People Hate to be Sold

“People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.” – Jeffrey Gitomer

I learned this concept early in my sales career and it seems like such a simple concept, however, I believe most salespeople don’t truly understand it. Think about it, do you want to be sold something, or do you want to buy something? Buy it of course.

Let’s take a look at it this way.

What is most common objection in all of sales?

“Just looking,” right? I think we can all agree on this. I mean we have all walked into a store, with the intention of buying something. We knew exactly what we wanted, all we needed to do is find it, grab it off the shelf, and buy it. However, when a salesperson, or clerk for that matter walks up to us and asks, “How may I help you?” we immediately blurt out, “Just looking.”

Every one of us has done this at one point or another. This is part of our human nature to protect ourselves. Even though we are there to buy, we say we are just looking out of fear of being “sold” something.

Being “sold” something by another person is associated with:

1. Being pressured into make a buying decision
2. That decision being the wrong decision

So as a salesperson, let’s flip the script, and instead of trying to figure out how to sell someone, let’s take a look at why people buy. I mean that is what they really want to do isn’t it?

Here are the Top 5 Reasons People Buy

1. YOU – Yes you are the number one reason people buy. Study after study has proven that people choose to buy because they liked, trusted, and respected their salesperson. Note: The converse is also true, if a customer does not like you, trust you, or respect you, they will not buy from you, no matter the deal.
2. Differentiation – You have to be different. You have to sell different. You have to know what makes you, your product, and your company different and better than your competition. If you are not different, or special, then why should the customer buy if everything is just the same.
3. Emotionally Engaged – People decide to buy based upon emotions. People decide to act based upon emotions. Let me put it another way because this is important, people will decide on the product or service they want to buy and take the actions necessary to make the purchase based upon their emotions. The key to creating these emotions is getting the customer exacted about the outcome you are providing them.
4. Desired Outcome – People buy for their reasons and not yours. Every customer has a problem that they are looking to solve. And every customer has a desired outcome they are looking to achieve. Think about the customer who walks into a hardware store and says, “I need a drill,” and the clerk responds, “Actually, you need a hole.” This is not about the product, the drill, it is about the result or desired outcome, the hole.
5. Value – When value exceeds price by one dollar you have a sale. This is a very important concept to understand. Any time a customer says the price is too high, or these payments are too high, what the customer is really saying, is “I don’t see the value.” An important note to this concept, value is always from the customers perspective, not yours.

It is time to change your focus. Stop focusing on what you want, to sell the customer, and start focusing on what the customer wants, to buy. This is the key to actually getting everything that you want. Zig Ziglar is famous for saying:

“You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”

Do you have the discipline to set your own desires aside and focus on the customers? If you do, you won’t have to sell the customer, because they love to buy!