The Power of the Dominant Buying Motive
Given the current economic challenges, sales trainers are working hard to convince
clients that there is still a place for selling skills and sales training. Corporate sales
training market needs to reposition itself yet again. Clients need to be convinced more
than ever that there is merit in investing in training a sales team. This needs to go
beyond “39 steps to closing the deal.”
To do that, trainers in selling and negotiation skills need to keep it simple. This is
something that is apparently quite difficult for those of us who are involved in people
development. Sales and marketing training is full of three letter acronyms. – USP’s
(unique selling points), CRM (customer relationship management, ROS (return on
sales) and so the list goes on. I am not really sure why social scientists seem to feel
this innate need to complicate what should really be really accessible concepts. I
wonder if we do this because we feel that the engineering or technology world would
take us more seriously.
Today I came across a new one . . . Enter the DBM- or the “dominant buying motive.”
At first I cringed, then I sat and thought about it and now here I am using the same
term, (there I did it again –the DBM).
Seriously though, any sales executive worth any salt needs to avoid features dumping
and overselling. Our clients need to be reminded about how to identify a particular and
specific competitive advantage. If this is done successfully, then the second step is to
position that advantage in relation to a customer’s dominant buying motive. All that
this means is that we need to be sure that customers are qualified correctly and, when
it comes to selling premium brands, that the emotional triggers are identified.
Persuasive needs based selling is firstly diagnostic. Sales trainers need to equip sales
teams with the skills to determine buying motives so that product or service benefits
can be matched. If this process is short circuited, the discussion will always end up
back at price.
So the question that needs to be considered, is,” Have I identified my customers
DBM?” This is often a journey because there are cased where customers themselves
are not clear about what the buying motive is in the first place.
Andy Brough is a Chartered Marketer and sales and negotiation skills trainer based in
Johannesburg South Africa and can be reached at: andyb[at]andrewbrough[dot]com or visit
the website at http://www.andrewbrough.com