Archive for September, 2012
Active listening – a forgotten key to sales success
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on September 5, 2012
When talking about sales skills, the first thing that comes to mind for many is asking questions. Asking questions, however, is not one-way. Often the best questions are ones that build on prior statements – resulting in a sales call that resembles a business conversation with a smooth flow between those participating.
This necessitates the sales person not only hearing what the customer says but actually listening to what’s been said. And, the customer must know you have listened. This means listening isn’t a passive activity – it’s an active sport. What do we know about listening?
Remember the old adage – “in one ear and out the other.” Unfortunately this is one of those cases where the old adage rings true. Research tells us that after listening to someone talk, immediately after you only remember ½ of what was said. And after 8 hours, you only remember ½ of that!
This means sales people need to follow the “100 Percent Rule” – sales people must take 100% of the responsibility for making sure the customer understands them. And take 100% of the responsibility for understanding what the customer says. Let’s explore seven best practices for getting that right:
1. Test Understanding. “That’s a need I haven’t heard you talk about. Before we move on could you just tell me more about …” Testing understanding invites the customer to continue to discuss or explain so you can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of their needs and opportunities.
2. Summarize What the Customer Says. Summarizing is a great way for sales people to demonstrate they understand what the customer’s saying. “From what you have said it sounds like your major concern with the existing support could be summarized this way …” Summarizing restates what the customer said in a way that demonstrates understanding. Here, it is important to distinguish Summarizing from “parroting” – the latter being a bad idea. Summarizing paraphrases only the essentials and is stated in your words.
3. Build Support. “That’s an interesting point – might there be other reasons for building that into the equation? For example, we’ve found in a similar case that …” Building support reinforces or extends the customer’s support or agreement by applying what you have learned from a previous experience or by suggesting its application to a new situation. In a business development conversation it can provide a proactive approach against competitive action and can provide additional answer to the question – Why us?
4. Take Notes. You can listen four to five times faster than someone can talk so use the time to evaluate what is being said and take notes. Do it in a transparent way because it indicates you are interested in what the customer is saying. One unintended outcome from talking notes is often the more notes you take, the more the customer will share. And, of course, by taking notes you’re more likely to recall what was said and what commitments were made
5. Evaluate the Entire Conversation. It is important to not only listen to what is being said, but also to listen to how it is being said, and to what is not being said. Qualifiers or evasive language is informative and the absence of information about a particular issue can be an important signal for future action.
6. Tune into High Fidelity Situations. Sometimes it is important to turn up the volume. When topics enter the conversation such as: new challenges, high risk issues, or key decision criteria, it is time to up your game. Plus it’s a good time to pay attention to non-verbal communication.
7. Be On the Same Page. It’s always a good idea to remember that a good sales call is all about keeping your eye on the customer. A classic trap is doing a really good job in talking about the wrong thing. This means periodically asking and really listening to the response as to whether the topic under discussion is a priority for the customer. If the answer is no – it’s time to change topics.
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Originally posted by Richard Ruff, on the Sales Training Connection – September 16, 2011
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Leveraging Social Media for Your Offline Business
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on September 2, 2012
Social media is important for all businesses, whether they are bricks and mortar businesses or online Internet-based businesses. There are many offline businesses that can effectively leverage social media to strengthen and grow their businesses in creative and effective ways.
Many of the popular social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Foursquare are capable of engaging local customers, increasing the popularity of your business and boosting your sales. There are many ways that an offline business can use social media to its advantage:
- Exciting and high-quality online presence: Once you have created profiles on the various social media websites, you need to update them on a regular basis. You should pay close attention to comments from your customers so that you can respond to them, publish new and interesting content, and continue to form new relationships and maintain existing ones. The more you update the status of your different social media, the stronger your business’s reputation will be.
- Get the whole company involved: If you have a staff, allow them a certain amount of time during their workday to post updates on your business’s social media websites. This is an excellent morale booster and your staff’s involvement will strengthen your marketing effort and increase your business’s online exposure.
- Social integration: Ask people to “like” your offline business on Facebook and follow your offline business on Twitter. You can then promote the social integration on your business receipts, signs and invoices so that your existing customers will want to jump on the social media train as well. You can also ask your customers to check in to Foursquare or one of the other geo-location applications once they arrive in the general proximity of your store offering them special promotions enticing them come in.
- Scope out the competition: Depending on what sort of business you have, you may or may not be heavily involved with social media. Always remember to stay on top of what your competition is doing by reading everything that they post. Remember that you and the other businesses are always fighting to stay on top.
- Strengthen the sense of community: the relationship that you should have with your customers, whether the relationship is online or offline is one that makes them feel like they are family (or, at the very least, very close friends). The way to achieve this is by having live events at your store as well as events online. You can promote your community and your business at the same time and people will begin to feel as though they belong at your store and that you want them to be there.
- Don’t do too much and become overwhelmed: If you don’t have any help in managing your social media platforms and you try to do it all by yourself, you may find that you aren’t doing it well. Be selective in your choice of social media channels and make sure that you go for quality over quantity.
- Guard your business’s reputation: Are you aware of what your existing customers and potential customers are saying about your business, products and services and brand? Pay special attention to the comments that people are posting online. It is also a good idea to set up Google alerts and to immediately handle issues as they occur. This is your chance to show people how much you care about them. Help them to solve their problems and address whatever concerns they have.
- Exercise patience: Remember that it takes time to see significant results with social media when it comes to the success of your business. Always remember that your hard work will definitely pay off and the more relationships you build and the more you interact with others, the more interested other people will be in connecting with you again and again.
- Reciprocate: When you post content online and you receive comments, not only is it important to respond to the comments but it is also a great idea to share other people’s posts if they hold value for your connections. After all, the idea is to enhance the experience of your online connections.
- Giveaways: You can use social media to give away free products from your store. There is a guarantee that that will attract attention and people will want to interact with you and will want to be the first to know when you introduce new products and services.
Conclusion
If you use the tips that are discussed here, your offline business will become more and more successful and more and more people will want to connect with you and will want to buy what you are selling.
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This article was originally posted by Michael Cohn in the CompuKol Connection Blog on November 25, 2010
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