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Purchasing
Criteria and Priorities
Question 1: “What
do you want in a (your product/service)?”
Answer: The answer will
identify the prospect’s key purchasing criteria –
such as specific product/ service features and benefits, quality
or service issues. This then enables you to focus on those
criteria that you have established as having the greatest
importance for the prospect. You can then present the benefits
offered by your own products and services that correspond
with these criteria - matching the prospect’s specific
phrasing - and eliminate from the presentation other, less-relevant
product/service features.
It is important to confirm these criteria with the buyer and
establish through further questioning your understanding of
their precise and mutually-agreed meaning. You can also qualify,
quantify and agree the prioritisation of these issues for
the prospect, and any relevant benchmarks.
For example: for the description ‘fast access speed’
as a criterion stated by a prospect for buying a computer
network: how will ‘fast’ be evaluated? How fast?
Compared with what? How does ‘speed’ feature as
a priority compared with other listed criteria?
Question 2: “
Why are (criteria) important for you – what would that
do for you/ how would that help the business?”
Answer: This elicits underlying,
often more personal reasons for the choice of criteria –
such as the impact on the job role of the prospect or the
implications for profitability, for example.
Most importantly, successful B2B (Business-to-Business) sales
should be linked whenever possible to the contribution of
the purchase to the fundamental issue of ROI, (Return on Investment)
that increasingly influences the underlying motivation and
justification for any major purchase. This linkage should
relate not only to the direct ROI on the specific product/service
to be purchased – such as the increased productivity
directly attributable - but also to the wider ROI for the
business and its ability to generate increased profitability
from its core commercial activities as a result of using your
proposed solution. This requires an understanding of the client’s
business objectives, processes and disposition.
Question No. 2 should be asked up to three times during the
presentation, to probe and uncover the underlying motivation
for each of the prospect’s core purchasing criteria,
and the linkage you can establish to ROI.
The answer to this question also reveals whether the prospect
has a tendency to be focused on ‘avoidance’ or ‘achievement’
for the purchase - whether motivated either to attain a goal
or, alternatively, to solve or avoid a problem. You can then
position your product/service solution accordingly, by using
an appropriate language pattern. In the latter case for example,
you can explain the benefits in terms of the negative issues
that will be avoided by selecting your product/ service.
To prepare for this, it is helpful to review, as an exercise
in advance, both the ‘avoidance’ and ‘achievement’
benefits for each feature associated with your product/service.
This question will enable you to ask ancillary questions to
identify the prospect’s needs very precisely. In the
case of the example of the computer network sale, if ‘speed’
is a criterion because “we have too much down-time, our
systems are so slow” (‘avoidance’): You can
ask: Where is the downtime experienced, and where is it most
critical? What are the demands on processor speed of current
and any proposed new software? What are the core data operations
that are most important to the business? Who undertakes them,
where and when?
You can then propose a system solution that matches the ‘avoidance’
needs and will “minimise downtime for (key personnel)”,
“ensure no interruption to the speed of (identified)
business processes in achieving (the core commercial activity)”
This further level of questioning of the network buyer may
reveal that ‘down-time’ is important because the
IT department is “plagued by complaints from the sales
team”. Your proposed solution might therefore include
a meeting with the team to discuss their specific needs and
applications, additional user training for them, provision
of a sales-user support line or diagnostics tools.
Contact us for further
information
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