Understanding your client is imperative in the sales process. As a student in sales we have continuously been taught that securing the deal revolves around engaging in a conversation surrounded around questioning your client. The purpose of the questioning is to discover the pain of the buyer, what pains and shortcomings of the buyers current situation can you offer a solution to. To the salesman this discovery process is completely surface level and client behavior is determined by how individuals react.
This questioning process allows the buyer and seller to develop a genuine relationship that is centered around the client and their unique wants and needs. A conversation that is dominated by the seller becomes “pushy” and prevents the true preferences of the buyer to be demonstrated. Customer inquisition is a very important piece in the selling “puzzle”. Arguably, customer inquisition is a two fold process that involves not only inquisition but also understanding. The way humans act and make decisions is a manifestation of internal neurological activity. Science continues to produce new findings in psychology that have been applied to finance and economics. Work in these fields continues to study why buyers make certain decisions with the hopes of eventually predicting behavior. Getting to the point where we are able to predict human behavior has been difficult despite the influence of recent discoveries.
What implications do behavioral understandings have on the sales process? I would argue that a complete understanding of human behavior is a necessary prerequisite when approaching client conversations. Behavioral economists have pointed to cognitive biases that exist in the human brain that make certain outcomes more prevalent. As behavioral economics have improved and more resources have been contributed to its study more “biases” have been established. Biases in general are generally categorized as heuristics, which are simply the use of subconscious mental shortcuts in decision making. Understanding every dimension of the human brain is impossible so for the sake of cohesiveness I will present one mental bias and how it can be managed. I define management as the fruitful manipulation of theses biases. When the mental shortcuts are understood, client decision making and choice structures can be designed that reflect the neurological “pain” of most humans.
To conclude, it becomes clear that there is a vast undiscovered field of behavioral science. The application of behavioral science has continued to expand, and the continued understanding will continue to develop a sales process that is focused entirely on understanding the client.
BoweryJE22
I agree with the points addressed in your post. Understanding your client is critical to successful selling. I think there’s a fair amount of psychology in sales too. A better understanding of how your client thinks— and most importantly, why he or she think that way— is key to a successful sale.
Understanding the client is definitely important. In a sales class I took, it broke the client into four categories based on personality. The four are amiable, analytical, expressive, driver. It is essential to know which one of these your client is before entering the sales pitch, so that you can tailor your pitch to their personality.