The Truth About Selling Steel: Eliciting the Buyer's Strategy

We all have developed specific combinations of reasoning within ourselves that cause us to make sense of a purchasing decision that allows us to buy. If you are able to know the exact steps a buyer makes when making a decision, then you are better able to tailor your presentation, products and services in such a way necessary to create a sale.

You need to understand that individuals use their visual, auditory and feeling senses to in interpret the information they are receiving. As the various stimuli are received, we create our representations of what we are receiving and, basically, give meaning to things. Everyone uses these senses in specific ways to create the necessary environment within themselves in order to make the decision to buy.

The key for you as a sales entity is to unlock the basic keys needed in order to unlock your counterpart’s buying response. Asking the right questions will help you move toward understanding and then removing the “wall” many buyers place between themselves and the feelings needed to elicit the buy response.

By asking the right questions, you are asking the buyer to access the memories and the process used in order to make buying decisions. It is important to remember that everyone does it differently. Some people go through 3 steps while others take 10 steps before making a buying decision.

The following are a list of questions that should be used in order to understand the buyers purchasing strategy:

How do you know when you should buy something?

How did you begin the process of buying your last steel order?

What steps are taken during the process?

How do you feel certain that you’ve made a wise buying decision?

What makes you certain about choosing a steel supplier?

How do you know when it is time to buy?

How do you go about deciding if the product and services are a right fit for you?

As you can see from the questions above, it will take some work and follow-up questions to elicit the buyer’s actual strategy. A response to a question with a comment like, “I need to feel good about it” doesn’t actually answer the question. That response should prompt another question from you, “What specifically about the product/service makes you feel good?”

Over the years I developed very strong business relationships with many buyers. In reality, what I was able to accomplish was an understanding of the process needed by the buyer in order to make a buying decision which made that person feel good that they made the best decision and bought from the right person/company.

Companies would also be well served by spending some time thinking about how their operations, policies and procedures fit into their customers’ buying process.

Steel Market Update has a complete Sales Training Workshop available which can be presented over a one or two day period depending on your needs. The workshop is conducted by Mario Briccetti, an experienced steel buyer and John Packard, publisher of Steel Market Update who has 31 years of active steel sales experience. For more information about the program, costs to put the program on at one of your facilities, etc. please contact us at: info@SteelMarketUpdate.com or by phone: 800-432-3475.

John Packard, Publisher, Steel Market Update