Rapport is the deepest level of relationship between two individuals that involves sharing common ground, and is established when harmony and accord have been reached between both parties. This does not mean the individuals involved agree on every issue. Instead, it means they have attained a mutual respect for each other’s opinions. Developing rapport with others lowers stress within our relationships, thereby creating greater productivity.

We have established rapport with people know, like and trust

Establishing Rapport

Rapport is developed as we understand, recognize, appreciate, and adapt to the behavior and communication styles of others. Regardless of background, everyone wants to be valued, appreciated and unconditionally accepted for who they are. As a result, we tend to trust and have an affinity for the people we believe really understand us and accept us.

Unfortunately, we struggle with this as human beings. Some folks just ʻrub us the wrong wayʼ, or worse still, they ʻpush our buttonsʼ. And often, the ones that irritate us the most are the ones closest to us, such as family, friends, and coworkers.
To begin connecting with others, we must cultivate a genuine desire to understand the people around us.

Mastering Rapport

Mastering rapport is reached when an individual develops the skills and the genuine desire to develop relationships of mutual trust and emotional affinity.
Rapport Mastery works best when adopted as a lifestyle to better communicate with people and do business, not merely to manipulate others with surface techniques or to be saved until there is a glaring problem. Rapport Mastery involves personal transparency as well as enthusiasm for the success of others.

The Road to Rapport

There is no instant path to building rapport with those around us. This level of respect and trust will take time to develop. Attempting to rush this process will actually be counterproductive as it breaks that trust. Although each of us will have the ability to connect more quickly with certain individuals, there is no way to create this level of trust and regard for another person outside of the test of time. Creating rapport is a step by step process.

Do I Have Rapport?

Individuals with whom you have established rapport will come to you for advice or information on a wide variety of subjects. Rapport is developed as we understand, recognise, appreciate, and adapt to the behaviour and communication styles of others.

How do you begin to establish rapport?’

The Power of Perception

Rapport starts with understanding the behavioural and communication style of another, discovering how our personal actions are being perceived by others, and learning to control our own behaviours to better meet their needs.Connecting with others begins with recognising and understanding the perception of those with whom we interact.

Humans are uniquely different from one another. Our ideas about the world around us have been influenced by our parents, values, education, and culture. In addition to these factors, the way we perceive, interpret and share this information is based largely upon our behavioural and communication style.

Imagine that two individuals walk into a room. Both are wearing glasses, however one pair has red lenses and one has blue. Neither of them realise they have glasses of different colours. Both individuals are asked to look at a white wall and announce to the other what colour they believe the wall to be. The individual wearing the red glasses will be sure the wall is red, while the individual with the blue lenses will be sure it’s blue. They both would KNOW they were correct and sure the other person was wrong.

Now imagine these individuals try on each other’s glasses. Would they have a better idea of what the other person was seeing? This change of perception would help reduce conflict because each of them would now be able to understand the otherʼs perception.

In order to understand and connect, we need to understand how the other person is perceiving the world around them. By putting on someone else’s glasses, so to speak, we will have the ability to appreciate and understand them better.

Perception is based on an individual’s communication and behavioural style

Pace, Perception and Adaption

To understand human behaviour and communication we need to begin by looking at two basic elements pace and priority.

Pace is the speed at which individuals move and speak. Some individuals tends to be more faster or slower than others. There is not right or wrong pace as we all have elements of both.

Fast paced individuals tend to move, speak, respond and decide quickly, whereas sower paced individuals prefer to spend time in reflection and act carefully.

If you are fast paced person, a slower paced individual may see you as impatient, irresponsible, reckless, rude, manipulative, overbearing, angry and inconsiderate.

If you are a slow paced person, a fast paced individual may see you as unmotivated, lazy, sad, uncaring, disrespectful, disengaged, untruthful and distracted.

All relationships being by connecting with each other’s PACE. If there is missed connection at his level, you will be unable to move forward to build rapport.

This is where adaption comes into play. Connecting in a non-confrontational, non-irritating way requires adapting my own pace to match the pace of the other person. I may be fast paced, however, the only way to show the slow paced person that I am not impatient or reckless, I must control my actions and slow down. In the same way, if I am slow paced, I may need to speed up my interactions so I am not perceived as unmotivated and lazy.

Priority characteristics

As with pace, individuals have different priorities , which refer to what they prioritise as they view their world. Individuals tend to be either:

Task-Orientated – they are more focused on accomplishing tasks. Think in terms of plans, procedures, organisation, function, projects and programs. They like to create lists and check off items as they ate completed.

People-Orientated – they are more focused on establishing relationships. They are energized by being around people. They tend to focus on more on relationships, feelings, friendships, helping others and making people happy.

If you are a task-orientated person, a people-orientated person may perceive you as cold, workaholic, greedy, disconnected, inflexible, unmerciful, unfriendly and not family oriented.

