Sales Tips: The Power of Being Your Customer’s Assistant Buyer

Your customer is, by nature, an extremely emotional creature.

When making a big-ticket purchase, even normally stoic and even-keeled people feel a keen sense of heightened emotional response. And why not? Parting with a large chunk of hard-earned cash for a life-altering purchase calls for some emotion!

This is why you, the salesperson, play a key role in the buying process. I share thousands of sales tips every year, but this is still one of my favorites.

Big-ticket purchases come with certain built-in service needs for your customer. The best salespeople meet these needs with grace and skill. I recommend that big-ticket salespeople assume the role of ‘Assistant Buyer.’

If I, as a sales counselor, understand you, the customer, extremely well, I can offer insight, suggestions, and guidance in your best interest.

I exist to help you buy.

The Assistant Buyer paradigm assumes that the sales counselor exists for the customer, not themselves. Many salespeople find this to stretch their thinking quite a bit, especially those who believe that sales is something they do to their customers rather than for and with their customers.

The Power of Trust

The sales process is a partnership. Think about that word, partnership. It implies some degree of trust between partners. Whether these are business partners, marital partners, or tennis partners, a partnership is, by definition, a trusting relationship.

As we all know, building trust is a process. When I talk about building a trusting relationship with your customer,  I am not necessarily talking about building the type of friendship where you want to go camping together (though it happens!).

Instead, we need to establish enough of a relationship that your customer knows that you actively seek their best interests.

Think of it this way: would you buy a car from your brother-in-law? How you answer that question depends on your relationship with your brother-in-law. Some of you automatically thought, “Absolutely!” Others immediately thought, “Not in a million years!”

The odds are that your response is directly proportionate to the amount of trust that exists between you and your brother-in-law.

You may react negatively not because you believe your brother-in-law will rip you off but because you know that he is not competent to assist you in this area.

Similarly, your customer will evaluate both your emotional intelligence and your competency as the two foundations of a trusting relationship.

The trust relationship you develop with your customer becomes the platform on which you build your entire sales presentation.

No trust = no credibility = no influence = no sale.

In addition to expert knowledge about your industry, work to understand the emotional nature of big-ticket buying. Then, assume the role of “Assistant Buyer.”

Equipped with these tools and this perspective, you will change your customer’s world.