Sales professionals often teach that “sales is sales,” and that everyone wants the same thing—more money and more time. But in reality, you can’t appeal to those needs with corporate clients. Here’s why:

• Your client has a full time job—there is nothing in this world that you as a vendor can do to actually make him or her work less; the job will remain full time.
• Your client has a salary—there is nothing in this world that you can do to get your client more money; she’s on a fixed salary

This doesn’t mean that you can’t appeal to the needs, problems, and concerns of corporate buyers. It just means that you need to start by understanding those needs as they really are. Here are three concerns that you probably never thought about before.

The Corporate Buyer: Business Concerns

Most people realize that corporate buyers buy goods and services to meet business needs. What they don’t realize is that there are only four such needs. Believe it or not, training is not a business need. A successful event is not a business need. Current technology is not a business need. Such needs are relevant only when they serve a true business need. As for true business needs, there are only four, and every project must be attached to one of these four. Highlight these and commit them to memory. The four business needs are:

• Increase sales
• Cut costs
• Improve productivity
• Meet compliance requirements

These are the only four defensible business reasons for buying anything in a corporate environment. Any vendor who wants to sell successfully in the corporate environment must be able to identify which of these business concerns his or her project is addressing. It can be more than one, but it must be at least one. Most corporate buyers are going to be held accountable, at one point or another, to how they perform against one or more of these goals. You must never forget that, because they won’t.

The Corporate Buyer: First Personal Concern

Corporate buyers also have personal concerns. It is easy to think that these might be similar to those of the small business owner. Easy, but wrong. Painfully wrong. Ultimately, corporate buyers have two personal concerns, which they think about nearly all the time. Here’s the first one:

Will I have a job tomorrow?

Write that one down. Will I have a job tomorrow? Burn this into your mind. You must always understand this. You must always address it. And you must NEVER say it, even if they do.

This concern translates into thoughts and questions that are quite different from the question itself. Whether or not a person has a job tomorrow is ultimately uncontrollable. However, the question drives what the corporate buyer is thinking. The following questions are roaming through their minds, and whether they share them with you or not, here’s what the buyer is thinking…

• Will my boss approve?
• Will my colleagues approve?
• Will my team implement this?
• Will there be results to show in case I am criticized?
• How can I defend the decision no matter what?

Do you see how different this is from the small business client? The small business customer wants more time, more money, more freedom, and fewer problems. If you are selling like you do to small business, you will have a problem because when the dust settles, you can’t deliver those things to the corporate client.

But you CAN help them increase the likelihood that they will have a job, and more importantly, you can easily cost them their job. They are painfully aware of this, and they think about it all the time.

Corporate Buyer: Second Personal Concern

That first question focuses the buyer on the personal risk they undertake in hiring an outside vendor. This second one focuses on the opportunity. Here’s the second personal concern:

How can this advance my career?

Several years ago, a client and I were out to happy hour. Perhaps he was a little looser than usual, but he asked and answered an interesting question: “Signorelli, you know why I do so much business with you?” I stammered a little and started to talk about the value we added, the excellence of our work, my great team. He shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “It’s because everything you do helps to advance my career.”

My jaw dropped. But I knew instantly it was true. Right there, he revealed the true nature of a corporate buyer’s interest. They are not entrepreneurs; they are corporate career people. And what’s in their interest is that career.

Notice that from this angle, the questions they are asking themselves internally are a little bit different:

• Will this help me appear to be innovative?
• Will this make me look effective?
• Will this help me surpass my numbers?
• Is there a better use of budget?
• How can I reduce the risk of any failure?

…and so on.

Implications

Knowing these concerns and interests will not guarantee your success, but not knowing them will virtually assure your failure in this market. Once you understand these needs, keep these things in mind:

• Connect everything you do to the business needs that apply to your project
• Maintain the highest levels of professionalism, and remember that you can never take anything they do or say personally
• Never get defensive
• Focus on how you can make your client successful and advance his or her career
• Realize that your professionalism, the likelihood of success, and their confidence in you is far more important than price

Your client is acutely aware of the fact that one wrong hire can cost them their job. Mitigating that risk is at the top of their agenda—more than meeting their need, more than getting the best price, more than your cool features and benefits. This is what is really meant by the old saying that people buy from people they like emotionally, then justify it rationally. People they like are people they trust to come through in a pinch and make each project as important as if their own job were on the line. These are the people they “like,” and they are the people they buy from.