Buying versus selling, why you should know the difference!

Focus your effort on buying versus selling. You don’t want to sell your customers anything, you want your customers to buy from you.  Huge difference!

Let’s start off by explaining the difference between buying and selling.  I personally hate to be sold anything, being sold means that I was put in a position where someone was trying to convince me that I needed a product whether I needed it or not, and how this product will make my life better in some way.  Let me just give you an example.  I am in the mall and there is a remodeling company that stops me and starts talking to me about their windows.   They don’t bother to ask me anything except to tell me how great their windows are.   (They don’t know this, because they didn’t ask, but my house was just built last year – I don’t need windows, but since they didn’t ask me, they proceed to sell me their windows).  Who was I to interrupt a good sales speech?  After 2 minutes, I politely said, my house is new, but thank you, I am not in a market for windows – and walked away.  That is my example of someone trying to sell me something.  If you are weak and cave easily when someone sells you something – usually you do not feel good about the sale – you were sold something you probably did not need.

Now lets look at buying.   I buy all the time, and it feels good when you buy something.  Usually I get online and do all my research about the product or service that I am in the market for, and then I go and buy it.  Rarely do I feel remorseful about something that I have bought.  The difference is EDUCATION and that is what you need to do with your prospective clients so that they will buy from you.  What ever it is that you sell or do – you need to give your prospect enough information about your product, your service, the benefits, what they need to look for so that they will make the choice and buy from you.

So lets look at an example – I sell insurance.   I want to put on a seminar, so I title the seminar “ I want to sell you cyber liability insurance”.  Stupid question, but how many people do you think will come to be sold cyber liability insurance?  Not many.   Now, I title my seminar “ Everything you need to know when you are thinking about purchasing cyber liability insurance”  How many people will be at that seminar – a lot.  Its an area that people want to know more about.   We have all seen it, the person doing the seminar does not pitch their company one time.  They present the info in an educational way.  What do you think happens after the seminar?  The instructor has a line of 10 people that want to buy cyber liability.  That is a nice problem to have – people that want to buy from you – you didn’t even have to cold call these people, or spend time prospecting them and they are ready to buy.

Remember it isn’t always about selling that will lead you to the sale, but more about educating the prospect or customer that will get you the sale.

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