The Power of Value Selling

10Reverse Engineering the Buying Process

Throughout my career, I've seen countless definitions of the sales profession. There's one that resonates with me the most: Sales is the facilitation of buying via the transference of confidence from the seller to the buyer.

And according to Todd Caponi, it's not that the buyer has confidence because you have convinced them—the buyer has confidence because they can predict the experience or outcomes of doing business with you.

The key to this definition is that the core of any successful sales engagement focuses on the buyer's success at completing a purchase. In most B2B buying processes, the buying company typically goes through six phases:

1. Identifying problems
2. Searching for information and options
3. Evaluating alternatives
4. Justifying the expenditure
5. Purchasing
6. Evaluating the solution post‐purchase

Notice that nowhere in this process is a sales professional explicitly included.

That's the dilemma for most sales reps today—how do you synchronize the buying process to your selling process? The first step, of course, is to ensure you understand the buying process.

Gartner has shared two troubling and conflicting statistics that only complicate this challenge:

1. Fifty‐six percent of buyers¹ have significant purchase regret after a large technology purchase.
2. Buyers, on average, spend 17% of their time with potential suppliers—that means they only spend 5% to 6% of their time meeting with an individual seller.²

It's intriguing that buyers ...