In selling to engineers I have likened the situation to someone who occasionally needs to look for a new car/mobile phone/computer/tv so does his research, reads the relevant reviews, checks out the manufacturer for specs, maybe visits a few shops to chat with the sales people – then makes a buying decision for a major purchase.
Seems to me that engineers do this all the time and need to shortcut as much as possible so don’t have patience with anything that gets in the way of the basic information. My experience has been that buyers are differently focused – they simply require a good level of confidence that the vendor will ensure the product meets their specification – this may be supported by the company’s publicity, reputation etc. and are then interested in commercial considerations around cost of ownership, e.g. price, delivery, delay mitigation, stocking, service reliability, replacement guarantees, payment extension etc etc – again these can be supported by corporate profile eg demonstration of technical expertise – e.g. application stories, feature articles, or cost saving examples eg new/simpler/cheaper/more advanced products, or application stories.
Selling to Engineers is clearly seen as a subject in it’s own right by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers – see here.
