How to be successful in B2C sales

Graham Elliott breaks down the essential differences between B2C and B2B selling, focusing on how to identify decision-makers, understand emotional purchasing drivers, and qualify prospects efficiently for maximum sales success.

• Most B2C purchases involve a single decision-maker within a household, making it crucial to identify and speak directly with this person
• When someone says they need to "check with their partner," your chances of making the sale decrease significantly
• B2C sales cycles are typically very short, often concluding in minutes rather than days or weeks
• Consumer purchasing decisions are heavily driven by emotion, brand perception, and what the product says about the buyer
• Brands represent lifestyles and identities beyond just the physical product being sold
• Qualifying prospects quickly is essential - ask questions about budget, timeline and needs to determine if they're serious buyers
• Every customer deserves a positive experience regardless of whether they buy immediately
• Building a good reputation in your local market is vital for repeat business and referrals
• Objections from customers are usually requests for more information, not rejections
• Understanding the four customer types helps you adapt your sales approach for different personalities

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Welcome to the podcast!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to B2C Selling
• 4:16 Finding the Real Decision Maker
• 11:15 Brand Power and Emotional Purchasing
• 16:29 Qualifying Buyers Quickly
• 20:31 Customer Experience and Sales Conversion
• 25:06 Recap and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello and welcome to the podcast. My name is Graeme Elliott, and in this podcast, I'm going to talk you through the things you need to be thinking about if you're involved in B2C selling, which is business to consumer. So in the last podcast, I spoke about business to business, so there are definitely some differences in both how you sell and, possibly, the type of salesperson you need to be. So we'll dive into it, but first I'll just ask you to like and subscribe, because that always helps and it doesn't cost you anything. It definitely helps me out, though, so if you find these useful, please support me that way. So, first of all, who is the type of customer that we're talking about? We're talking about business to consumer. Well, it's generally an individual, or you might be a family, somebody like that but generally, consumers are individuals buying things. So what does that mean in terms of how you sell to them? Well, the first thing is the buying decision, and it's typically made by one person within the household, and I've done a bit of business to consumer selling myself, and one thing that's really important to understand is that sometimes the person you're talking to is not the decision maker, and, just to give you an example, I was selling. I think this was. I did some card selling like American Express at one point and typically what I'd find is I would maybe just cold or find a person you know and just ask them and do some really cold selling, which is quite hard to do, and they give me all sorts of nice noises, but then the comment would be OK, but I have to speak to my wife. What happens in that situation? And if you ever come across this, or if it's a lady saying I have to speak to my husband or whatever the partnership is, they have to speak to the other partner. This is usually where you're going to lose the sale, because things at radio control, first of all, their relationship. The person who they're going to talk to is probably the decision maker. They will probably give the final yes or no. You get into these dynamics in couples and some people get really irritated when their partner suggests something. So you could have that as a potential issue straight off the bat.

Speaker 1: 2:30

The second thing is that even if the person that you've spoken to is quite enthusiastic about it but wants to go off and speak to their customer, you can guarantee they will not sell it the way you could. They will maybe focus on one or two things and, as I say, there's also emotional things going on within the relationship. Often that can scupper you. But basically, if that's what happens, if you can make sure that you speak to the partner yourself, because they're the decision maker and that's the person you want to be speaking to If not, then it's much, much harder to get the sale. I'd say your chances of making the sale are quite heavily reduced.

Speaker 1: 3:14

So you can always ask about the decision maker in the group, in the family. You obviously need to be a little bit tactful about how you do that, because you don't want to turn people off. You can try phrases like when you're making a decision like this do you normally make the decision or is there somebody else in the household who likes to be involved and perhaps suggest that you have a conversation with them? Obviously, ideally, you want them there to there and then, because you might be able to make an appointment, they may show up, but it's always very difficult. So you aren't usually dealing with a single decision maker, but the important point is to make sure that that is the person you're speaking to, because if you're not, then I'd say your chances of a sale get quite heavily reduced.