If you are a people-oriented person, a task-oriented individual may perceive you as distracted, weak, overly emotional, unproductive, naive, gullible, foolish and not serious.

90% of conflict is caused by a clash of priorities or false perceptions

Now that we understand what rapport is and how we unknowingly can break it by failing to control our behaviour, we can now develop a process that will help us to better adapt and build relationships.

Know, Like, & Trust

Remember, rapport is established with all types of individuals when they know, like, and trust you. Matching pace provides the foundation for rapport by allowing other’s to get to know us.
However, the other two aspects, trust and like, are developed differently depending upon an individual’s priority style.

We get to know each other by matching pace. We develop rapport by respecting priorities.

Task-oriented individuals must trust you before they will like you. Here’s the progression of establishing rapport with the task-oriented individual: They will do business with you only if they have come to trust you. Once trust is established they will gradually begin to like you.

People-oriented individuals must like you before they will trust you. Here’s the progression of establishing rapport with the people-oriented individual: They must first like you. (One of the best ways to begin to establish affinity with this type is to smile.) Once they like you
they will begin to trust and develop rapport with you.

2 ROADS TO RAPPORT

Practical Application

To build rapport with a task-oriented individual, consider what is most important to this behaviour style. Because this behaviour style views the world from a task perspective, task completion is imperative for constructing trust.

To build rapport with a people-oriented individual, consider what is most important to this behaviour style. Because this behaviour style views the world from a people perspective, they will observe how you interact with others and desire friendship.

They are the basics of building more meaningful, peaceful, and productive relationships with those around you.

The post A Practical Guide On Building Rapport In Sales appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Here are 7 of the best formulas that boost email reply rates. Each example highlights the language that shows each formula.

(1) Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

Before! Here’s your world now
After! Imagine what the world would be like if you solved this problem
Bridge! Here’s how to get there

Copy template below to email

(2) Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

Problem! Identify a pain point
Agitate! Agitate that pain point
Solve! Offer a solution

Copy template below to email

(3) Star-Chain-Hook

Star! The big idea
Chain! A series of facts, sources, reasons, and benefits
Hook! The call to action

Copy template below to email

(4) Attention–Interest–Desire– Action (AIDA)

Attention! Grab the reader’s attention
Interest! Make it personal to engage their interest
Desire! Build desire for what you’re offering
Action! Ask for a response

Copy template below to email

(5) The 3-B Plan

Brevity! Keep it short
Blunt! Get to the point
Basic! Keep it simple
Give the reader a clear sense of who you are and what you want from them.

And get to the point quickly

Copy template below to email

(6) Praise-Picture-Push (3P’s)

Praise! Open with a sincere, respectful compliment
Picture! Use cause-and-effect reasoning to paint a picture describing how your product/service/idea will deliver
Push! Ask them to commit

Copy template below to email

(7) Awareness-Comprehension- Conviction-Action (ACCA)

Awareness! Present the situation or problem
Comprehension! Describe how it will impact them
Conviction! Create desire by explaining how your solution fixes the problem
Action! Ask for a response

Copy template below to email

Sourced from the e-book “10 Cold Email Formulas That Just Plain Work” produced by Yesware.

The post Email Templates To Engage New Customers appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Here are 17 sales truths and why understanding each one helps you win more deals.

(1) Everyone is overwhelmed. 

Focus only on what’s relevant, actionable and valuable to your prospect. Minimize complexity. 

(2) Your prospects are pretty OK with what they’re doing now.

If they weren’t, they’d have already changed. Your  job is to help them see why it’s worth doing things differently. 

(3) Prospects don’t like change. 

Crazy-busy people don’t want MORE work. Help them envision how your solution will get them to their goals with greater ease. 

(4) It’s your responsibility to pique curiosity. 

Experiment with creative ways to get people to say, “Hmm. That’s interesting. I’d like to learn more.”

(5) Your ideal prospects have a lot in common. 

Leverage what you already know about your customers to ask better questions, deepen conversations and establish credibility. 

(6) Prospects want to deal with experts. 

Demonstrate familiarity with your prospects’ business, processes, industry, issues and challenges to set yourself apart from the competition. 

(7) Assume responsibility when you fail. 

If your prospects buy from another vendor or decide to do nothing, analyse what you could have done differently. If you don’t learn from your mistakes you’re guaranteed to repeat them. 

(8) 50% of your forecasted deals won’t close. 

(That’s about average.) To exceed your goals, ruthlessly inspect your pipeline to eliminate “hope” and fix lurking deal killers. Clear out “dud” opportunities to make room for real ones. 

(9) Prospects act in their own self interest. 

If they can’t see how they will win by making a change, they won’t take the risk. Ask them how they’re evaluated. Explore how your product/service helps them achieve their goals. 

(10) Prospects will struggle to get buy-in. 

Arm them with the tools they’ll need. Prep them about the common obstacles. Help them facilitate change conversations with internal stakeholders. 

(11) You’ll hit the world’s worst traffic snarl on your way to a big meeting. 

