Why People Don't Buy Things: Five Five Proven Steps To Connect With Your Customers And Dramatically Improve Your Sales [Paperback]

Harry Washburn (Author), Kim Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2000

Selling can be a science as well as an art, and offering the right product at the right price is only the starting point. The authors explore the thought processes potential buyers go through every time they consider making a purchase. This guide offers a systematic approach to understanding customers' motivations and tailoring the entire sales strategy to fit the customers' buying path. By teaching salespeople how to recognize different buying profiles, this book offers strategies and tactics to break out of non-productive patterns, forge new relationships, and turn promising prospects into repeat customers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Harry Washburn and Kim Wallace, principals in a firm specializing in sales and marketing research, believe salespeople are most successful when they can read customers' true motivations and tailor subsequent strategies to fit their unique needs. Based on 20 years' experience with companies like AT&T, IBM, and Polaroid, they've developed a method for replacing traditionally combative sales techniques with ones that encourage a cooperative decision-making process. In Why People Don't Buy Things, they explain how to find each customer's "buying path" by determining his or her specific "buying profile," which they classify as either Commander, Thinker, or Visualizer--and then adjusting arguments, language, and demonstrations to match them. The result, they contend, will help salespeople overcome stumbling blocks that regularly drive possible business away before a sale is consummated.

As any experienced salesman knows, if an individual or group prospect has substantial objections to buying from you that are not smoked out and resolved in your favor, you will lose the sale.... Why people don't buy things is as important a factor in individual and group purchasing decisions as why they do buy things.

--Howard Rothman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Forty years ago Louis Cheskin helped popularize the use of motivation research in marketing with his now classic Why People Buy. Washburn and Wallace look at the other side of the coin to analyze customer objections, and they provide techniques to overcome them. The authors met when they were vice presidents at New England's largest advertising agency, and they left that firm in 1976 to start their own marketing company specializing in consulting, sales, and marketing research. Over the years, they have developed such tools as ThoughtScan, the ArgumentAudit, and Decision Path Analysis. Here they explain how these work and show how to apply them. Potential buyers fit three different profiles, argue Washburn and Wallace. They show how to recognize "commanders, thinkers, and visualizers," and using real-life examples, they offer strategies for countering resistance in each case. David Rouse --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (January 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073820157X
• ISBN-13: 978-0738201573
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #71 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Research

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to Use Tool Guaranteed to Increase Your Sales Results, November 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Why People Don't Buy Things: Five Five Proven Steps To Connect With Your Customers And Dramatically Improve Your Sales (Paperback)

I am a CPA and Harvard MBA and have sold sophisticated tax shelters on a commission basis for years. This is one of the finest books on salesmanship I have ever read.

It is grounded in excellent theory, yet it presents the information in a simple manner that is easy to understand AND easy to implement.

The book focuses on two areas:

1) Know where your customer is in the buying cycle. a)Is he committed to do something yet, or not. b)Is this a repeat of a prior purchase or not? c)Is he evaluating alternatives? d)From whom will he buy the product or service selected? e)Is the price right?

2) Different personality types buy in different manners. The book describes three types. a)Commander (take-charge, action-oriented leaders) b)Thinker (logical, analyze details, and like knowing the answers), and c) Visualizer (practical, intuitive, see things as they are).

A buyer is interested in certain information at each STAGE in the buying cycle. Additionally, each personality prefers to receive their information in a different manner. By recognizing the buying stage and the personality of the buyer you are trying to persuade, you can choose the most compelling arguments to make every time. This will avoid 90% of the turn-downs other salespeople get when trying to close a sale.

I have read other books classifying personalities into 9 or 16 types. Other authors define 8 or 11 stages of a sale. By using 5 stages in their DREAM sales cycle, and 3 personality types, I think Washburn and Wallace have done salespeople a GREAT service. These categories are well defined, easy to identify, and easily utilized to increase sales with their strategies.

Readers looking for more advanced strategies in these areas can try Kerry Johnson's "Sales Magic" and "Selling the Way Your Customer Buys" by Marvin Sadovsky and Jon Caswell. However, I feel Washburn & Wallace's "Why People Don't Buy Things" has the ideal mix of quality content which works, is easily digested, and implementable. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For those who sell, this book is a must-read!, March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Why People Don't Buy Things: Five Proven Steps To Connect With Your Customers And Dramatically Increase Your Sales (Hardcover)

The authors lay out a "DREAM" buying path (do something or nothing; repeat or not repeat; evaluate a new choice; access where to buy; and money...agreement that the price is in an acceptable range. They show how this process is applied, customizing your sales approach to the profile of the customer. Based on extensive interviews, the authors have identified three dominant buying profiles; these are explored in detail. This is a thoughtful presentation of an approach to sales that breaks down the buying decision from the customer's point of view. The keys are the ability to read the customer, determine the appropriate buying profile, and customize the message accordingly. An informative and intuitively appealing approach, that has the added allure of being well tested in the field. For those who sell, this book is a must-read!

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Have you ever lost a sure-fire sale?, May 26, 2000

By 

a reader (usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why People Don't Buy Things: Five Five Proven Steps To Connect With Your Customers And Dramatically Improve Your Sales (Paperback)

When you do residential telemarketing for a livelihood, every call counts. You don't want to just burn up leads, and get on to the next prospect as quickly as possible. You must hang in there with each prospect till you hear some impossible objection you can't possibly overcome. And, of course, educated consumers know them all!

This book is my Bible. I reread it every day over pancakes and coffee at IHOP before starting my noon shift. As a result, I am able to listen to my prospects describe their worlds, instead of just arguing inside my head with myself, and selling to my own agenda all day. What a relief!

Like most salespeople, I occasionally wonder, "Is there some magic that I don't have?" whenever I see other people's sales go up on the board and I'm not selling. I often see this same question on sales managers faces as well.

After all, what salesperson doesn't imagine customer resistance as a very tangible and solid Great Wall that has convincing physical reality?

This book has enabled me to develop my own on-the-job marketing, and not pin all my odds on a company-supplied canned script that can't possibly listen to prospects and can't really help me survive.

Is sales an art or a science? Read Wallace and Washburn, apply the techniques, and then decide for yourself.

You'll never hear prospects the same way again. Telemarketing may be a blind shot but it doesn't have to be dumb.