Speaker 1: 4:09

So what's the sale cycle? This is useful because often, often it's same day, it's maybe happens in a matter of minutes, maybe have a conversation and you make the sale depending on what you're selling. You probably want to keep it that way because obviously you have a limited amount of time. You want to be getting as many sales as possible, which means that you need to be talking to as many potential clients as possible in the time that you have. So it's really important for you to be able to qualify people quite quickly, and what can be helpful is to have some questions that, as quickly as they qualify people in so that might be budget, the timeframe, all that kind of thing you also want to qualify them out. So if they don't have the money, you really don't want to be wasting time with them. Or if it's, let's say, you're selling cars which is not likely to happen in minutes, but you never know that's how I buy cars.

Speaker 1: 5:08

In that sort of situation, you really want to get a handle very quickly on what they're hoping to spend, when they're hoping to spend it, that kind of thing, so you can very quickly get a handle on is this a live one. Is this a hot lead or is it somebody that maybe needs nurture, maybe encouraged back at some point? What's their focus? What's the focus on the relationship? Their focus, what's the focus on the relationship? So often, when you're looking at business to consumer, whereas you definitely want to be someone they like and they want to buy from and the reason I say that is, if you flip that the other way around, if they find you to be obnoxious and pushy which hopefully you're not but that's really going to turn them off.

Speaker 1: 5:50

And because these types of sales are often emotionally driven as much as, or even more than, they are financially driven, the whole emotional side is something you've got to be very aware of. So you really need to be approachable. You need to be someone they want to buy from. So there are ways of achieving that, and definitely making them feel important is one way of doing that Making them feel that you care about them, meeting their needs. Whatever those needs are, they're as likely to be emotional as they are anything else. So that means it's helpful to identify the kind of person they are. So I'm not going to go into that in this podcast. I do have the online course. I will shamelessly pitch that right now, but that is one aspect that I do dive into. It's a whole section in the course. It's not overcomplicated, but it's designed to allow you to very quickly get a feel for the kind of person they are and how you need to adapt your approach to be the person they want to be doing business with. So that is quite important.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Other things that they'll be looking at is the brand. Often, and when you look at a brand, it goes beyond that because there's an emotional aspect to it. So what does that brand mean to them? What are they actually buying? So if, for example, you are selling something, let's say it's a car and it's a Jaguar, ok, what does that brand mean? Well, it's about status, it's about quality, it might be about performance, it might be demonstrating a certain financial income bracket. It might be talking about a lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 7:31

If you think back to, um, apple, uh, certainly, if we're going back a few years now. But if you thought about apple versus, let's say, microsoft but it was pcs in general apple was selling a lifestyle. What they were selling it was not just a computer, uh, it was a whole lifestyle. It was a whole image. Apple at the time. If and you might remember this, um, if you do they were sort of classier, they were a bit more arty. Um, it was more for or it's. It spoke about creatives creative people's. People would tend to use it, partly because they were they're actually pretty good with graphics and things like that but there was a whole lifestyle associated with Apple and often these brands when they're selling.

Speaker 1: 8:19

So think about how your brand is advertised on television. If it's advertised that way, what is it that people are buying? Because they're not buying the product as much as they're buying what it says about them by being, by owning one of these things, whatever they are. So it's really important to understand what your brand, the kind of people that your brand, is aimed at, and what it's delivering for them, because it isn't delivering the product or not wholly. It's actually about lifestyle, it's about image, it's about all of those things. So the person who walks in, who's interested in what you're selling, they're buying the brand, and that's the kind of image they want to project to. Well, you know friends, but even people they don't know If it's a car, it's just driving down the street. So you need to be very aware of that, because that is also what they're buying.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Um, it might be convenience, um, it could be the experience, customer experience. They might have had a good experience with that brand before. But again, all of these things build up. So if you think about things you've bought as a consumer and if you've had a bad experience with a particular brand, that might be nothing to do with the brand itself. It might be the dealer or whoever it was that you bought from. But if you are not happy with the kind of support you got, if you're not happy with the buyer experience, then are you likely to go back to them? Probably not, and the chances are that will to some extent tarnish the brand in your eyes and it might tarnish it enough that you won't buy it again. So, or there are other things. Um, recently, as um as I'm recording this, we've only recently had this whole business with tesla and elon musk. So regardless of where you stand on that, certainly at the moment it is very clear that Elon Musk's activities politically have had an extremely negative effect on Tesla.

