As a salesperson, be knowledgeable about factors that influence your buyer's purchase decision. You can obtain this knowledge, which helps to increase the salesperson's self-confidence and the buyer's confidence in the salesperson, through training and practice.

A firm's marketing strategy involves various efforts to create exchanges that satisfy the buyer's needs and wants. The salesperson should understand the characteristics of the target market (consumer or industrial) and how these characteristics relate to the buyer's behavior to better serve and sell to customers.

The individual goes through various steps or stages in the three buying situations of routine decision making, limited decision making, and extensive decision making. Uncover who is involved in the buying decision and the main factors that influence the decision. These factors include various psychological and practical buying influences.

Psychological factors include the buyer's motives, perceptions, learning, attitudes, beliefs, and personality--all of which influence the individual's needs and result in a search for information on what products to buy to satisfy them. Established relationships strongly influence buying decisions, making satisfied customers easier to sell to than new prospects. Customers evaluate the information, which results in the decision to buy or not to buy. These same factors influence whether the buyer is satisfied or dissatisfied with the product.

Realize that all prospects will not buy your products, at least not all of the time, due to the many factors influencing their buying decisions. You need to uncover buyers' needs, solve buyers' problems, and provide the knowledge that allows them to develop personal attitudes toward the product. These attitudes result in positive beliefs that your products fulfill their needs. Uncovering prospects' needs is often difficult because they may be reluctant to tell you their true needs or may not really know what and why they want to buy. You can usually feel confident that people buy for reasons such as to satisfy a need, fulfill a desire, and obtain a value. To determine these important buying needs, you can ask questions, observe prospects, listen to them, and talk to their associates about their needs.