Behavioural Selling

Karthi Subbaraman -

As forever students of human behaviours, designers know a thing or two about how human beings buy. For someone interested in selling, understanding buying behaviours is pivotal.

Here are some observations around how human beings acquire value👇

  1. Human beings love buying. They hate being sold to. In other words they hate being pushed, manipulated, lied to and pressurised. Anything that takes away freedom and choice, is hated by sapiens. If you allow customers to do what they love to buy in their own time, they will like you as a sales person.
  2. Human beings chase scarcity. Scarcity gives them vanity, pride, ego and other intangible values. Your duty as a sales person is to make your customer understand how scarce the item is. This fastens their decision making. Discounts, offers, deals, luxury are all different ways of inducing scarcity.
  3. Human beings live in a dynamic context. Their life keeps changing. So don't look for a target customer. Look for a target use case. Solve for the specific use case (jobs to be done) and showcase the benefits. If the customer perceives the product as more valuable, sale happens automatically.
  4. A product/service can't solve all problems to all people. It typically solves one or two use case(s) for a set of people. Find that set of people who have those use cases and help those people solve their problems. Sales will happen effortlessely. Don't allow your sales targets and deadlines push you hard into deliberate selling.
  5. Customer's buying decision and thinking patterns are not in your locus of control. The only thing you could do is help them see how to get what they want (provided you have what they want). Provide them with enough rationale and evidence so that they can make informed choices and buy what you are selling 🤞
  6. Specificity(niche) wins. It speaks directly to the customer who has a context you are addressing. It helps you focus your sales efforts and deliver better results. You cannot please everyone and you should never try to. If your niche is super specific, your positioning gets focused.

If despite helping the customer in the context (use case) is not helping revenues, change the product or the offer. Iterate (pivot if need be) till you find traction. Waiting for things to change with time will not help. Human beings don't pay attention to things that are not in front of them. Don't fade away and expect them to remember you.

Hope your sales strategies can utilise these nuances ✨

🥂 to sales!