Speaker 1: 10:23

I mean, there are other aspects to that as well. I think the brand is now seen as it was seen as market leader. In fact, it's a great example of how brands can change, because initially when they came out, they were very different. You bought them online. You didn't have dealerships I know there's one or two around but I think early on that was, if I remember correctly, that was the way it was done. But it was different. It was cool. It was electric, really good performance. They looked nice, if you like that kind of thing. It was electric, really good performance, they looked nice, if you like that kind of thing. So that whole brand really stood out from what was available at the time and it did a huge amount for electric cars and their popularity and the market share.

Speaker 1: 11:11

But equally, what's happened is they haven't been able to keep up with developments in electronic electric cars because much bigger companies that have gone into that have been able to invest a lot more. They come out with changes in the efficiency of the vehicle, so you now get much longer range, obviously the electric cars. One of that was one of the big concerns what range can you get realistically? How long does it take to recharge All that kind of stuff? So when you look at the brand that you're selling, these are the kind of things that your potential client is thinking about and they're either buying into it or they have concerns. Now these can come up as objections, and the important thing to remember with objections is they're generally a request for more information. It's telling you your client is not 100% there. They've got just something niggling, a niggling doubt, and that's your opportunity to resolve that doubt, if you can do that.

Speaker 1: 12:05

So that's an important aspect of what the focus is on the sale sale the brand, what that brand is delivering and what it means to them. So what are the drivers? Um, emotion is a big part of business to consumer and um, desire is going to be a big part of it. You're often, um, they're often price driven, uh, when it comes. So this is where your qualification is important, because you really want to make sure people are do have the kind of budget, uh, that will allow them to buy what you're selling. If they are being a bit aspirational, as in, they want to buy a brand that is, um, they may have felt is out of their reach previously, they may have the budget, they may not. You really need to identify that early on Because, as I've said, these tend to be quick sale, a very short sales cycle, so you want to be in front of as many people as you can who can buy, who are likely to buy from you you don't want to be spending your day with in my business we'd call them tire kickers but people who kind of wanted more information. They liked it, maybe, they wanted to hang around a nice dealership, but they weren't serious buyers, so you really didn't want to waste time with them.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Equally, it's really important that you can recognize a real bum when you see one, because I've heard I was looking at a story a few weeks ago now. It was about a lady who went into I think I don't know if it was Jaguar, but it was one of these upmarket car dealerships but because she wasn't well-dressed she was just in jeans and what have you and because she was female in this particular example, in this particular country, the salesperson didn't take her seriously and in fact she had plenty of money, she was definitely a real buyer, but she got very turned off by the dealer because of the way they treated her and she went home, saw her husband and he decided to just turn up and I can't remember the whole story now, but basically came up and and well then, the that particular it was, it was the sales, the same salesperson, um, he demonstrated that he absolutely could buy several of these vehicles and then made it very clear that he was not going to buy from that dealer, and particularly that salesperson, because of the way his wife had been treated. So treat everybody obviously respectfully, as they are a real client. But also you really need to have questions there that allow you to qualify in or out people. You need to do that very quickly. Okay, so product complexity Often they're pretty standard. They'll be mass-produced. In the case of cars, you might have options. Again, though, you can come back.

