MarketSense

How Buyers Behave - Buyer Modalities

I am finding that one of the most engaging areas of persuasive momentum that of buyer modality. I think this is because as we learn about it, we can instantly understand it from our own perspective as buyers.

Buyer modality is the application of behavioral patterns to identify buying behaviors. Its value lies in its basis on behaviors (what people do) not simply character traits. In marketing and sales, we care a lot about how people behave.

A great overview of buyer modalities can be found in Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg's book Waiting for your Cat to Bark? The Eisenbergs based their buyer-oriented modalities on psychologist Dr. David Keirsey's work linking human behavioral patterns to temperaments and character types.

Eisenberg Buyer Modality	Keirsey Temperament
Methodical	Guardian
Spontaneous	Artisan
Humanistic	Idealist
Competitive	Rational

What I like about Keirsey's work is that he helps us understand the distribution of the temperament types in the general population.

What I like about the Eisenbergs' work is that they take the information about each of the temperaments and boil it down to the implications of these behaviors in buyers.

This area of buyer modalities has stimulated some interesting discussions with my clients. In an effort to better understand the modalities, the first question that came to mind in a team of sales people was, "Which buyer modality am I?" One of the sales persons thought that he was a "spontaneous" buyer. Some of the others in the room questioned this. But as I asked questions about his buying habits, it became clear that he was really a "competitive" buyer.

As we talked through each modality, the discussion took an interesting turn. The question on the table was, "If I am a methodical buyer, what type of temperament do I want in my sales person?" This led to the question, "What type of temperaments do the majority of sales people have? Are they centered around one or two temperaments?"

Then the stories came out. We discussed the frustrations of having a sales person with a different temperament try to sell to us. The implication was that we would prefer a sales person with a temperament just like us because implicitly they would better understand what we wanted.

But the whole point in buyer modalities is that within each modality, we have insight into how the buyer will approach and likely behave during their buying process. If buyers stay pretty true to these modalities, we should be able to fairly easily identify a prospect's buyer modality. Once we understand his/her buying modality, we can customize our marketing and sales approach to better connect with them.

Now you are either going to love this or hate this. One the one hand, buyer modalities may help you boil down the seemingly endless variation of buyers into four different types. Simpler is better. But then you need to overlay the buyer modality with the buying process to really understand how to reach the buyer where they are. With an 8 step deliberated buying process, that means a lot more detail.

So, why would we go to the trouble to work through all of this buyer modality - buying process detail? For better results.

For marketing, that means significantly improved campaign results which generate more highly qualified leads. For sales, that means easier and shorter sales cycles. For the buyer, that means the creation of a valued relationship that satisfies their needs. Satisfied customers mean increased business revenues.

In upcoming blog entries, we will look at each of the four buyer modalities in more detail.

Why We do Business with Bad Customers

In my last blog entry, I talked about buyer personas that are bad for our business. Often we can see them coming from miles away, but we still choose to do business with them. I was curious about this, so I asked some of my clients about this phenomena. Their responses fell into two categories.

Reason #1: We need to work with bad customers

The idea here is that bad customers bring with them some pretty hefty revenues. In some cases, bad customers were responsible for repeat business that was very lucrative to the company. In other cases, the bad customers were important filler. They took up the business slack. Most clients felt that it was better to do business with a bad customer than not to have that business at all.

This last statement points to the underlying fear that there aren't enough good customers to keep our business fat and happy. If there was ample supply of good customers, why would anyone ever deal with a bad customer?

Reason #2: The projects look interesting and challenging

I can personally relate to this idea. For those who like a good challenge, a bad customer is an open invitation to a stimulating engagement. We go in with eyes wide open and hopes high. Perhaps, this will be the situation we can turn around. We don't mind the hard work, the difficult interpersonal communications, or the daily inconveniences.

Yet, when the sale is done and the project completed, we realize that along the way it sucked the energy right out of us. We may have had little triumphs along the way, but we never realized our hopes.

If we objectively evaluate these sales, we realize that we would have better spent our efforts on customers who appreciate us, value our work, and have a big stake in a successful outcome.

Rethinking Bad Customers

I believe that doing business with bad customers makes bad sense. In our Googled, viral marketed, word-of-mouth, Internet age, there is no reason why we shouldn't have a steady stream of good customers knocking at our door. (If there truly is a dearth of available good customers, then perhaps we should be rethinking our business.)

If we see a bad customer coming, we should just say no. For every bad customer we take on, there is an opportunity cost. By taking on a bad customer, we lose an opportunity to take on a good customer. We burn out valuable resources which lowers the energy, creativity and value we can offer to our good customers. We take on additional business risk in an age where bad word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire on the Internet.

Why would we do this?

