Since the early 60's, psychologists studied the behavior patterns of how individuals and corporations made purchase decisions. While we are in another millennium and a few decades away from the 60's, that research is still accurate in understanding and predicting buyer behavior.
Whether making an individual buying decision or a mission critical decision for an organization, buyers will go through 4 phases.
Phase 0 is about setting goals, objectives and strategy. Once a vision is set, the next phase is to determine needs.
In phase 1, an assessment is done of what can be used internally and what must be purchased creating a list of wants and needs.
Armed with a list of requirements, in phase 2, a search is done of potential vendors and solutions that may be able to fill those needs and a vendor of choice is arrived at plus a few back up choices in the event the chosen vendor misbehaves.
In phase 3, the decision maker(s) assesses the risk of moving forward with the chosen vendor's solution, or decides not to.
In phases 1,2 and 3, buying criteria and decisions are made on needs, solutions, price/costs and risk.
In today's selling environment, risk is the dominant buying concern. Today's buyers weigh the impact of how this will change the organization if they move forward with the purchase or if they remain at status quo. As a result, there is much more involvement from top level management who often own the risk of a decision.

There are 4 areas of concern in each of the buying processes that a buyer or a committee of buyers will consider. They are; 1. Price/cost, 2. Needs, 3. Solution, and 4. risk.
Depending on where the organization is in their buying decision, and who they are meeting with, a seller must be well-prepared to align early on with the buyers expectations while creating bias toward their solution.
in the individual and often the reason that more sales are lostMost common answers given are tied to pricing, getting in front of the right person, showing value, etc. However...there is one answer sellers never offer because often they are unaware it even exists and it can go undetected because buyers rarely reveal the real reason you lost the sale.
This learning path is designed for sellers in the b2b market at all levels of their selling career. For beginners, learn some best practices from the professionals to level the playing field. For advance sellers, sharpen skills by changing habits or styles that can actually turn a buyer off.
For this path, I have collected best practices from top sellers around the world, along with a few of my own on what good sellers should do in the very first few minutes of a sales call to change the outcome.
My goal is to provide you with answers and ways to resolve the question on what is done intentionally, or unintentionally, that actually convinces a prospect to buy or not to buy from you.