Quiz: How Important is Product to the Buying Process?
Here's some information that can increase your ability to close business, by keeping you focused on what's really important.
So, speaking of important, the product/solution you're selling is obviously a major element in developing a big B2B sales opportunity.
However, do you know how important the product/solution is to the buying decision? Because if you don't, you might waste time selling the wrong thing. So here's a quick quiz:
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The correct answer is: 30 percent!
Actually, it's more like 29 percent, according to a study of buying habits conducted by Bluewolf, a company that does systems integration for CRM and Sales 2.0. According to that study, B2B decision-makers, on average make buying decision based upon the following criteria:
- 16 percent politics
- 23 percent chemistry
- 32 percent trust/understanding
- 29 percent solution
You can't always influence the customer's internal politics and, much of the time, you're selling whatever solution your firm has to offer.
Even so, you can always use your sales skills to build better rapport and deeper levels of trust and understanding. And that's over 50 percent of the decision-making criteria.
BTW, the above figure explain why sales efforts that focus on "features and functions" don't work -- those elements are responsible for less than a third of the decision-making process. So no way should they dominate your process.
READERS: Anyone care to argue this point?