There is one reason. It is because we currently aren't being inundated with good customers. And why aren't we being inundated with good customers? Because we don't know how to effectively reach them, attract them, meet their needs, and persuade them to buy from us. It is because we haven't created the persuasive momentum that rewards the good customers and weeds out the bad ones.

Buyer Personas that are Bad for our Business

Recently, at the beginning of a buyer persona workshop, a sales representative mentioned, “I really can’t see a way of narrowing down the characteristics for a type of buyer. Our buyers are a highly diverse group with all different personality types.”

In essence, his company is choosing to sell to anyone who knocks on their door: the difficult and demanding buyers as well as the delightful and realistic ones.

I asked, “Today, you may indeed work with a wide variety of personality types, but it may not be good for your business. Have you ever wished you could walk away from a difficult customer?”

He replied, “No.”

Around the table, the people who had to work directly with the difficult and demanding customers were shaking their heads in the affirmative.

The truth is that we all sell to buyers (and customers) who may not be good for our business. Often, during a buyer’s time in our sales process, their behaviors and actions clearly indicate that they will be the type of customer we will want to fire. But we sell to them anyways.

I like to illustrate my point with a story from my days at IBM and Sun. At both companies, I had the opportunity to work with the same customer (same buyer, same users). This customer was a very high profile company and the sales team had worked extra long and hard to jump through the buyer's hoops to land the sale. To be honest, the sale wasn’t very large monetarily, but we expected the prestige of landing this customer to help us attract other buyers in the same industry.

Because this was a high profile customer, they were given carte blanche access to our developers and support engineers. High level executives met with them regularly and promised them new features and adjusted the delivery to the customer’s timeframe. Everyone hoped that they would turn into a great reference for us.

But in the back hallways, this customer was driving everyone crazy. They were mean, demanding, and relentless. They constantly used the threat of escalating whatever little problem they were having to the CEO as a way to ensure they got immediate satisfaction. They required features that other customers wouldn’t use. They disrupted work days, weekend days, and product schedules. They burnt out developers, customer service reps, and line managers. They were never happy. And this went on month after month, year after year.

This one customer cost both companies much more than they ever paid in license and support fees. But neither company ever realized this. The customer never served as a reference. Even after everyone jumped through their hoops, they were never satisfied. As for the influence their corporate name would bring, I never saw that realized as a contributing factor in other sales in that industry.

Not all customers are good for us. And we can usually tell who they are as we are selling to them. The traits are evident – disrespectful, demeaning, demanding, insincerity, dishonesty, etc. As you work out your buyer personas, don’t forget to use the opportunity and evaluate which buyer personas you should be doing business with.

How Buyers Find You

In the marketing of my youth, the traditional marketing goal was brand awareness. Building a brand identity and promoting it everywhere a potential buyer might be were the law. Television. Magazines and Newspapers. Bill boards. Mailers. Placement on store shelves. Marketers worked hard to create that optimal number of impressions that brought brand recognition and consideration.

Herald the arrival of the Internet and the advances in Internet search. In a 2007 Digital Consumer Behavior Study by Avenue A | Razorfish,

• A whopping 54% of connected consumers would use a general search engine to begin their search for a product to "see what comes up".
• Another 15% would visit a specific eCommerce site that specializes in the type of product and search there.

Talk about leveling the playing field.

This is not to say that brand identity and awareness play no role in today's buyer's processes. But the sheer volume of money thrown at search list placement would argue that simply being found is perhaps more critical. The importance of being remembered (branding) versus being found (placement) is changing.

Given the growing use of Internet search in being found, the interesting question for marketers becomes what terms do buyers use as they begin their buying process. Marketers need to make sure that their company and products place well in buyer searches.

The challenge is that at the earliest stage of the buying process - awareness of a need - many buyers aren't going to start by searching for your brand name. When buyers first become aware of a need, desire or problem, they often don't have the fine-tuned vocabulary of the marketer who is trying to create blue ocean space for their product.

Instead, early stage buyers search for things like "big screen tv", "birthday cards", and "learn french". Being the leader in "LCD tvs", "on-line greeting cards", or "language learning software" won't help them find you when your products don't appear on their search results list.

It is important to note, that as the buyer works his/her way through their buying process, the terms he/she uses in their searches become more specific. So, don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. If that big screen tv buyer decides that they really want a plasma tv, you are not going to be considered if you sell LCD tvs.

Rule #1: You must place well in the category searches to avoid being eliminated from buyer consideration at the earliest stage of the buying process.

Rule #2: You must continue to place well in specialty searches to remain in consideration during the rest of the stages in the buying process.

Avinash Kaushik provides an interesting discussion on this issue of being found in his posts on The Long Tail.

Avinash suggests that marketers use SEO for the short head and ad word buys for the long tail search terms.

But before you start buying, you must understand your buyer (think buyer persona) and methodically go through the buying process stages to identify relevant search terms.