gives you an opportunity to build your value to a customer thereby strengthening the business relationship. A strong bond serves as barrier from competitive threats. What’s more, servicing one account is often more efficient that servicing several businesses.

How Cross Selling Differs from Up Selling

Many people confuse cross selling with up selling. Both are great techniques for increase your revenues, but the sales tactics are decidedly different. With cross selling you are selling additional products and services to an existing account. Up selling is a sales technique in which you sell the prospect a higher end version of they intend to buy.

Butch “Superfrog” Anton is a master of the Up Selling technique. Here’s how this sales tactic works and can pay off for you. Whenever a customer asks Butch to make a simple black and white sign, he shows him alternatives. These other options could involve printing or drop shadows or different materials.  Each option may cost a little more but the value added benefit is greater too.

While the customer may have initially expected to spend only $25 dollars, more often than not he walks out of Butch’s store with either a $50 or $75 sign. What’s more, the customer is happy about it because he walks away with a better looking sign. Butch is happy too, not just because his revenues increase, but because he now has a customer who is likely to be a repeat customer. That’s a true win-win!

Identifying Cross Selling Opportunities

In cross selling, identifying additional opportunities will take a little extra thought and effort.  But it’s not that hard. Here are a few suggestions on how to go about it:

If the account has retail stores, visit a location and conduct an informal survey. Look at the window treatments. What improvements could you suggest? How would these suggestions benefit the customer? Benefits that come to mind are attracting more attention and building more store traffic.

In conducting a store survey, pay attention to the lighting, paint colors in addition to the cleanliness of the store and how products are displayed. Fabric banners and wall graphics are a cost effective way to remodel the appearance of store interiors. An attractive store environment enhances the shopping experience. What’s more, within the first few minutes after entering a store location, shoppers make judgments about the retailer and the quality of the merchandise based on store graphics and lighting. The first impressions that are generated are not only lasting impressions but also determine whether the shopper stays or leaves the store.

If you have customers, who are manufacturers, you should inquire about needs for interior signage and graphics.  On the shop floor, aisle signage helps employees quickly find raw material and finished goods for use in production or for shipping to customers. Factories also have a number of needs for interior signage promoting shop safety programs. When companies attain safety or sales goals, they are also great candidates for banners to announce their achievements to their employees.

Equipment manufacturers usually require a variety of safety labels. I once uncovered an opportunity from down the street from our factory that generated $125,000 annually in low cost of sales business. For more than a year, I had talked to this company about truck graphics before it dawned on me to explore other opportunities.

When I worked for RTape, it amazed me that sign companies that we used for exterior signage, never once asked us about our needs for tradeshow posters and banners. Compared to the lifetime cost of our building sign, the cost of all of the other graphics over the same period was far greater.

Selling Larger Businesses

Cross selling to a small business is relatively easy, because the business owner or manager often controls all of the purchasing decisions. Selling large accounts is more complex and challenging because several buyers are often involved. But it is certainly easier than selling a total stranger.

Here’s a sales strategy for these big accounts. Ask for help. Start by asking your current contact to introduce you to the other buyers. In the parlance of what is known as strategic selling, your current contact is generally referred to as the sponsor. He can point you in the right direction, identifying the key influencers within the account as well as giving you good advice in dealing with the other personalities within their organization.

Once the introductions are made, the real work begins. Whether you are conducting a site survey or conducting a sales discussion, your primary goal should be to identify needs. For most people this can be the most challenging part of selling because it requires that you carry on a substantive business conversation with your prospect.

The Power of Questions

One of the best ways to initiate a sales conversation is to ask questions. I know one very successful salesman that prepared his questions well in advance of his sales meeting. Many might find this approach a bit stilted, but it worked for this person. I believed that it this technique worked because his questioning was comprehensive and it saved time. By the time the salesman was finished, he had a thorough understanding of the customer’s goals and his problems.

Discovering a customer’s needs is vital to making a sale, because if there is no need, there is no opportunity for a sale.  Once you determine the problems, then you can propose a solution.

The needs analysis/problem solving sales approach not only is critical in uncovering opportunities, but it defines you as a valued business consultant versus a peddler.  

Building Rapport

In Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, he suggests that one of the quickest ways to start a relationship is to talk about what the other person wants to talk about and let him or her do most of the talking.

By asking questions you can discover areas of common interest, which helps in building a rapport with the prospect. In selling this is critical, because people like doing business with people they like.

By genuinely showing interest in a prospect’s business, he will feel more relaxed in talking to you and sharing his company’s goals and challenges.  Just as a doctor must diagnose a patient’s disease before prescribing a cure, you must clearly understand the customer’s needs before suggesting solutions.  

In this regard, remember the recommendation of Dr. Stephen Covey to “seek first to understand before being understood”. At any account you have the potential to sell many different types of signage and graphics. What can destroy your rapport with a customer as well as scuttling your opportunities for additional business is being more interested in making a sale than providing solutions. Nobody likes a pushy salesman. But everyone respects a consultant.

Conclusion 

The most successful graphics sales people know that the best time to sell additional products is immediately after the initial purchase. That’s because the customer is in a buying mood.

Cross selling can be especially effective when products are complementary. For example, suggesting interior fabric banners, hanging signage, wall graphics or floor graphics can complement the sales of a window graphics program.  I have found that providing prospects with case study examples of businesses that have purchased a number of related products are effective in making add-on sales. Here’s where a pitch book of photographs can provide essential supporting evidence for your claims.

As you become more engaged in cross selling, you will not only experience an increase in your revenues. More importantly, because cross selling is more efficient, you will also improve your bottom line.

If you are not already engaged in cross selling, it’s time for you to start picking the low hanging fruit.

Good Luck Selling!