What Do Buyers Want?

Credit: Bill Gillespie

What do buyers want? What are they really shopping for? What are the deliverables that might make them pick you over one of your competitors? Can you identify sales triggers?

Last week I wrote about an employer of mine that wanted to do business with an international freight company. The bid collecting team had refused a visit from our sales rep. We went upstream and managed to earn a seat at the table.

Today I want to share anecdotes from the resulting call. When the big brass had cleared the room my rep and I sat alone with a team of people that resented us being there. What we did next was as important to our success as getting the boss involved.

I apologized for how we forced the meeting to happen. I shared that we were no different from the rest of the printing market in that we wanted to do business with them. I asserted that we were not just a local leader but an industry leading company. Then, I started to talk about our equipment and quality.

The senior bid collector stopped me. He said, “we know all about your equipment and quality. Believe it or not, your critical competitors tell us all about that. Everyone knows how good your work is and how advanced your technology solutions are.”

He continued, “we don’t have any trouble finding good quality and service. Even if yours is better what we get is what we need. Getting stuff printed correctly and on time isn’t something we struggle with. Now, if you told me, you had a gadget that could grab a poster, roll it up and insert it into a tube, I’d be impressed. It’s the post press handling that impedes our projects.”

We didn’t have a poster grabbing, rolling and inserting gadget so I stopped and listened. His comment changed my questions too. Everything shifted to “handling solutions” rather than printing processes. His trigger was handwork or how to avoid it.

This became the focus and study of estimating. We looked for and designed better handwork answers. We became students of the process and earned millions in work.

These skills exported to other clients as well. We earned kitting projects where the handling and storage were worth more than the printing. Our presses turned on because we were experts at other things. We were hired early, before specs were written. We solved problems that fed our plant. Our top reps were no longer bid deliverers.

I watched an identical thing play out years later. A client of mine in Utah called about a magazine they printed. Their incumbent web printing source was fumbling the ball.

It wasn’t anything I could print. I was in the wrong part of the country too. My client asked if I could suggest a source and I hooked her up with someone in Salt Lake City.

The company owner was a great listener. He could certainly handle the publication. Almost anyone with a web press could. The client’s sales trigger was distribution. How could the magazine get to publication boxes and mailboxes without breaking the bank?

I don’t know what their solution turned out to be but the printer had one. The twice a year publication and some of its cousins moved to Salt Lake City. Guess what, so did their daily direct mail.

My client’s anxiety wasn’t print speed or quality. She expected those things but wasn’t worried about finding them. It was the end-to-end problem solving and workflow compression. Her trigger wasn’t ink on paper. It was magazines on desks.

Think you know this? Perhaps you do. But I talk to sales reps every single day from all over the country. Before today is over a rep asking for help will tell me about his price and print speed. He/she will share that their equipment should earn them work.

These reps aren’t talking about what the clients are buying.