Speaker 1: 14:48

I was in a situation I was going to buy a Range range road revoke in sydney and I went and saw a dealer and I kind of worked out what my ideal car would be, with a lot of options on it, and I saw this. This lady was selling to me. Well, she was the salesperson. I had this list and she wrote it all down. That was great, and she said we don't have anything in country but we'll need to buy if, but if, and the lead time will be about three months. If you want to order this, I'll need to know by Friday. So that, in that respect, it was quite good, because she was giving me a cutoff date where I needed to make the order. Uh, where she fell down, though, was that I didn't really care about most of the options. I was more curious, and I certainly didn't want to wait three months, and I thought I'd kind of wait, because she never asked any follow-up questions to get very clear on what I, what were the important things to have on the car and what things weren't. And it got to the Friday and she never contacted me and I thought, okay, so I actually bought from another dealer. They had an ex-demonstrator that was close enough and I bought that.

Speaker 1: 15:49

So if you are in that situation, by all means get the full checklist of what the client wants, but it's really important to find out the things that are the showstoppers. So for me, it was the particular car I wanted. There was a glass roof panoramic roof, they called it and then particular alloy wheels. I liked so and that was it. I didn't really care beyond that. So it's really important that you understand that and you get that list down and you know what are the nice-to-haves and what are the essentials, and if you can keep momentum in the sale and really understand lead times. So I wanted to get the sale done pretty quickly. I was absolutely not interested in three months. So this is another important thing to tie down pretty quickly. So I don't know what you're selling, obviously, but for the most part it's likely to be mass produced.

Speaker 1: 16:42

If you're selling white goods so washing machines, refrigerators, things like that you might have a choice between models. So again, it's important. So it might be spin speed, for example, it might be load capacity on a washing machine, those kind of things, and your client might not know. So if it's load capacity, they might not know what load capacity they want. So here's where you can step in and be helpful and ask about, maybe, how many people that the washing machine has to look after. It might be single person, it might be a big family, how often to do a wash, all those kind of things. But you need to have your questions there so that you can ask key, relevant questions, questions that are relevant to the buyer, that allow you to quickly narrow down the best option for them. And then, obviously, you're into price and things like that again. So again, with price, that may be a consideration, but convenience might be more important and for certain buyers convenience will be more important than price. So, again, I run through this in the sales course in a lot more detail, but these are so there's not absolutes here and being able to identify the kind of client and, just to make that a bit easier, there's only four types the way I do this. So it's not you don't need to know have a massive, long list of potential clients, but it is good to know that because it means you know where you've got a good idea, where you need to focus on with that particular client. Okay, so the sales approach Look, as I've already discussed, your potential client has probably been exposed to a lot of mass marketing adverts, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 18:18

There might be online stores, there might be promotions that they're dealing with. So if it's an online store, if they come into a physical store, if that's what you're selling, then they may well want that personal touch and I personally prefer to buy from people or buy from a store, simply because they're likely to have something in the store that I can physically look at, maybe even try out, depending on what it is. I can ask questions, look at, maybe even try out, depending on what it is. I can ask questions. I much prefer to ask or to you know, have that interaction. So, for example, if I'm buying a camera, I pretty much know which camera I want, but it's good to have a chat to somebody who also knows if only to confirm my choice that I've made the right technical choice, for example. So these are scenarios you could well be in. So just be aware of that and be aware of how to give the best support to a client.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Volumes so there's likely to be a higher volume. You're selling, making more sales, but lower value per sale. So this is why I'm saying you really need to be able to qualify people very, very quickly. You can do it visually I teach that in the course but also by asking questions. You don't want to waste time with someone who's not going to buy. It's as simple as that. You want to be spending your time with people where you've got a reasonable chance of converting them.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I think with business to consumer. One of the things that I think is different with business to business is with business to consumer when they walk in. If they know what they want, if they've already sold themselves on the brand, then you've already got a very high chance of converting them. So here. It's down to how you relate to them and the kind of questions that you're asking and the way you're supporting them in the sale. Equally, the brand might be an aspirational brand for them, so something they want to get to, but if they're not serious buyers, by all means look after them. They want to have a good experience with you in your branch or dealership, whatever it is, and you want them to come back to you because they had a good experience with you in your branch or dealership, whatever it is, and you want them to come back to you because they had a good experience. So this is where some people I've seen this with some salespeople they just don't bother, and that relates back to, in fact, the story of the lady in the car dealership that I mentioned. So, regardless of how you feel about that person, give them a good experience, ask the right questions quickly, qualify them and then take it from there. But do look after them because you want them to come back and you want good referrals.

