But they do have emotion, show them a neat or novel technique, product. process or formula which they can play with and they are enthusiastic.

Present your offer as the low-risk choice; engineers are risk-averse.

Permit them plenty of decision time, if pressured, they will take the safe option – do nothing.

Show them how to make a positive case to the other parties involved in the decision. Their technical input is probably only one of the buying criteria, ROI is will be another, but is one that the engineer is less concerned about personally.

Look at my book ‘Selling for Engineers’ for more tips like this.

You stated in bullet point number five that, “Engineers don’t buy on emotion”. Actually, everyone buys on emotion, but most people do not like to admit they buy on emotion – this is particularly more true of engineers, scientists, people with fiduciary responsibility or medical doctors. The trick in selling to these sorts is to allow them the delusion that they were not sold, performed diligent research and due diligence and made their decision purely based on facts. They will enter everything into a matrix and weight each feature or benefit. Use stories of other customers you have had before so that they can give you a slightly higher weighting in specific categories. Understand what is the most important deliverable to them by understanding what they want to achieve – share their passion and convey respect for them and their goal. Do this and they will justify the unjustifiable. They are humans just like anyone else. They need to know that your product or service is going to help them achieve their vision. Often, their true vision is becoming more of an asset to their organization and/or their field and all the respect that comes with it. Sometimes it is simply making more money for the same reasons why the rest of us want to make more money.