When individuals ask me, “How do I turn out to be a extra profitable salesperson?” many are stunned after I don’t say one thing like, “Use information to get to know your buyer higher.”
As an alternative, my response is at all times the identical: Construct higher human connections.
You possibly can have all the info on the planet. But it surely gained’t allow you to in case you don’t leverage it to really develop and develop relationships.
I’m going to share my two greatest secrets and techniques for doing simply that: listening and strategic gifting.
Gross sales: It’s not only a numbers sport
“Gross sales is a numbers sport,” might be some of the frequent phrases uttered by grizzled gross sales veterans. And whereas they’re not mistaken, constructing human connections will at all times tip the chances in your favor.
Why? As a result of individuals purchase from individuals, not from information factors.
Working example: I’ve labored in tech gross sales nearly my total profession. I used to be educated to ship chilly electronic mail after chilly electronic mail. I used to be instructed that if I simply ship sufficient, I’d ultimately hit my quota. And generally that labored. However most of the time, my chilly emails fell on deaf ears.
At one level, annoyed with silence and rejection, I noticed I wanted to change my method if I used to be actually going to succeed. I began doing two issues that fashioned the idea for getting extra responses, extra conferences, and finally extra gross sales.
How I revolutionized my outreach technique
First, I began paying nearer consideration to my prospects.
I appeared for clues to who they had been: Possibly a sports activities group within the background of a profile image, or an image of their favourite pet, and so forth.
Second, I began sending them enjoyable, personalised presents that aligned with this information: hats with their sports activities group’s emblem, a chew toy, and so forth. No matter I might discover that may proceed the dialog.
It turned out that this method labored very well (so nicely that I went on to co-found Sendoso, a sending platform — however that’s a narrative for an additional time).
I noticed that attending to know my prospects—and exhibiting genuine curiosity in issues they had been obsessed with—was a sure-fire technique to maintain their consideration and ultimately shut gross sales.
It made them really feel heard and appreciated. And in return, they usually gave me their enterprise.
In different phrases, I labored to develop actual human connections primarily based on actual interactions. This wasn’t a data-driven course of. This was actually me attending to know my prospects, and utilizing that as a foundation for constructing a relationship.
At this time, including a further step in your gross sales cadence that isn’t an electronic mail or a name can greater than double your response price. By strategic gifting, you might be practising how one can truly get to know your prospects. Moreover, you’ll shorten your gross sales cycles and enhance your shut charges out of your efforts as nicely.
No tech software is the magic answer
It’s important to make sensible investments within the platforms you utilize to spice up your gross sales efforts. Usually firms don’t have any downside investing in instruments to:
- Make emailing simpler
- Make sending contracts simpler
- Make discovering prospect information simpler
- Make utilizing LinkedIn simpler
- Make sharing content material simpler
- Make scheduling simpler
- Make getting intent information simpler
However do all these instruments assure gross sales success?
Whereas they definitely might help, a human ingredient is required to execute gross sales efficiently.
As everyone knows, LinkedIn has lengthy been a robust social media platform for professionals. However identical to some other social media web site, it may be misused and abused.
Used nicely, LinkedIn can yield new connections, new doorways opened, new gross sales, and extra. Used incorrectly, you may ship copy and pasted dry emails that go nowhere, blow via total lists of certified prospects, or worse–get locked out of the platform for dangerous gross sales practices.
My piece of recommendation: use gross sales instruments nicely. Insert a human connection to your gross sales course of. Construct genuine relationships.
This begs the query: how will you do that at scale? I is likely to be biased, however I imagine investing in a software that makes constructing relationships simpler is extremely vital.
Two tricks to construct actual relationships
It doesn’t matter what instruments you utilize in your gross sales efforts, there are two issues you must do if you wish to achieve success in gross sales. They’re:
Develop your capability to pay attention
As salespeople, we’re usually very talkative! We really feel like we have to maintain speaking to be able to persuade prospects to signal on the dotted line.
However what we actually have to do is to begin to really pay attention. Take heed to our prospect’s wants, sure, but additionally take heed to their ache factors, their wishes, and their hopes. We have to see them as individuals and never numbers if we’re going to construct a human connection and translate that right into a sale.
Be taught to present to be able to get
One other facet of gross sales is that we are actually asking individuals to present us their consideration and, finally, cash.
However what we don’t do sufficient is giving.
And strategic gifting is usually a game-changer.
I’ve seen presents open all types of doorways at Sendoso, however I’ll share simply this one story, as a result of I used to be so impressed with the extent of care and a spotlight this group put in — to not point out the outcomes they acquired out.
Boulevard is a platform serving spas and salons — point-of-sale, scheduling, and funds. Boulevard’s VP of Advertising, Bernice Lopez-Brennan, was actually working progress advertising and marketing whereas packing containers for FedEx. As she admitted with a rueful giggle, “It was no technique to scale.”
So the group acquired strategic.
After constructing out a finances for presents, they created reward tiers for prospects in numerous phases of the gross sales cycle. When prospects registered for a demo, the Boulevard group despatched them a $5-10 espresso e-gift.
Submit-demo, reps adopted up with an e-gift for a $25-50 lunch.
Sounds small, proper? However the outcomes had been spectacular.
The complete marketing campaign was budgeted for lower than $2k, however yielded 9x that quantity in open alternatives, and 4x that in ROI throughout a single quarter.
Additional down the gross sales funnel, reps adopted up by sending containers of cookies to their prospects’ salons — successful over the entrance desk workers and frontline stylists.
So sure, I’m speaking about giving prospects a present card to Starbucks or perhaps a good bottle of wine, however I’m additionally speaking about giving them our consideration. In my expertise, that’s what individuals actually need — and what they’re usually missing when experiencing extra data-driven gross sales approaches.
The takeaway
I’m positive there are many gross sales veterans on the market who will nod their heads approvingly to this method, then return to their workplaces and begin sending out random emails with none personalization apart from altering their individual’s title.
However we’re dwelling in a brand new period, the place many people are burnt out. The outdated approaches merely don’t work anymore. Finally, success in gross sales at this time—and sooner or later—will hinge on whether or not you perceive how one can develop actual human connections. And perhaps, like me, you’ll come to appreciate that constructing relationships is simply as vital as assembly gross sales quotas.