Speaker 1: 20:56

If you are in a physical sales office, the chances are that you're selling into a particular geographical area, a local area, so you want to get a good reputation in that area. You want people to come in and feel welcome, regardless of who they are. So if it's a car dealership, make them a cup of coffee. It doesn't cost anything and they can have a look around all that kind of thing. It's a nice experience People feel cared for. I have walked into dealerships when I had been actively looking for a car and I've walked out again because not one salesperson has bothered to engage with me and ask what I'm interested in and how they can help all that kind of thing. So they have lost sales and so I'm quite serious about this.

Speaker 1: 21:38

I think it's an important aspect of business to consumer Give people a pleasant experience, whether they're going to buy or not, and if they don't buy now, they might buy later or they might be talking to other people who are real buyers. So don't let that get away from you. So just to recap, business to consumers tend to be individual consumers, but you'll have one key decision maker and it's really important that that's the person that you speak to. Sales cycle tend to be quite short, can be minutes, literally minutes, which is great, and you're likely to want to be a hunter type salesman. But you've got to have that relationship, that ability to connect with people and in the last podcast I spoke about hunters and farmers. So this kind of environment is much more suited to hunter salespeople.

Speaker 1: 22:34

In terms of the relationship focus, they're very much wedded to the brand, so the reason that they're in front of you is much more likely to be about the brand. They're interested in convenience. They want to have a good customer experience. Though You've got to be able you must look after them. Decisions driver these are going to be emotional sales. So this is also where it's it's really important that the um, uh, the personal, your ability to connect with them is there, because it is emotion.

Speaker 1: 23:02

If they get annoyed with you, they're likely to buy from another dealer and the chances are if it is a big brand name, there's probably they probably have several options where they can buy this same product from. So you're a lot more exposed. The emotional part of it is much more important. Desire the other decision making aspects will be desire, price convenience, those kind of things. So it's important to understand which of those is the biggest driver for them.

Speaker 1: 23:31

The product complexity you're probably not looking about a lot of options, maybe if it's cars and things like that, but it might be. There are a number of model options they could go for. So I gave the example of a washing machine, but anything else like that. So it's really useful for you to have a conversation with them that helps them to narrow down onto the product that is right for them in terms of how they're going to use it. They might choose to buy up a model or two, but that's their choice and make it clear that that's their choice.

Speaker 1: 24:03

I've had that selling. In fact it was business to business but I I had an experience where I was almost trying to talk this guy out of selling a particular model because it was just cost a lot more than what he needed. But he was adamant and so fine, I signed it up, but I'd done my job as a salesman. I was there to help him, I'd done my best and it did result in the sale. So that was all good.

Speaker 1: 24:26

So, in terms of the sales approach, as I've said, it's it's mass marketing ads, it's about image, it's about what that brand means to them.

Speaker 1: 24:34

They are likely to have several other places nearby they can go to or, you know, not too far away.

Speaker 1: 24:46

So it's important that you give them good reasons to buy from you rather than someone else, and a part of that will definitely be the client experience with you. And remember, if it is like white goods or a car or something like that, they are looking at potentially a longer relationship with you because it might need routine servicing or you might want a longer guarantee you know things like that or they might want to buy other goods. So if it's a washing machine, they might want other things, maybe kitchen goods, that kind of thing. So you are potentially looking at setting up a relationship where they're going to come back again. So that aspect of it is actually quite important. Ok, so that is it. I hope you found that useful and please remember to like and subscribe, and that does help me out. If you have ideas or questions, please put them in the comments and if I don't hear from you, I will speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.