What Motivates Buyers to Buy? It Doesn't Add Up by Jerry Hocutt

Awareness + Need + Value = Sale

Right?  Wrong. 

How about this: “If I did ______________ every time, every customer would buy from me.”  (Please email me your answer immediately!)

Let’s try again: ? + ? + ? = Sale

If you can figure out the blanks, the sale is yours.  The trick is to determine what the blanks are.  When we do, we know what motivates buyers to buy.  So are there any common denominators?  Let’s see.

Desire?  I love McDonald’s fries.  But the love of the fries doesn’t motivate me to buy them every day.  Circumstances?  If I’m taking a vacation to Hawaii, I do have to buy my plane ticket, reserve my room, and rent a car.  But I don’t do that every day, or even every year.  Confidence in the economy is a motivator to buy.  But that’s lacking right now.  Psychologists and marketers find that some of the biggest motivators are water, food, shelter, sex, and money.  But even if you included that in your selling equation, it doesn’t mean you’ll make the sale to every one every time.

Recession is a motivator to save what you’ve got – not to spend.  Good times are a motivator to spend – but not to save.  Fear motivates.  Rewards motivate. 

But, really, what motivates buyers to buy?  This question has hounded salespeople, managers, and business owners since Grunk the caveman invented the wheel.  You’re not going to find the answer here.  If I knew what it was, I might be afraid to tell you.  Maybe it’s a secret I’d like to keep to myself.

How do you buy?

Look at your last purchase.  What motivated you to buy? 

As I’m browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I’ll sometimes pick up a book, scan the contents and a few pages, look at the back cover, replace it on the shelf, and continue browsing.  As I’m looking at the other books, I’ll find my attention wandering back to the book that caught my eye.  I’ll go back, pick it up, and look at it once more.  But then I’ll return it the shelf, still not convinced to buy.  As I drive home, I keep thinking about the one or two ideas I gleaned from the book and debate with myself whether the book could pay for itself by increasing my sales. 

Arriving home, I kick myself for not getting it.  I know I can use the information to help my sales.  Then I find an excuse the next day or two to “be in the area of B&N” and go in to purchase the book.

What motivated me to buy?  First, the awareness of the book and what it had to offer.  Second, time had to pass to give me time to think about it and come up with justifications to buy.  And finally, the desire to have the information that could benefit me became so strong, that I had to return and make the purchase.

In my situation this time, Awareness + Time + Desire = Sale.

Iron Man, diets, and yoga

Our oldest daughter entered and completed her first Iron Man last summer and we couldn’t be prouder, especially seeing how much dedication it takes to prepare for such a grueling event.  She had motivation to buy into a killer event. 

Many people are motivated to buy into diets because they’re motivated by health issues or they just want to look and feel better.  Millions buy into yoga for the exercise, the spiritual aspects, to help a bad back, or simply for the rewarding inner peace and concentration it gives.

What motivates people to buy?  I feel that everyone has different motivations at different times.  But do you see any common denominators in the above examples?  Are the common denominators something we as salespeople can use to help motivate our buyers?  Not necessarily close the deal, but at least move them towards buying.

I see six common denominators

One: you have to have a qualified customer.  You can’t sell chocolate cake to a person allergic to chocolate.  (Sorry, Sarah.)  You can’t sell McDonald’s fries to someone who just finished a gourmet meal at a five-star restaurant.  As salespeople, we have to know how to qualify our customers.  We need to find the ones who can at least use (not necessarily need or want) our service or product.  Maybe now, maybe later. 

Two: the customer has to be made aware of your service or product.  As salespeople, it is our job to put ourselves out there to make sure customers know what we can do and how we can help.  (Why McDonald’s spends millions advertising...they know you’ll be thinking of those fries some day.)

Three: time.  Because people have different thought processes (for example, analytical vs. driver personalities), it will take some of them more time to make a decision.  Not every service or product is an impulse buy.

Four: the customer has to like you, trust you, and believe you.  You’ve got too much competition to come across as a snake oil salesman, inept, or incompetent.

Five: value.  As Warren Buffett says, “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

The lynchpin for motivating buyers

Six: emotion.  If you can’t get the buyer emotionally excited about your service or product, forget it.  All the other five common denominators, the quality of your service or product, the size of your company, and all the facts, figures, and proofs are worthless.

Webster’s defines emotion as: a. a state of feeling; b. conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) experienced as a strong feeling directed toward a specific object and accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body; c. defies reason, logic, intelligence, and knowledge.  Examples are faith, hope, belief, love, and heart.  Another example is a scary movie that has you jumping out of your skin.  Hey, it’s just a movie.  But the hairs standing up on the back of your neck still defy reason, logic, intelligence, and knowledge.

Emotions motivate.  Those McDonald’s French fries?  Sitting in your office before lunch, you can almost taste those salted, hot fries touching your tongue; your emotions are in play.  When you see yourself crossing that finish line in the Iron Man with your small son or daughter holding your hand for the last few yards, you get emotional and are motivated to buy into the tormenting bike ride you must take today.  When no doctor can remove the pain from your back, you talk to your yoga friends and get emotional enough to give those asanas a try because you can “feel” the relief.

Yeah, if I could give salespeople one piece of advice to motivate buyers to buy, it would be this: get the buyer into an emotional state first.  Get them tasting those salted, hot fries.  You won’t have to close them.  They’ll simply ask, “Can I have ketchup with that?”

About The Author:

© 2009 Jerry Hocutt. Read more articles by Jerry at his blog http://footinthedoor.squarespace.com/journal and listen to a free preview of his CD/MP3 audio program Cold Calling for Cowards® at http://www.footinthedoor.com/freepreview.html.