The Truth About Buyers

Buyers are researching your product, or service, or solution and have already made a list of sales organizations they are going to consider.

Buyers are too busy to be bothered with salespeople because they already have as much information as the salesperson. Salespeople aren’t so valuable.

Buyers prefer to be warmed up over email and social channels before they will accept a telephone call from a salesperson.

Buyers don’t know what they don’t know and they need someone to teach them and disrupt their thinking to help them produce better business results.

Then There Is This

Buyers don’t have time to research what they need to buy. They’re too busy to even look up, and they need a salesperson to help them understand their needs.

Buyers need a salesperson with business acumen and deep situational knowledge to help them understand the range of choices available to them and the necessary trade-offs involved with those choices. Salespeople create massive value.

Buyers are okay being interrupted when that interruption creates value for them. They see attempts to warm them up as the real nuisance.

Buyers have bought what you sell before, know what they need to produce better results, and need someone to help them get what they need. They don’t need to be taught what they don’t know.

The problem with describing “the” buyer is that there isn’t one. There are many. All generalizations are lies. You take your prospective clients as you find them.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.