Give yourself ample (2x) time to arrive stress-free. Get there early. Review your strategy. It’s the only way to be at the top of your game.

(12) Technology will fail. 

Have Plan B ready to go. Have handouts to support presentations. Prepare to jump on a white board to facilitate a conversation … Hey! That might even be a better idea in the first place!

(13) People will use devices during meetings. 

Think about how you’ll get them so engaged that they won’t want to. 

(14) Buyers won’t remember anything. 

After a phone or in-person conversation, follow up with a summary of key points and next steps. Take the burden off of them. 

(15) Your top accounts are at-risk. 

Bring fresh ideas, insights and information to help your customers achieve their goals. It’s the single best way to keep your competitors at bay. 

(16) Buyers don’t know how to buy. 

Review typical hurdles your customers had to overcome at each phase of their buying process. Ask how “similar” decisions were made—from concept to signed contract. 

(17) Your contact will leave the company, get downsized or go on an unexpected medical leave. 

To protect yourself from a shake-up, make sure you have multiple relationships in an account. Never leave your future in the hands of one person.

The post 17 Truths Sales Professionals Need To Accept To Win More Deals appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Sales Trigger 7: Invoke Fear

Fear is an incredibly powerful motivator. You’ll see everyone from marketers to politicians to bosses to parents using fear to get people to take some specific action. They do it because it works.

Now, I’m not saying you have to act like Freddy Krueger from the horror movies and scare the bediddles out of your prospects. Not at all. Instead, all you have to do is lightly touch the fear trigger to make a significant impact.

Here’s how to do it:

Create a Fear of Missing Out

This phrase (fear of missing out) has become so popular recently that it has its own acronym: FOMO. Typically this applies to people who can’t stop looking at their smartphones because they have a fear of missing out on some Facebook post, pop culture trend, or even an invitation to go out.

You can take this natural fear and funnel it into your sales system by creating a somehow limited offer. For example:

• Limit the proposal to a set number of people. For example, perhaps you set up a PLR membership site with a strict membership limit of just 250 people. Or you can offer a bonus or discount to the next 100 people who order now.
• Offer a discount or bonus for a limited amount of time. For example, you can offer a 50% discount that ends in 72 hours.
  As you can see, there are many different ways to create scarcity, boost urgency and in general, develop a sense of fear. These include:
• Coupons.
• Discount sales.
• Flash sales.
• Dime sales (the price goes up every day or after every purchase).
• Early bird offers.
• Introductory special rates.
• Holiday sales.
• Grand opening sales.

I could go on with this list. In all cases, the offer is somehow limited. This creates a fear of missing out on a great deal, which in turn boosts your conversion rate.

Here’s the second way to create fear:

Remind People of Their Fears

One of the best examples of this comes from the marketing you see from insurance companies. They get prospects to imagine what it would be like if they lost everything in a fire, and they didn’t have insurance.

You don’t need to sell insurance to remind people of their fears. No matter what you’re selling, you can remind people of what might happen if they don’t order now. For example:

• If you choose to do nothing and leave this sales page, you won’t lose weight. The ridicule might continue. People might give you disapproving looks when you’re out on the street. You’ll hate what you see when you look in the mirror.
• This problem is not going to get better if you ignore it. Those few fleas you see on your dog now might multiply. Soon your entire house might be infested. Insects might infiltrate the carpet, the furniture, and even your bed.

Do you see how this works? Create a limited offer or remind people of their fears, and you’ll see a boost to your conversion rate.
Now the next conversion-boosting triggers:

Sales Trigger 8: Radiate Authority

You’ve probably heard of the old Stanley Milgram psychology studies, where average people were told by an authority figure – which was a researcher in a white coat — to deliver electric shocks to someone else whom they couldn’t see.

Of course, there weren’t real shocks getting delivered, but the subjects of this experiment didn’t know that. They got told the shocks were real, and they could even hear someone screaming and pleading in the next room over not to shock them. Yet these research subjects kept delivering shocks, all because an authority figure told them to do so.

I’m not suggesting you run around trying to get people to deliver electric shocks to others. Rather, you can use any authority you might own to help build your credibility, get people to listen to you, and get people to do what you want.

Here’s how:

State Your Credentials

If you have some position of authority in your niche, then be sure others know about your credentials. This might be a degree or career paths, such as a doctor, lawyer or law enforcement. If you have a photo to back this up – such as you in judge’s robes or a uniform – include this with your content.

Borrow Other People’s Authority

If you don’t have a position of authority, you can still use influence to your advantage by borrowing other people’s position of authority. How? By doing joint ventures or even just getting testimonials from authority figures.

For example, maybe you have a diet guide. You can have medical doctors and nutritionists review it and offer their testimonials.

TIP: This is like the advertisements where they state something like, “four out of five dentists agree.” That’s using borrowed authority to boost sales.

