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Treat Your Client Like a Date

Let’s blame the buyers.

There’s the ingrate—the buyer who doesn’t appreciate the handstands, backflips and other miracles we performed to deliver good product on time and within budget. Is there no sense of loyalty? Doesn’t the buyer or the buyer’s management understand that buying print is not like buying a sack of potatoes?

There’s the prospect—the buyer who simply can’t or won’t make a decision, even though the benefits of abandoning an existing supplier are obvious. His reasons for not acting aren’t coherent. His only message: “We’re not ready to make a change.”

What’s going on? There are almost as many answers as there are selling situations. If I could offer a pat solution, I’d be living in luxury on a secluded Caribbean island. However, let me offer some observations that I hope are thought-provoking.

The Meanings of Disloyalty
Few buyers are innately disloyal. Disloyalty is almost always a symptom, not a motive. It could represent a mandate from senior management or pressure from a user, specifier, or some other member of “The Buying Center.” The concept of The Buying Center in business-to-business selling is that several people in an organization influence supplier selection. The buying decision is not the province of one person. There is a gatekeeper, a user, a specifier, a purchaser, a financial qualifier and others.

Disloyalty could represent a poor experience with a receptionist or some other member of your organization. I’ve researched hundreds of buying organizations that have terminated relationships with print companies. My studies indicate that individuals’ poor performance is frequently the issue, but the customer will not register a complaint because he doesn’t want to be entangled in a supplier’s personnel matters.

Another core reason for buyer disloyalty is industry gossip spread by the competition. The effects of this on an account tend to be grossly underestimated by the primary supplier. There’s a tendency to believe that all is well as long as orders are flowing and customers aren’t complaining.

Satisfaction Guaranteed
In today’s commoditized environment, satisfaction is the least that customers expect. This is a clarion cry to sell every current account as though it were a prospect. Never let customers forget the reasons they should do business with you. It’s important to devote energy to immediate challenges but, in the long term, fulfilling customer expectations at a competitive price will not, by itself, assure success. What unique benefits do you offer? In the vernacular, what value do you bring to the table?
Let’s talk about prospective customers. New accounts are not easy to sell. Many salespeople act surprised when confronted with the remark “that we already have a print supplier with whom we’re happy.” After all, changing a print supplier is like the decision not to change dentists: the devil you know is more convenient than the devil you don’t.

Those issues should be anticipated and addressed early in the prospecting process. When prospective customers raise objections, valuable traction is lost. The salesperson is playing defense. The odds of success are less. Many sales trainers base their curricula on the clever handling of objections. As logical as those rebuttals are, they may be too late if the issues haven’t been addressed in a proactive manner earlier in the prospecting process.

When prospecting, you probably don’t know if you are selling to the decision-maker. The person with whom you talk during the prospecting process probably cannot make the unilateral decision to discontinue a relationship with an existing supplier. Don’t count on clever, compelling rebuttals to objections raised late in the prospecting process. Your job is to turn your contact into an advocate who will carry your differentiated message—the reasons to buy from you—to others in the buying organization.

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