If you want to increase your sales to corporate buyers under 40 years of age, learn more about them as potential customers through their buying patterns.
You’ll discover that you’ll be most successful if you represent an all-encompassing product or service. Also, you’ll need multifaceted communications, tremendous energy, rapid response and almost endless persistence to assure proper timing.
Penton Research Services, the research arm of Cleveland’s Penton Publishing (www.penton.com), a leading business media company, has uncovered some enlightening information about younger corporate buyers:
– They’re busier than they were five years ago and busier than their older counterparts.
An in-depth telephone survey of purchasing decision-makers at 3,623 manufacturing, mining, construction and service companies found 64.9 percent under 40 working longer hours, compared with 60.4 percent age 40 to 49 doing so.
Are they really busier? It could be that “companies give them long hours and grunt work because they’re young,” says Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Inc., a New Haven, Conn., research and consulting group (members.aol.com/rainworld/rainmake.htm). His company studies the work lives of the 58 million American and Canadian Generation X’ers born between 1963 and 1977. He personally has interviewed more than 1,300 of the cohort.
Younger corporate buyers may perceive themselves as busy because of their “natural inclination toward `multiple focus’: Homework on one knee, dinner on the other knee, remote control in one hand and the telephone in the other hand,” Tulgan adds.
– Perhaps because younger buyers are pressed for time, they won’t be as likely to research the competition.
Penton’s random survey of 600 subscribers to six industry publications found that 47.6 percent of buyers under 35 always feel busy, vs. 47.5 percent of those 35 to 49 and a mere 35.0 percent 50 and over. The ones who shop around the least are under 35. Only 57.1 percent do, vs. 60.0 percent of people 35 to 49 and 63.4 percent of those 50 and older.
But younger buyers may well conduct research in an untraditional manner, which appears to have grown out of today’s communications chaos. Tulgan thinks that they research with the premise that they’ll be “bombarded with information that they can sort and file as it comes in.” Is this shopping style passive? It may not be, if the buyers are more open to information that reaches them.
– Advertising prompts them to buy more than any other age group.
A Penton survey of 4,006 managers, engineers and purchasing agents found that 63.5 percent under age 30 specified, recommended or purchased a product advertised, 54.6 percent ages 30 to 39, 56.5 percent ages 40 to 49 and 54.9 percent age 50 and older. Tulgan posits that younger buyers trust their ability determine what’s useful in an ad and block the rest.
– Younger buyers aren’t loyal to brands, are less cautious and more willing to experiment, and find advertisements more credible than their older counterparts.
– Many future buyers are unaware of large corporations that might eventually become their suppliers.
Penton reports that only 54 percent of 250 second-year M.B.A. students at leading universities could identify a corporation’s correct business — “because they don’t actually need the information immediately,” Tulgan counters.
Sales and marketing employees who want to reach younger corporate buyers may well have to develop new methods to approach them. This customer group is busy (if married, many may be juggling two careers and children), tends to sit back and absorb information that comes directly to them from a wide range of sources, is loyal to individuals rather than brands, and values products and services that meet immediate needs.
The key to understanding this group of buyers lies in their expectation of immediacy. As one of Tulgan’s interviewees remarked, “If I want it, I’ll buy it, unless I don’t know about it, in which case go ahead and tell me about it, but please make it brief, straight and simple.”
If these buyers weigh options by reviewing pitches through advertising or direct-mail pieces, they’ll most likely act on something they need right now, particularly if it’s full-service, Penton says. But they’ll do so only if the presentation is easy to digest, describes products accurately, includes complete contact information and has “a strong call to action.” The company recommends using ongoing communications, providing rapid service and making buying easy.
Because of loyalty to individuals, these buyers may well make their purchases from people they trust. Salespeople need to develop partnerships with them. Satisfying the need for immediacy will require excellent timing and, possibly, a tremendous amount of work to assure it — possibly more than the usual six or seven contacts required to complete an average sale.
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Mildred Culp is the author of “Be WorkWise: Retooling Your Work for the 21st Century.” E-mail her care of tribjobs@tribune.com. You’ll find more of her columns at www.work-wise.com
