Bought and Sold

If marketers are all the time thinking how to sell, customers are also spending the time for making purchase decisions . So , how can a marketer influence a customer consciously or sub-consciously? Are all the products in the world being sold by a salesman or is it being bought by customer?

The below 'BES grid' plots 'type of sale' against 'value' and can be used to classify a product into any of the one 6 basic types. This identifies the key challenges specific to each of them so that they can be positioned and addressed appropriately.

A customer can be classified as a 'bought customer', when he picks/purchases a product without any salesman's influence but with his own sense of approach. A customer can be said 'sold', when he is actively being pursued by a sales person explaining the benefits. An 'evaluated buy' customer is one who evaluates different brand choices before making a conscious decision; a mix of both types.

High Value Low Value	Type 1 Indulgence area (Electronic gadgets like mobile and watches)	Type 5 The 'Upper grey area' Large consumer products (home, Loan, white goods, medium segment car)	Type 3 B to B area (Capital goods, auto ancillaries)
	Type 2 Commodity area (Home needs/groceries)	Type 6 The 'lower grey area'	Type 4 Salesmen area (Credit cards, holiday packages, Insurance)
	Bought	Evaluated Buy	Sold

Challenges for marketers:

For type 1: How to create the 'indulgence factor'? Recall Merc and Blackberry

For type 2: How to create recall and salience? You can recall Pepsi, Gillete

For type 3: How to communicate value and create confidence? Eg: BHEL

For type 4: How to effectively communicate and sell/pitch? Eg: ICICI

For type 5: How to create recall and how to communicate value? Think Nano!

For type 6: How to create recall and recreate salience?

Type 1 and 2 involve marketing skills to create brand salience through any of the mediums. Type 3 and 4 involve people skills and are heavily dependent on them. In Type 5 and 6, the 'reference circle' plays a powerful medium influencing the decision making.

A product might belong to 'upper grey area' when customer wants to evaluate it against different high value products of the same category and allows himself to be 'sold' of the product. The same applies to 'lower grey area' for a low value product. But here, they generally may be the Type 1 products that seep into this category once they loose their 'brand salience'.

In all, these 6 boxes could only act as 'positioning boxes' in customer mind with respect to the value and type of sale-approach.