Radiate Authority

You don’t have to have any specific credentials to position yourself as an authority in your niche. If you’re an expert, then act like one. Be a strong leader. For example:

• Speak (write) with confidence. The more confident you sound in your articles, sales letters, blog posts, and other content, the more likely it is people might follow you without question.
• Position yourself as an authority. This means blanketing your niche with content. Write guest blog posts. Write and publish a book. Give talks. The more people see your excellent content, the more they’ll associate you with authority in a niche.

So the bottom line is thus to set up yourself as an authority, show your credentials when applicable, and borrow other people’s authority when possible.

Together, these tactics could boost your conversion rate.

Next up:

Sales Trigger 9: Be Honest

I know it seems like common sense that you should be honest. But the truth is, a lot of people seem to think that marketers and salespeople aren’t trustworthy. Just ask anyone what their impressions are of used-car dealers. That’s an entire profession where everyone tends to get lumped into the “dishonest” pile. Those writing ads of any kind aren’t far behind.

Of course, salespeople don’t help their own image. While the majority don’t tell outright lies, many of them skirt around the truth with “errors of omission.” In other words, these marketers and salespeople don’t let prospects know what’s wrong with the product.

Now here’s a trick to boost your conversion rate: be honest with your prospects, tell them all about the flaws, and then turn these perceived flaws into assets.

Just that you’re being honest about a product or service is going to make people trust you more, which in turn boosts sales.
However, the other part of this is that you’re handing an objection by turning a perceived flaw into an asset. As you learned earlier in this report, handing objections is another good way to boost your conversion rate.

Let me give you a real-life example of turning a liability or flaw into an asset.

Listerine is a mouthwash that’s known for having a strong taste. Scope (a mouthwash competitor) directly attacked Listerine by saying that using Scope produces fresh breath without “medicine mouth.”

So now Listerine is having a perception problem in that prospects think their product is going to taste yucky, like medicine. Listerine responds with ads that say this: “Listerine: You can handle it. Germs can’t.”

Boom. Listerine is saying in these ads that the strong taste is what kills the germs. And by inference, they’re saying that any mouthwash that doesn’t have a strong taste probably isn’t killing bacteria.

See how that works? Listerine didn’t hide the fact that they have a strong-tasting mouthwash. Instead, they turned that perceived weakness into a strength of the product by suggesting their product tastes strong because it kills germs.

Now you can boost your conversion rates and sales using this same strategy. Simply be honest no matter what you’re selling (your product or an affiliate product), and turn perceived flaws into assets when possible.

For example, maybe you’re selling an ebook that seems a bit thin compared to other ebooks on the topic. Some people might feel like they’re not getting their money’s worth if the book is too short. You can turn this perceived flaw into an asset by saying this book is for busy people – there’s no fluff, no filler, just meat.

So go ahead and think about what’s wrong with your products and the affiliate products you’re selling. Don’t hide these flaws in your sales copy and product reviews. Instead, put ‘em front and centre, and turn the perceived deficiencies into strengths.

Next up:

Sales Trigger 10: Evoke Consistency

People don’t want to view themselves as wishy-washy flip-floppers who change their mind when the wind blows. People like to see themselves as consistent and committed. You can use this psychological fact to boost your sales.

How? By using the foot in the door technique.

It works like this:

You get your “foot in the door” by getting your prospect to perform some small action or do you some small favour. Then later, you ask them for a bigger favour. Since they want to appear consistent, they’re likely to do your bigger favour.

Researchers have examined this psychological trigger, and they’ve found it truly works. Researchers started by asking people in a neighbourhood to put a big, ugly sign in their front yard. Naturally, the majority of people said no.

Then these researchers did a test with another group of folks. They asked this second group to put a small placard in their window that promoted picking up trash or some other neutral activity. Many people said yes because it was an easy way to support beautifying the neighbourhood.

A couple of weeks later, researchers returned to those who displayed the placard and asked if they’d also display a yard sign. You got it – that yard sign was the big, ugly one. And you know what? A bunch of these people said yes because they wanted to stay consistent.

So here’s the point: if you ask for a big favour right away, people will outright say no. But ask them for a small, easy favour first to get your foot in the door, and these folks are more likely to say yes when you ask for a bigger favour later.

For example:

• Ask people to join your mailing list first (easy favour), and then later ask them to buy your entry-level product.
• Ask people to buy your entry-level product, then ask them to buy your home study course.
• Offer an upsell to those who’re in the process of buying your course.
• Ask people who’ve “liked” your social media content to share it with their friends.
• Propose a small, easy joint venture with a partner first, and then later propose a more significant joint venture project.
• Ask your prospects to enter your free contest, and then later ask them to register for a webinar.

You get the idea. Get your foot in the door with small requests and see if you too don’t get a bigger response rate when you make larger requests.

