What’s driving your customer?

If you’ve participated in the Gazing Mindset Selling programme you’ll know we talk about the stages people go through when making significant  decisions. Our job as influencers is to locate the other person in the Decision Making Cycle © (DMC) and decide the right strategy to help them move forward towards taking action, ideally with you and your proposition. But quite often when we as Gazing coaches first meet sales teams and start working with them we find that little consideration is given to understanding this critical stage. Even if are focused on the customer, often they start the conversation at stage 2. It’s where most sales people begin. Stage 1 is all about customer Drivers. Why do they matter, and what’s the risk if we ignore them?   

People don’t make major decisions, change course or select different suppliers without there being some motivation to change. Motivation is directional – usually towards what people desire or away from what people fear. If the motivation is strong enough, people will go to extraordinary lengths and put themselves through all sorts of discomfort to achieve their goals. 

Our job as influencers is to get an understanding of what is really motivating the organisations and the individuals we talk to. Once we understand their motivation, we then need to connect our story to it.  Participating in this part of the decision making could enable you to shift the whole debate, and position yourself as critical to the success of the project or initiative. If we can successfully attach ourselves to their big picture, we will reduce the likelihood of getting into a price battle, and will differentiate ourselves from the competition.  

 How to do this? Three things (as usual!) 

Be patient and keep the conversation about them. The Drivers’ star gives you suggested ‘big picture’ themes to talk and ask about.  

Be curious. So long as you have earned the right, ask more to get to the real Driver. (This is very different to a tick list of ‘must ask’ questions.) It should be a conversation. And don’t expect to discover all this in one engagement.

Remember, people have personal as well as business Drivers. If appropriate, ask about these as well. 

 To find out more about influencing and how to create a high performance environment, please do get in touch.