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Who do you think is learning faster as a group: sellers or buyers?
Best Answer
- Recommended by:
- Henry Bruce,
- Don Perkins,
- Jerome Norwood
Buyers. Hands down. Buyers are currently 60-70% of the way to a buying decision before they raise their hand and identify themselves to sellers (Source: Corporate Executive Board). While buyers have never been very impressed by corporate websites or sales people, they didn't have many options until recently. Now they've learned that they can rely on social media to access trusted, useful information from their peers.
Sellers are faced with one of two choices -- give buyers ready access to useful information, or give up any hope of influencing the situation -- just sit back and pray that the buyer arrives at the "right" answer on his own.
I have great hope for the sellers. My experience is that people are most teachable when the %$#@ hits the fan.
- Recommended by:
- Don Perkins,
- Vanessa Castiglioni
Would agree with all on this chain that it is indeed the buyers. As Chris states above, the buyers change and lead is causing organizations to change, but unfortunately many of them are not making the changes necessary and are still far behind.
One of the thing the sellers must understand is that this change that is needed does not come quickly. No technology or tops down mandate around alignment will cause the change to happen any faster. It is a 18 month to 3 year culture change that must occur and includes both marketing and sales aligning around the customer.
Carlos Hidalgo
@cahidalgo
- Recommended by:
- Michael A Brown
Buyers, primarily because they don't indulge in the silly vanity that there are "naturals" at buying. They recognize it as a learned skill. Sellers persist in the foolishness that there are natural salespeople. It gives under-performers an excuse, and plays on the "naturals'" vanity and self-serving scarcity theory. Neither group will engage in much training, measurement or reflection -- which is precisely what the buyers are doing.
Definitely the buyers. Are buyers are more motivated to learn all the time? Do sellers get into a rut and think they do not have to learn and change? The funny thing is that a lot of them are the same people.
Without question Buyers - and their learning is the only thing driving Sellers to change.
Buyers are individuals (either consumers or business people) motivated to get best product, best price, best delivery, and so forth. Many companies are fragmented into sales, product management, operations, and so forth and top management is motivated to make a profit in the short-term. The sales reps might actually know what buyers want but they have trouble getting it done inside the company.The different silos don't cooperate and the company is slow to innovate because it's a lot of trouble to do it and you have to justify it to the financial people. A smaller business in which the owner has long-term customer-driven goals might be able to make quicker changes to meet market demand. For example, a small local owner-operated store in my urban neighborhood manages to carry to best, freshest produce and the hottest gourmet food items, while offering friendly, efficient service, and is open long hours. The owners are close to their customers so there is no disconnect.
Just about the time I began using my first computer (even in the late ‘90s, I was a late-comer) my son and I attended a seminar on “eCommerce”.
The moderator of the program bandied about statements like:
“Ford Motor Company spent 6 million dollars this year advertising their web site!”
“Sears is talking about ‘building’ eCommerce stores were shoppers can view and select merchandise on-line. They have committed millions of dollars to the concept.”
The speaker pointed out that computers would eventually become the “stores” where people shopped and that the program that his company offered would get fledgling eBusinesses started on the right track.
We didn’t buy into the idea at that time. My take was that Ford may have added their web site address to all their ads and Sears was probably trying to see the direction, and feasibility, of cyber sales — but, eCommerce was not going to kill brick and mortar stores any time soon.
In the meantime, I watched billions of bytes of information about millions of subjects and products coalesce on the Internet. Information that helped buyers find better and better deals without trekking from store-to-store and reading all of the “flyers” that wound up in mailboxes. Even information that would help "buyers" make better informed decisions on health care and insurance programs.
The result is a marketplace where I see the buyer who has not only taken “caveat emptor” to heart but has redefined that adage in a way many of us might never have thought possible.
Surely, the sellers (Including myself) didn’t see the transformation coming until the buyer was several steps ahead of the seller in smart shopping, competitive shopping and global shopping…
I once heard a motivational, business gurru-type say that there were three secrets to having a successful business: ‘Location! Location! Location!” Personally, when it comes to sales, and sellers, I see the Internet as the busiest street corner in the world and any savvy seller would want to be on that corner.
Why?
Because that’s not only the corner that today’s more savvy buyer seems inclined to check out first — and often where they spend their money — it’s the corner that they go to, to learn, evaluate, compare and decide whether or not to push the buy button or go to the brick and mortar location to pick up their purchase in the store’s “On-line” pickup center…
No doubt in my mind that today’s buyer is way more sophisticated they were only ten years ago. With more information about more products, services, “deals” and where to get the best deal available.
Just about a year ago, my son and I took our business to the net and have never looked back…
Apparently buyers trust each other to give each other honest and useful information, but sellers don't trust the feedback they get from buyers, at least not enough to take quick action based on it. Not every change requires a large investment. For example, many websites offer free shipping, some even offer free returns. Buyers really like this feature and are willing order more merchandise to get the free shipping. And yet there are still many sellers that charge very high shipping rates, even for multiple purchases. Do they realize they are missing sales?
In developing countries like India, I believe its still the Sellers. Thats due to the fact that intelligence in this field has been on the rise for sellers who are educated by some of the best institutions in the country, while the buyers still belong to the pre-digital intelligence and knowledge world wherein their learning curve has halted.
Buyers who are informed usually know the competitive products and services better than the sellers. Everybody gives them the information they need.
Throughout the history of marketing, the buyer has always been one step ahead.
They watch something - we find a way of interrupting them to say buy me.
So they buy TIVO, make cups of tea etc.
So we advertise more, with more annoying ads, more embedded in the programming.
So they stop listening and responding.
They communicate. So we pester them with communications from us.
So they invent telephone preference lists. Spam lists. Advertising Standards.
Social has been a great leap forward for buyers. Now they have enough information to make all but the most complex decisions without talking to sellers at all.
They have specs, prices, comparative reviews, feature explanations.
They have past buyers telling them their experiences.
They have "independent" analysts and reviewers.
Push information telling them what to buy, who's buying it and why.
They have experts. They can share all of this with their colleagues.
All in a few clicks.
And they can make a decision in pricinciple, totally removed from a buying process.
So what should we do? Shout louder? More frequently? More annoyingly?
Through more "media".
Or possibly do what we should have done in the first place.
Have products which can really benefit them.
Help them with their buying decision.
Involve their colleagues, influencers etc.
Perhaps it is time for us to learn what it is really like to be a buyer. Their drivers, their needs, their aspirations. Their influences.
Not just live in our own little world of "the boss says we need more business" "Get out and sell" and "don't care about them - there's plenty more fish in the sea".
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Related Activity
Buyers. The knowledge gap is astounding. Traditional selling is very hard today. No one has time to share their frustrations and pain before --or even after a sale. Solution selling used to work well-- people would share needs with the promise that the sales person would advocate for them in return for a relationship that could be referenced. Technologists and software engineers have been working to eliminate marketing and sales from the value chain for a long time- viewing it as sunk cost that is not measurable. Their work is paying off. Now people go to the Internet to frame their own needs and discover solutions for themselves. Customer Relationship Management has replaced most of the functions once viewed as "sales'. Now companies must leverage buyer knowledge and customer performance to generate demand and drive revenue growth.