Now let’s wrap things up:

Conclusion

What you’ve learned in this report is like pulling back the curtain to see how the world’s best marketers, salespeople, and politicians seem almost magically to lead people to do what they want. And now you too can boost your sales and response rates by employing the following ten psychological sales triggers:

• Reciprocity
• Curiosity
• Specificity
• Objection-Handling
• Credibility
• Conformity
• Fear
• Authority
• Honesty
• Consistency

Now the key here is to not cherry-pick through these methods and merely use a few of them. Instead, put as many of these methods to work for you every time you write a sales letter, publish a newsletter, post something on your blog, or write any other type of persuasive content.

These are potent triggers that researchers have proved time and again work like crazy to boost your response rates. But don’t take my word for it – try them for yourself to see what kind of results you’ll get. I think you’ll be amazed!

Just in case you miss the first two chapters:

Chapter 1 covers Reciprocity, Curiosity And Specificity.

Chapter 2 covers Handle Objections, Credibility and Social Proof.

Publisher’s note – this article was originally published at Richtopia as A Comprehensive Guide on the Psychology of Marketing and Sales.

The post Sales Psychology – 10 Triggers To Become Highly Influential (Part 3) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Sales Trigger 4: Handle Objections

If you’re selling something, then your prospects are already figuring out reasons why they shouldn’t buy it. These are called objections.

Common objections include the following…

The price is too high. Here the person may be able to afford the product or service, but he still thinks the price is high compared to the value you’ve demonstrated.

You can fix this by demonstrating more value (sharing benefits) and clearly stating your USP (unique selling position). You can also explicitly give people a reason the price is so high.

For example: The price for this inner circle membership is higher than what you’ve seen elsewhere because we only want serious business owners in this élite group.

TIP: Want to see how to prove high prices? Then start reading ads for luxury goods and services, such as Rolex, Mercedes, Bentley, Armani and similar goods. In most cases, you’ll see the price justification is based around their branding and USP.

The price is too low. Low prices sometimes get equated with the product or service being “cheap” or “junk,” so this objection makes people wonder why you’d price the item so low. That’s why you need to justify low prices, too.

For example: I know what you’re thinking – this price is crazy low! You might even be thinking something is missing from this package.

Nope, you get the FULL course for a fraction of the price.

Why?

It’s because I want to make this course affordable to everyone. It’s not fair if only rich people can afford this course. So for a limited time, you can get this course for a song – but hurry before this special offer ends!

I can’t afford it. This objection isn’t that the price is too high, but instead that the prospect is thinking he shouldn’t spend his money on that particular item right now. Sometimes that may be true. Sometimes that’s just an objection you need to handle because it’s nothing more than an excuse.

The solution? Justify the price. An excellent way to do this is to compare it to other activities or products which show why your product is a good value.

For example: If you hired a ghostwriter to create this report, you’d pay at least $750 for it. But if you’re one of the first 100 people to act now and get a PLR license, you get full rights to this report for $50. You can’t afford to pass up this steal of a deal!

Another example is to point out how the item is comparable to some small thing the person regularly purchases.

For example: You get this complete report for the price of a small pizza. You won’t find a better way to invest $9, so click the order button below now.

I’m not sure if it will work for me. For this objection, you offer a guarantee (AKA risk reversal).

For example: I’m so confident you’ll love this product that I’m willing to back this offer with an iron-clad 100% money-back guarantee. If you’re unsatisfied for any reason whatsoever, email me, and I’ll promptly issue a full refund – no questions asked.

So you can see how this works. Be sure to handle those common objections you just learned about. However, you need to take it a step further: you’ll need to look at your specific product and figure out what people might object to so you can handle those objections as well.

Next trigger:

Sales Trigger 5: Build Credibility

You need to give your prospects a good reason. In other words, you need to build your credibility. Whenever your prospects are reading your sales letter or other content, they’ve got their defence shields up. They’re sceptical. And one of the thoughts that will be floating through their head is this: “Why should I listen to this person?”

You need to give your prospects a good reason. In other words, you need to build your credibility.

Let me give you some examples of credibility-building statements:

• Why should you listen to me? Simple: because last year my business generated $1,117,922. I know how marketing works, and now I want to share my secrets with you.
• I lost 50 pounds using this diet plan, and I’ve kept it off for three years. I’ve helped 388 other people just like you lose at least 50 pounds too. This plan worked for me, it works for others, and it will work for you too.
• My books have soared to the top of the USA Today Bestseller’s lists three times in the past 18 months – so you know this novel-writing course is the real deal.
• I’ve spent ten years honing my copywriting skills. My sales letters have pulled in $200 million worth of frontend sales and created countless backend opportunities. Now you too can put my experience and expertise to work for you.
• Dr Simon has spent the last two decades learning everything to know about human metabolism. You won’t find a better-researched book or a medical doctor with more experience in this field.

So the bottom line here is to give your readers a reason to listen to you. Do you have experience? Credentials? A degree? Specific results in the field? Awards?

Whatever it is, build your credibility by sharing it with your readers.

