A Buyer’s Decision Path

Add to annual product, service, and company S.W.O.T. analysis.

A Buyer goes on a very specific journey before buying a product that sells for over $50. It involves only a few steps, but the path is taken over 60% of the time, and over 90% of the time if the product is $250 or more. Are you aware of the path?

This nugget shares the path that you have to ensure your company, your product, and sometimes, even yourself, are ready for.

The mantra here is, “Be Ready For Research”.  This is not to be confused with prepping for a potential client’s vetting process or the look-up of an executive’s bio.

This is on our consulting checklist of “Must be used by all companies in all industries”.

(0:00 – 0:18)
Let’s assume you’re in business, but you want to fine-tune things. Or you’re in business, but the numbers aren’t quite there. Or you’re in business, and you know you should have done two to three to four times more business last year, and you cannot figure out why the numbers aren’t where they should be.

(0:18 – 0:44)
This is going to be taking a look at business on a very psychological level, okay? So there’s only one place to go if you want to make money and get referrals consistently, and that is a place called RFR, Ready for Research. I think people should annually do an RFR checkup on their own company, on their own name. It is what it is.

(0:44 – 1:10)
It’s exactly what it sounds like. You’ve got to get your personal name and your company name ready for research. I want to start with a story about, I want to say five or six years ago, I was at someone’s home and they were telling everybody the story that the day before, they had set an appointment for a Kirby vacuum sales rep to come in.

(1:11 – 1:14)
They had always wanted a Kirby. Their neighbors had a Kirby. Their parents had a Kirby.

(1:14 – 1:34)
They had no idea what they cost, and they did not know or understand the process at which the Kirby sales reps operate. So they were telling the story and it was, you know, kind of fascinating actually because it got me really thinking that, wow, this is the way of the future. So watch this.

(1:34 – 2:00)
This is five, six years ago. The husband and wife were sitting through the Kirby sales rep presentation and all of a sudden the husband, while the sales rep was demonstrating the product, he went onto his laptop and he Googled the sales rep’s name. He also Googled the sales rep’s office.

(2:00 – 2:41)
Lo and behold, as the guy was doing his 10-minute demonstration, this gentleman that was watching the demonstration, in under five minutes, he was able to find evidence of exactly what the raw cost of that Kirby vacuum could be. Meaning, what is the lowest he’d be able to pay for that vacuum. If I remember my numbers correctly, the sales rep was trying to sell the vacuum for like $1,700 or $1,650. For those of you that know how Kirby sales reps make money, it’s a very large commission pay structure where the Kirby rep gets a lot of money, the manager gets a lot of money, the branch manager gets a lot of money.

(2:41 – 2:52)
But the bottom line is, a pretty good chunk of money does go towards the vacuum because they are one of the best vacuums ever made. We have one. But the key is this.

(2:52 – 3:26)
When the sales rep was holding firm at $1,700 or $1,650, whatever it is, the guy that was sitting through the presentation said, “So are you telling me right now, you’re looking me in the eye and you’re telling me you cannot sell that vacuum for less than that?” And he says, “Well, not necessarily. There’s a couple of things that we can do and this and that.” Well, bottom line is the gentleman turned his laptop around and the Kirby sales rep went white as a ghost because he saw exactly what the gentleman was looking at.

(3:27 – 3:44)
It was the price sheet, the internal price sheet from the office saying that that vacuum could be sold. I think it was like $1,030 or $880. It was significantly less and it was all said and done.

(3:44 – 4:08)
They did strike a deal at the best price available where the sales rep only got like an $80 commission. But the bottom line of what I’m trying to say here is the sales rep, when he went into that account and he went into that potential sale, he did not check his personal name or his company name online. He was not ready for research.