How You Sell. How You Buy.

Any time that you make assumptions about buyers, ask yourself if that assumption is true about you and the way that you would buy.

If you were your buyer, how would you want the salesperson charged with winning your business to approach you? Would you want a spam email in your LinkedIn inbox? Would you find that less offensive than a phone call?

If you were challenged to create better business results in your own company, would you hope that the person who could help you waited for you to find them and raise your hand? If you were buying a serious, large, complex set of outcomes, would do so much research that you would literally be at the point of making a decision before you ever engaged with a salesperson?

If you were working hard to understand how to move your business forward, would you want a salesperson to spend their first meeting with you trying to establish some common ground on which to build a relationship? Or would the value of your relationship depend on their ability to create business value?

Would you want the salesperson charged with winning your account to assume that you are just like the rest of their client portfolio, that your challenges could be resolved in exactly the same way you’ve resolved your other client’s challenges? Or would you want them to learn about your business, how you do what you do, and the way any solution might need to be modified to work for you?

If you knew what you needed, would you want a salesperson to believe that you had a sophisticated buying process, that you had the depth of experience to know all of the trade-offs, and to follow your lead? Or would you rather your salesperson share with you how you might go about making change in your business?

Would you want to be left alone to develop the consensus on your own? Would want to try to move your organization to the decision by yourself? Or would it be helpful to have someone with business acumen and deep situational knowledge help you to develop consensus?

Would you want a massive slide deck presentation? Or would a conversation create more value?

When it comes to pricing, would you want the salesperson to provide you with the lowest possible price, even if it meant that you weren’t going to get the result you needed? Or would you want them to help you make the right investment for the outcomes you really need?

If you were concerned about the risk of making the investment, would you want the salesperson to hide from the discussion and hope that you are able to work through mitigating that risk on their own? or would you want them to engage with you, helping you with the proof you need to confidently move forward and defend your decision?

How would you want to buy?