Next up:

Sales Trigger 6: Use Social Proof

Here’s something to understand about your prospects:

They’re unsure of themselves. They’re not sure what to do. They prefer to see what others are doing and then follow along.

That’s right; people tend to be a little conformist.

I’m not making this up. Scientists have proven that people like to conform with others. For example, let me ask you which line is longer:

Line A: —————

Line B: —————————

There’s no question, right? Obviously, Line B is longer. You can show these lines to anyone with normal vision, and they’ll all tell you that Line B is longer.

So let’s imagine you have a guy named Joe who’s judging line length. Three other people in the room are also judging line length, and all three of them say that “Line A” is longer. These three people are shills – they work for the researcher.

After Joe hears all these other people say Line A is longer, he now has to give his answer.

Guess what?

Joe is more likely to say “Line A” is longer, even though you can see it in his face that he knows that’s not true. He is merely conforming with the group because it makes him feel more psychologically comfortable to go along with what everyone else is doing and saying. (Hint: This is why “peer pressure” makes such a significant impact on people.)

You can use this tendency to conform to your sales process. All you have to do is show your prospects that everyone else is buying your product, joining your mailing list, or “liking” your social media posts. This is called social proof.

Let me give you specific examples:

• Testimonials. Your prospects don’t always believe you (they figure you’re biased), which is why testimonials work so well to boost sales. What’s more, testimonials help trip that conformity reason as well, which also pushes people towards the conformity button.
• Tickers. This is where you show people buying a product or joining your site in a live ticker. Of course, you can’t share specifics, but you might have something such as “John from London just joined… Suzy from
  California just joined…” If you have a lot of sales, subscribers or registrations coming in each day, it’s a powerful way to use social proof to boost your conversion rate further.
• Numbers. Think of how McDonald’s Restaurant signs used to say things such as, “Over one billion hamburgers served.” That’s social proof using numbers.

Social media has social proof built right in. For example, anyone visiting your Facebook Page can see how many fans you have, and how many people like, share or comment on your posts.

You can share other numbers as well, such as how many customers you have, how many subscribers, etc. E.G., “3287 satisfied customers can’t be wrong, so order now!”

So here’s the bottom line: show your prospects and visitors that OTHER people are buying your products, subscribing to your newsletter, following you on social media, and other activities. This social proof will get even more people doing the same thing.

Chapter 3 covers Fear, Authority, Honesty and Consistency.

And just in case you missed, Chapter 1: Reciprocity, Curiosity And Specificity.

Publisher’s note – this article was originally published at Richtopia as A Comprehensive Guide on the Psychology of Marketing and Sales.

The post Sales Psychology – 10 Triggers To Become Highly Influential (Part 2) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

A lot of marketers look at successful sales letters and then try to mimic the words they think will boost sales.

That’s right; they use a swipe file. And then they wonder why their swipe-filled sales letter isn’t generating any sales.

Here’s the thing:

If you don’t understand the psychology of selling, then the words are going to fall flat if they’re not used in the right context.

If you put the components of a sales letter in the wrong order, sales will tank.

If you’re not pushing the right psychological triggers at precisely the right time, the conversion rate could be pretty low.

The point is, to start getting more subscribers and sales, you need to understand why your prospects behave the way they do, what they’re thinking, and how you can get them to act in the desired direction.

That’s precisely what you’re about to discover in this report, where we’ll look at ten psychological sales triggers you can put to work for you starting as soon as today.

You can use these mental triggers in your sales letters, blog posts, newsletters and more.

You can use them to get more subscribers, get sales, get referrals, or whatever else you need to grow your business.

Sounds good, right? Let’s jump in.

Sales Trigger 1: Evoke Reciprocity

Reciprocity works like this: if you give your prospects something valuable, they’ll feel obligated to provide you with something in return. This “something” might be a referral, a sale, an email address, or something else of value to you.

The reason this works is that we tend to get psychologically uncomfortable when we feel like we owe someone something.

TIP: This doesn’t work on everyone. Some people have an entitlement mentality, and you could deliver valuable stuff to their door all day long. And yet they’d have no feeling whatsoever that they owe you anything.

On the flip side, you can’t be a conditional giver. In other words, you can’t give with the expectation of receiving something back. So give freely and don’t worry about whether others are giving you anything in return. Help your prospects, even if you aren’t rewarded for it. If nothing else, this will give you a great reputation in your niche (which, in turn, will boost sales).

Let me give you a real-life example:

Let’s imagine you call up a couple of friends and invite them out to dinner tonight. You take them to a lovely restaurant, and everyone enjoys appetisers, a nice meal, and even dessert. When the bill comes, you snatch it off the table and insist on paying. Your friends argue a bit – after all, this was a lovely meal – but eventually, they relent and then graciously thank you for the meal.

So what happens next?

If you guessed that your friends are going to take you out for dinner some night, you’re right. If they didn’t, they’d start to feel psychologically uneasy. Their unease would grow if you did something else nice for them in the meantime, like bought them a cup of coffee or took them out to the movies. They only way they can get rid of this psychological discomfort is by returning the favour.

