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These past two years have challenged all sales organizations to re-assess how they sell.  Far fewer are revisiting how their prospects buy.  Every organization needs to confirm buying behaviors and preferences from time to time to avoid missing big trends.  Encyclopedia Britannica would have benefitted from this in the mid-nineties. They would have seen the emerging preferences for lower cost and easier methods of access.  Major disruptive events cause changes in buyers and it is a fair bet that your buyers are subtly changing right now.

Many sales leaders are taking the right steps to double down on their key accounts and put in place cost effective sales channels among other things to bolster sales results.  There is a tendency, though, to rush through planning and move on to the implementation.  After all, this takes time and a sales organization never has an abundance of time on their hands.  A little up front analysis on the buying process, though, can yield significant insights on how you should best organize your selling efforts.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal Marketplace section provides a good example of how Estee Lauder has adjusted to changes in buying behavior.  Historically, there have never been visible prices at the counter…if you had to ask then you couldn’t afford it.  That had the benefit of creating panache but also qualifying buyers.  In this environment, that approach has had the negative effect of confirming a buyer’s initial suspicions that they can’t afford it.  Estee Lauder also noticed that women just wanted to try out their products without all those cosmetic technicians floating around.

In response to these changes, they started displaying prices and provided different options for experiencing their products via self serve, computer analysis or live interaction with a technician. Consider how things might have played out had Estee Lauder not revisited their buyer’s preferences and behaviors.  They might have responded by putting even more technicians on the floor or lowering prices.  Both options would have hurt profitability.

The article can be accessed here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703915204575103604265214346.html?KEYWORDS=lauder#articleTabs%3Darticle

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