Episode #270: The Buyer's Gap

Clients don’t need to do anything. We discover this unfortunate fact very quickly in sales. We also discover they are never on our timetable of what needs to happen. They can stay with the same supplier or they can make no changes to their current situation. Neither of those are helpful for a salesperson. There must be some driver for the buyer to take action and take action right now. There has to be a gap between where they are now and where they want to be. This gap can be quite clear to the buyer, but even that doesn’t mean they will take any action.

If they think they can get to where they need to be to bridge that gap, using their own resources, they will not pay for anyone to help them. Often, when we meet the buyer, they have super strong self belief they can do it all by themselves. It is the salesperson’s job to really test that self belief.

This comes down to our communication skills. Can we show some different view of the problem? Can we offer some insight that the buyer hasn’t considered as yet? Can we show that they are a lot further away from where they need to be and that they can’t get there by themselves? Of course we are going to use logic to get them to move but that may not be enough. Can we get them emotionally involved in a better solution to the problem using us, rather than launching their own DIY campaign internally?

This intervention requires a great deal of subtlety and diplomacy, because no buyer likes to be told they are wrong or made to look insufficient in their capability to run their business successfully. Leaders have a lot of self-belief in their own capacities, so we are treading on dangerous ground here, so we have to be careful with the words we use and how we use them.

Energetically pointing out some major gap in their analysis of the situation may make us feel good, but the buyer won’t necessarily appreciate it or want to believe it. It all depends on how we frame the conversation and how we point out what they are missing. The best form of persuasion is if they self-persuade. We ask some very intelligently constructed questions which lead them to the conclusion they cannot do this completely by themselves.

If we can make the argument for change now, then we have a chance of making the sale.

The client may agree that the gap is there. They may agree that they can’t bridge that gap themselves. None of this necessarily means they are going to take any action though and involve us in solving the problem. They may feel they will get to it, at some unspecified and vague point in the future. Or they feel they will get around to it when they are good and ready, because there is no hurry. We can never have complete knowledge of what is going on in their organisation, how the investment monies are being allocated and what help they can expect from headquarters or which big deals are coming down the pike. We cannot be fazed by these thoughts though and we have to push hard for action now.

The gap has to have pain attached to it by us. We know that we are all more motivated by reducing pain, than increasing gain. We have to paint a word picture of how much their non-action is really costing them. We have to show them that now is the time to act and further delays will be very detrimental. This is not that easy because we are talking in terms of supposition. When we talk about the opportunity cost of no action that can be a very theoretical idea and not necessarily something that is going to inspire the buyer to leap into action and hire us to solve their problem.

We need to bring hard evidence to the argument when we talk about the losses associated with the opportunity cost of taking no action. Unless we can paint a picture with concrete numbers, then the urgency isn’t going to be felt. We may not have all of the numbers, but we can at least start asking the right questions to get the numbers we need or have the client start to consider the numbers for themselves.

When we are doing the questioning phase of the sale’s call we need to be threading in the implications of not fixing their problems immediately. These implication questions are key and have to be delivered in the right format. This is not easy, but that is the skill of the salesperson. We must be up to the task or go and find another profession, because this skill set is central to whether we will be successful or not in this art of selling.