Listen, your prospects are the same way. If you do nice things for them, they’ll feel a compulsion to return the favour.

So how do you work this into your marketing?

The easiest way to do this is by offering a free lead magnet product, and then sending good content to your mailing list. You can also share good content on your blog and social media platforms. These simple steps will trip the reciprocity trigger.

Take note:

The key to making this work is to remind people of the trigger when you ask them for a favour.
For example: “Since I’ve given you this free video, I’d like you to do a favour for me – click this link to tell your friends about the video. They’re sure to love it just as much as you!”

See how that works? You remind people what you’ve given them, and then you ask for what you want. It’s an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” sort of concept. And yep, it works like crazy to boost response rates.

Now let’s have a look at the next sales trigger…

Sales Trigger 2: Arouse Curiosity

Curiosity is a powerful motivator. That’s because when you inject it into your content, it’s like creating an itch that your readers need to scratch. And the only way they can scratch this itch is by taking some specific action (such as joining your list or buying a product).

Do you ever remember the original BluBlocker sunglasses and their advertising? Marketing expert Joseph Sugarman eventually took over the marketing for these glasses, and they sold tens of millions of pairs. One thing Sugarman did was create curiosity in the original TV ads.

How?

By showing the reactions of real people as they looked through the sunglasses for the first time. They usually exclaimed, “Wow!” And then they’d go on to talk about how everything looked so amazing, and how they’d never worn sunglasses like this before.

Sugarman admitted that they could have slipped a BluBlocker lens over the camera lens to show the home audience what it’s like to look through those sunglasses. But they didn’t do it, because they wanted to arouse the home audience’s curiosity about what it’s like to look through those glasses.

The only way to scratch that curiosity itch was to order the sunglasses by mail. It worked! The BluBlocker company sold millions of pairs of sunglasses in their first few years.

Now you too can use curiosity. Let me give you a few examples:

Example 1: Use curiosity to make sure people keep reading.

Whether it’s a blog post, email, report or even a sales letter, you can evoke curiosity in the beginning or even the middle to keep people reading until the end.

Let me give you a few specific examples:

• Build anticipation in the introduction. This works well for content such as blog posts, newsletter articles, and reports. Simply tell people what they’re going to learn in the story or article, and arouse curiosity in the process.
  For example: You’ll find out what exercise the world’s most élite militaries have used for 500 years to train their best soldiers!
• Tell a story, but don’t quite finish it. This arouses emotion, which is a good thing. But if you don’t finish the story right away, it also arouses curiosity.
  For example: So you’re probably wondering if Jane met her goal and lost 50 pounds. You know what? I think the results are going to surprise you. I’ll tell you all about them in just a few minutes. But first, let me share with you the #1 mistake dieters make that stalls your progress.
• Wet their appetite for what’s coming. You can do this anywhere in a sales letter, article or report.
  For example: Jane got amazing fat-loss results using the same secret your favourite Hollywood celebrities use when they need to shed the fat fast.

You’ll discover this secret in just a moment. But first:

Example 2: Make people curious about a product.

Let’s say you’re selling a book about how to get traffic. You might arouse curiosity by saying something like this:

You’ll discover the closely guarded traffic source that’s never been revealed before – wait till you see how much traffic it could bring!

You can bet anyone interested in getting more traffic will be a bit curious about this little-known traffic source.

Here’s another example that would make a great benefit statement in a bulleted list:

You’ll find out which common herb reduces fine lines and wrinkles – you may already have it in your cupboard!

So you can see how this all works. Make people curious, and you’ll keep them hooked on your content, joining your list and buying your product to satisfy their curiosity.

Now the next powerful sales trick:

Sales Trigger 3: Be Specific

People are always a little sceptical when they’re reading bold claims in ads or other content. However, there are ways to cut their scepticism and make them more likely to believe what you’re telling them. One of these ways is by being specific about your claims.

The best way to explain this is with an example. Take a look at these two statements:

Statement 1: You’ll find out how Jorge made $5000 last month with Facebook ads, and how you can too!

Statement 2: You’ll find out how Jorge made $5223 last month with Facebook ads, and how you can too!

Those statements are precisely the same, except for the dollar amount. The first one is an even $5,000, where the second statement is unequivocal.

Guess which statement is more compelling?

If you guessed Statement 2, you’re right. That’s because it’s highly unbelievable that someone made precisely $5000 last month. It’s far more believable that they made $5223. Because the claim is specific, it seems more plausible.

This sales trick doesn’t just work for dollar amounts – it works for almost anything where you can be specific about a number. This includes:

• Length of time. For example, “31 days” is more accurate than “one month.”
• Weight. “Jack lost 63.5 pounds” is more specific and believable than “Jack lost 60 pounds.”
• Other dimensions, such as length and width. “The plants grew 13 inches tall” is more specific and believable than saying they “grew about a foot.”
• Number. For example, “15,955 subscribers” is more specific and believable than “about 16,000 subscribers.”

