How to Wow Buyers (Hint: It's Not about Your Product!)

Want to know how to wow buyers?

Are you sure? Because chances are good that you've heard and rejected this advice before. It's surprisingly simple. It all starts with this important rule:

They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

This is why the top performer is not necessarily the one who knows the product line best. Superior product knowledge can even be a trap, leading to an over-dependence on reciting facts and figures about the product’s bells and whistles. In organizations that provide lots of product training without also offering solid sales training, it is not uncommon for sales managers to be perplexed about why sellers aren’t hitting their numbers. They may expect the product to do the work instead of teaching sellers how to wow buyers.

The answer is in that maxim above. Sellers who pitch products are only showing what they know. And buyers don’t care.

Getting a buyer to care starts when the buyer knows that the seller cares. Sellers who know how to wow buyers aren't carnival barkers or slick manipulators. They are people who care.

This kind of caring can’t be generic, it can’t be faked, and it can’t be robotically built in to a sales pitch. It doesn’t come from a one-time process that is scripted or routinized. It has to come from actually caring about the individual buyer.

How to wow buyers starts with caring about them!

Caring about the buyer means the seller wants to understand enough to offer solutions that will solve the buyer’s most urgent and pressing needs. Caring about the buyer means the seller wants to go “above and beyond” to differentiate himself or herself and earn the buyer’s business. Caring about the buyer means the seller is looking for repeat business, referrals and satisfied customers rather than taking a “win at all costs” approach.

There is no better way to show how much you care than by understanding and responding to a buyer’s unique needs and what he or she personally values. There is only one way to find out about an individual’s needs and value priorities. That’s by asking questions. Questions equip sellers to truly add value.

This is significantly different from pitching generic features and trying to extend them into generic benefits.

Buyers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. To show how much you care, you need to ask quality questions, listen carefully to the answers, and then make links between your solution or product offering and the buyer’s unique needs.