Why communication is more important than sales in the 21st century
The world of modern sales is a space of mutual benefit. Even for giant corporations these are challenging times, because with the ubiquity of the Internet, any product can be compared with its closest counterparts or discussed with experienced consumers. Now it is not enough to have a product to sell. It is necessary to know how to communicate with the future customer.
In B2B, communication is the key to understanding customer needs. This is well illustrated by a story from the Selvery team. We were approached by a company with a request to develop presentation materials on the sale of exchange-traded gas. The customer specifically stressed that the materials were intended for a certain chief power engineer, that is, the person who is responsible for supplying gas to the company.
But already at the stage of joint discussion of the future project, it turned out that the chief power engineer had no problems with gas, and his head was occupied by problems of another nature. Gas had already been supplied to the enterprise, purchases had been established, and contracts had been signed. The power engineer was not interested in saving money either, because he would have had to reconfigure the entire supply chain and document flow.
But we did manage to find those who were interested. They were the development director and the financial director, specialists whose job it is to find solutions for increasing the company’s margins. Among other things, these employees also received an additional bonus for projects to optimize supplies and expenses. The presentation materials went through them to the CEO for approval.
B2B
To work in B2B, you have to be able to be useful. And to be useful, your approach to the customer must be individual. You can’t speak universally to everyone, your sales should be based on customer data. You don’t just have to do sales, you have to do account-based sales.
The offer should be tailored to each role, that is, it should be tailored to the nature of the tasks that different key employees in the buying company perform. If you are going to different employees in the company, you should talk about your offer in terms of their interests. You should not have a “one-size-fits-all” presentation. There are already platforms in international markets where you can collect all your product database, all the key customer roles, and make the presentation tailored to each role depending on its profile. These are target sales accelerators, such as Selvery, which allow you to speak to the customer in their language.
How to know the language of the buyer? How do you find out about his interests and needs? You need to communicate, you need to ask questions. Together with the answers, they are stored in a structured form in Selvery and allow you to shape presentations right during the conversation, taking into account the interests of each of the roles of the buyer’s company representatives.
B2C
B2C is different, but the key principle remains the same: to sell, you need to know the interests and needs of the customer. And in order to know the customer, you need to communicate. Communication can lead to a relationship of trust, in which the interlocutor turns into a buyer, but for this you need not only to ask, but also to tell, that is, to give. By giving — information or emotion — one becomes useful to the other person.
To become useful to the customer, you can start a conversation using Simon Sinek’s lap formula. Usually people start introducing themselves by saying, “Hello, I’m Joey, I’m a sales consultant.” Simon Sinek argues that this is wrong. You should talk about yourself by consistently answering “why,” “how,” and “what.” Are you here to sell? Tell why you’re doing it. How do you do it? What are you doing? For example, “There are so many high-end watches in this store that not everyone can understand them all at once. I learned the basics of time from the best watchmakers in Switzerland, and now I help the people who come into this store to understand apertures, bezels and Jacquemarts. I am an expert consultant. By the way, my name is Joey.”
If there are a lot of salespeople, the same Selvery Targeted Sales Accelerator will help to automate the work with buyers. Communication will help you find out the buyer’s needs — and generate the perfect presentation without any unnecessary information.
It doesn’t matter if a salesperson works in B2B, B2C or even B2G. The important thing is that in the age of robots, high-tech, and ubiquitous numbers, good old-fashioned human communication helps make guaranteed sales.
