Every buyer has a system for buying. Even if they don’t know that they have a system, they do.

I started Sandler training today and have started learning a lot about sales once again. Today we talked about systems. Specifically, buyers always have a system, but rarely does the seller have a system.

The buyer system they talk about goes like this:

  • Withhold information
  • Gather Information
  • Commit to Nothing
  • Disappear

You might think that you don’t have a system like this, or you may not even understand what these mean, but let me walk you through an example I got today.

You were in a car accident and your insurance gives you a check for $30,000 to buy a new car. When you go to the car lot to get a new car, you don’t hold up a sign saying “I have $30,000 to spend on a new car!” Often times the first thing that you’ll do is withhold that information. You don’t give all the information because you don’t trust that the salesperson is actually in it for you. Surely they’re in it to get the biggest check from their commission. So when you go up to the lot, you purposely don’t give a budget or anything that would hint that you have even close to $30,000.

Next, you try and find all the information that you can possibly gain from the car salesperson. What cars are good, why they’re good. What car he would have if he had it. What kind of pricing, etc. You’re gathering information. As much information as you can gain. Not necessarily because you’re going to buy there, but because you want to find all the information before you buy.

The next thing that happens is that that salesperson thinks you’re super interested, so they go in for the sell. They’ll put everything they can together for you, all the forms, extra information they were able to generate for you looking at other dealerships. They say, “are you ready to buy now?” You take a big step back realizing that this guy thinks you’re actually about to buy a vehicle right now. You don’t want to just tell him that you’re not going to be buying from him and that you were checking out all options, so what do you tell him?

“I’m not quite ready yet, but let me get my ducks in a row and talk to my wife before I get it. Maybe this weekend I’ll come back”

You’ve been able to get a bunch of information now, but you commit to nothing. You’re not about to be suckered into buying a vehicle before you go compare 12 other places to see what you could get there.

Now, let’s say you go to a car lot across town and end up getting a steal of a deal on a new car. Couldn’t possibly pass up. You buy the car and have been driving it for a week. The next Monday comes and you get a call…it’s from the guy at the dealership you went to first. You feel embarrassed to tell him that you’ve already gotten another car and aren’t going to be coming back, so what do you do? As far as he’s concerned, you disappear. You feel kind of bad, but you figure it’s easier not to have the awkward conversation with this guy.

This might not be exactly what your process is or would be, but most likely you have something like this engrained in your head for how you would approach a buy.

Most sellers don’t have that, or if they do, it’s a process that falls right in line with the buyer process so that the buyer is leading the dance the whole time. Who suffers by this happening?

Clearly, the seller suffers in this kind of a setup, but I believe the buyer also suffers.

First of all, by doing this, they are most likely opening themselves up to being harassed by a salesperson for weeks or months. Why? Because it’s part of the salesperson job to follow-up with people who claimed interest. If they were interested, you want to make sure that you are able to be there for if they want to move forward. By the buyer not being up front about what their intentions are, they can confuse the seller into thinking that they’re a qualified prospect who should be followed up on.

Secondly, by the buyer not being open and honest about what their needs are, they may not get the full scope and solution to the pain that they are experiencing. They may go in a direction that is not actually most beneficial to them.

All of the above to say, one of the biggest things I learned in my training today is that you’re doing yourself, and your buyer a disservice by not begin upfront and setting expectations at the very beginning of your encounter with them. And you also give a buyer peace of mind if you can set expectations correctly at the very beginning.

Instead of a bunch of small talk at the beginning of your conversation to lighten up the mood, how about say “Hey, at the end of this conversation, I would love to have good next steps. If those next steps are ‘this really wasn’t what I was looking for, sorry’ GREAT! We part as friends and neither of our time is wasted. If at the end you say, this is something we want to move forward with, perfect. We’ll schedule another meeting at that time for us to follow up on moving forward. But what I don’t want to do at the end of this is have a vague plan for the future that ends with me chasing you down for two months wondering if you were interested and you trying to shake me off.”

By saying this at the very beginning of your conversation, you alleviate some of the pressure or uncertainty the buyer has with divulging information because you care less about letting them buy and more about qualifying them for if they even might be in the running for buying.

No one likes to be chased down, so make sure they know beforehand that they’ll only be chased if that desire to be.