Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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!

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.

This book is terrific. I have read many books on improving sales, the sales process and how to close sales. This one is the best by far. It's filled with practical information that you can apply immediately. It takes you through a step by step understanding of why people do and do not buy. It's helped me improve my sales closing rate. I highly recommend it to anyone in sales or marketing.

This book simplifies the entire selling process. If you pick up the book at any store and just glance through it and then feel compelled to buy it, then you have already been sold on the the theories outined for successful selling in the book. The methodology described has already worked on you!

This book is not your run of the mill "How to be a successful salesperson" literature. It's easy to read, funny at times, and very enlightening. Whether you are trying to get your business off the ground or are already a accomplished salesperson, this book is for you.

Let's face it. Most sales people we come in contact with drone on about what they think is gonna make you buy. Wahburn and Wallace have revealed profound conclusions of what customers want to hear, based on hundreds of research questionaires conducted with customers of highly successful companies. I've been in sales for 17 years and I gave up on reading sales books because they were not helpful. This one is different. It immediately helped me improve my presentation that I've been giving for the last 11 years. I thought it was as good as it was gonna get. Wrong. I'm making more money and saying what customers want to hear. Even better, more customers are saying what I want to hear. Buy the book. You won't regret it.

Did you ever notice that different kinds of people seem to respond to different kinds of sales arguments? Of course you have. That's part of the fun of selling. But it's not that much fun if you're not winning.

Imagine what it would be like if you always knew what kinds of sales points, examples, and demonstrations would score best with each prospect you talked to. You could double, even triple your effectiveness, and avoid those difficult times when you know you aren't connecting with your prospect.

Here's what it would be like. Jon Goward, a master at creating television commercials, asked the authors to test three of his thirty-second TV commercials for Cape Cod tourism. He wanted to find out which one had the greatest impact and why. The authors suggested showing each commercial to about twenty people who had vacationed on the Cape in the past, but hadn't visited recently. They made a friendly bet with Jon that they could get guess which commercial would be most persuasive to each respondent within thiry seconds of when each respondent walked into the interviewing room. They also bet they could outguess him, no matter how much time he took.

The authors got nineteen out of twenty right! Jon got eight right, no better than random guessing, even though he was the one who had created the commercials.

How did they do it? You'll have to read the book for the secret!

Did you ever notice that different kinds of people seem to respond to different kinds of sales arguments? Of course you have. That's part of the fun of selling. But it's not that much fun if you're not winning.

Imagine what it would be like if you always knew what kinds of sales points, examples, and demonstrations would score best with each prospect you talked to. You could double, even triple your effectiveness, and avoid those difficult times when you know you aren't connecting with your prospect.

Here's what it would be like. Jon Goward, a master at creating television commercials, asked the authors to test three of his thirty-second TV commercials for Cape Cod tourism. He wanted to find out which one had the greatest impact and why. The authors suggested showing each commercial to about twenty people who had vacationed on the Cape in the past, but hadn't visited recently. They made a friendly bet with Jon that they could get guess which commercial would be most persuasive to each respondent within thirty seconds of when each respondent walked into the interviewing room. They also bet they could outguess him, no matter how much time he took.

The authors got nineteen out of twenty right! Jon got eight right, no better than random guessing, even though he was the one who had created the commercials.

How did they do it? You'll have to read the book for the secret!

Great book on why we sometimes let the big one slip away. Full of ideas and case studies to help anyone selling anything to better position their product/services and ultimately sell more.

I have heard of different personality types for years, how to pick them out and what to do after you know their type, but it was always so complicated. The authors make it VERY easy to pick out the personality type, then they tell you what to do with the information. They give excellent examples from their own work with clients over the years.

This is not one of those books that is just an advertisement for their consulting or their seminars. Each of the three personality types is clearly described. A simple trick is given to remember how to pick each personality type. Then many real life examples of how to sell to that presonality type. All the authors have left for you is to modify the examples to the products you are selling, modify the presentation you already use so that it targets the three personality types in 4 or 5 areas and you will be selling in a way your client likes to buy.

What if you are doing group sales with a mixture of personality types in the same room? It is covered in this book.

This book is too good and too cheap not to get and read. The contents are too easy to not put into practice.