Customer psychology: understanding your buyers for better sales
Have you noticed that the way of selling has changed a lot from what it was just a few years ago? Would you like to understand the buying behaviour of your customers even better? If so, you might be interested in learning more about your customers’ psychology. This way, you will understand your buyers even more and see your sales booming!
What is customer psychology?
Customer psychology is a specialty area that studies how our thoughts, beliefs, feelings and perceptions influence how we buy and relate to goods and services.
Customer psychology can also be described as:
“The study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society.”1
Insights
As you might know, today’s prospects are getting bombarded by information from sales associates. They don’t really know how to sort it all out. The psychology of selling in today’s sales world requires that we recognize how busy and overwhelmed with information our prospects truly are. Prospects often don’t want to talk to salespeople who are just trying to persuade them to buy. They don’t want to be overwhelmed with sales pitches.
Instead, what they actually want are real insights that demonstrate knowledge and understanding of what’s really going on in their world. The psychology behind this is that you must think of and present yourself as an expert, not just some low-level sales professional who’s just going to waste your prospects’ time. You should try to bring insight to the table from the start.
Each phase is crucial
During the introduction phase, it is crucial to introduce yourself to the prospect and give them some information about the company you are representing. When you are having this discovery conversation, you need to ask your prospect important questions.
While this still applies, the new sales psychology also requires sales professionals to earn these discovery questions. So think about how to demonstrate real expertise to win discovery conversations and get prospects ready to answer your questions. If you don’t demonstrate expertise before you start the discovery phase, potential customers will likely not be interested in what you have to offer.
Get them talking
Did you know that when you get your prospects to start talking in the discovery phase of the sales process, you are much more likely to close? And so, sales associates who are really good at getting their prospects talking are the most successful sales out there.
This concept of selling has a diminishing effect in the psychology of your prospects. But you don’t want your prospect to dominate the entire conversation. That’s not really productive, of course. If you can get your prospects talking, it’s a great thing.
It means that the prospect is engaged in the conversation. Getting them talking helps to pull them in and make them feel like they’re participating in defining the offering that you’re ultimately going to present.
Objections
It’s very common that a prospect has some objections in a sales conversation. How can you learn to deal with them? You have to try to keep the customer’s resistance as small as possible. Always react with empathy and understanding. A great way to do this is to try to ask more questions about the reason for the objection.
Would you like to get more sales insights? Check out our guides and blog posts to keep your sales up-to-date.
1 S., Vijayalakshmi. (2013). An impact of consumer buying behavior in decision making process in purchase of electronic home appliances in Chennai (India): an empirical study.