People buy for a lot of reasons. In the consumer goods world emotion is often cited as a major factor in purchasing decisions – sometimes the overriding factor. In business, however, I believe that emotion plays a much smaller role. To test that theory my company, Saddletree Research, conducted a survey of executives who are members of the National Association of Call Centers, or NACC, (www.nationalcallcenters.org) to find out what factors influenced their purchase decisions.
The survey did not specify which products would be purchased as a result of these influencing factors. Because the respondents were overwhelmingly contact center business executives we can assume with confidence that the purchases being influenced by the factors listed in the survey would include unified communications along with other communications and customer service solutions.
Rather than base the survey on open-ended questions we listed nine factors from which respondents could choose the top two factors that influence their purchase decisions. We did leave one open ended “Other” selection and asked respondents to fill in what factor other than those listed influenced their purchase decisions. The results of the survey were not entirely unexpected and in many cases put an exclamation point at the end of trends that seem to be developing in the contact center industry.
We received 125 completed surveys with the responses illustrated in the table below.
Factors Cited as Influencing Purchase Decisions in 2008
It came as no surprise that the majority of respondents cited price as a major factor influencing their purchase decisions in 2008. With economic uncertainty and the effects of the weak U.S. dollar on monetary markets savvy managers have to consider price at the top of the list of considerations.
Second in importance in its ability to influence purchase decisions was the reputation of the company. In the contact center world company reputations are fairly well established so this factor makes sense. In the world of UC, reputations among vendor companies have a long way to go before being well established. Larger companies with well-known names may have the advantage in early UC sales as smaller companies scramble to establish a widely recognized reputation and get the buyers talking about them. This will most likely be welcome news for public relations firms.
A decade ago, trade shows were a critically important factor in any company’s sales efforts. It was a chance to meet prospects face-to-face and demonstrate your product’s capabilities. By about the year 2000 the trade show demonstration was being replaced by extensive product information that was made available on a company website. In 2008, it appears that neither trade shows nor websites hold much sway over buyers. Keeping in mind that company reputation was the second most important factor in our survey respondents’ decision making process, we assume that companies are maintaining their industry reputation today through word-of-mouth inasmuch as traditional means of brand establishment and maintenance such as magazine advertising, trade shows and websites appear to hold little value to buyers.
Among the write-in purchase influence factors in the open-ended question, 18 percent of respondents cited return on investment (ROI) as one of their top two influencing factors. Given the focus on price among the majority of respondents a corresponding concern with ROI makes sense.
At the bottom of the heap of influencing factors was a prior relationship with the salesperson. I’ve always believed the old sales adage that states “People buy from people,” which essentially highlights the importance of the seller/buyer relationship in the sales process. In light of the results of this survey perhaps that sales adage should be changed to “People buy from people who have the lowest prices.”
The list of influencing factors in our survey is far from exhaustive, but it is broad enough that it should be of interest to vendors who want to reach buyers and to buyers who want to know what is important to their peers in the industry. As the unified communications industry wades through today’s challenging economic conditions in an effort to gain momentum, any information that helps the seller better understand the buyer should be seen as useful.