So you get the point. Whenever you can be specific about a number or any other detail, do so because people are more likely to believe particular claims.

Chapter 2 covers Handle Objections, Credibility and Social Proof.

Chapter 3 covers Fear, Authority, Honesty and Consistency.

Publisher’s note – this article was originally published at Richtopia as A Comprehensive Guide on the Psychology of Marketing and Sales.

The post Sales Psychology – 10 Triggers To Become Highly Influential (Part 1) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

It’s funny then that, according to research by Lee Resource and IBM, 80% of companies surveyed claimed that they offer superior customer service, but only 8% of their customers agreed with them. Ouch!

80% of companies surveyed claimed that they offer superior customer service, but only 8% of their customers agreed with them. Ouch!

It is undisputed that negative customer experiences cost your bottom line. Have a look at these CX statistics:

For every customer complaint, there are 26 other customers who have remained silent. (source: Lee Resource Inc)

A dissatisfied consumer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience, while about 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people. (source: Lee Resource Inc)

Attracting a new customer costs 5-times as much as keeping an existing one. (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC)

Happy customers who get their issue resolved tell about 4 to 6 people about their positive experience. (source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC)

86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience. (source: Harris Interactive, Customer Experience Impact Report)

It’s no wonder then that customer-centricity and customer experience (CX) are hot topics in business right now. But just saying so is not enough. What about your business? Just how customer-centric is it?

Just how Customer-Centric is Your Business?

Before I go on I’d like to clear up a question I get asked a lot: What is the difference between customer-centricity and customer experience?

It’s simple, really.

Customer-Centricity creates positive Customer Experiences. In other words, for customers to perceive a business as being customer-focused it needs to be structured and managed like Jeff Bezos says, i.e. with the customer in mind. So, to be customer-centric, at every touch point in the organization you need to ask: “What does that look like from the customer’s point of view?” and then adjust your processes, KPIs and culture to do the right thing to create that positive customer experience.

So, how Customer-Centric is Your Business?

I propose that there are 10 Critical Customer Touch Points in the customer’s buying journey that can make or break your business.

These ten Touch Points are:

1. A Brand that Differentiates Your Business

I don’t mean that you have to be a household name or that your logo needs to be a certain color. The main thing is that you have a distinct brand that customers can recognize and identify you by. Most businesses should have this under control.

2. A well-defined Product and/or Service to Sell

How well can you articulate your product or service? How clearly can you explain to your prospects and customers the benefits of your product or service? Will your customers understand what it does for them, i.e. what’s in it for them? Or do you mostly talk about how it works?

3. A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) And A Killer Introduction That Engages Your Ideal Buyers And Makes Them Want To Know More About You

This is critical: It can’t be a motherhood statement such as “We really care for our customers.” It needs to be credible and you need to be able to back it up. What is your unique value proposition? I.e. can you clearly state what makes your business and its offerings unique and why a prospect should be interested in you? What makes you different from any other business out there?

And then, how do you convey that difference at the first point of contact with a new prospect? How can you intrigue and engage them right from your opening introduction? How do you get them to lean forward and say: “Tell me more.”?

4. A Clear Understanding Of Who Your Ideal Customers And Prospects Are

You would agree with me that there is little point in engaging with the wrong kind of prospects. You are better off dealing with the right kind instead, right? So, how clear are you on what your ideal customers look like?

5. The knowledge Of Where To Find Them

Once you know who your ideal Buyers are you need to know where they hang out. Do you know where to find your ideal prospects and customers?

6. The Understanding To Access And Engage Them Effectively

It’s not enough to know where to find your ideal Buyers. You need to know how to get to them and get them interested in your goods or services. How effective and scalable is your sales process? How well does it leverage your unique value proposition (see Point 3 above)?

7. The Know-How To Eliminate Your Competitors

Rarely will you be the only one in the race to a deal. Instead, you will most likely have to beat off any number of competitors. So, how do you fend them off and becomes your Buyer’s final and only choice?

8. The Skills To Create Effective Sales Proposals That Close Deals

In most B2B sales situations you are likely to be asked to submit a sales proposal to your Buyer. Do you get excited by the fact that the Buyer asked for a proposal and send it off to them asap? Or is there a better, smarter way? Further, how can you ensure that a) your proposal covers exactly what the Buyer needs, and b) that you have maximized your chances of your proposal being the last one standing, the one that gets accepted?

9. A Superior Pre, During and Post-Purchase Customer Experience

If you reflect on the customer experience statistics at the beginning of this article you will understand just how mission-critical your customers’ perceptions and experiences are to the success of your business at every step of the way. So, how successfully are you managing your Buyer’s interactions with your business?

10. The Ability To Keep Your Customers Loyal And To Win Their Repeat Business

Your customers’ experience does not end with a transaction. In fact, their post-sale experience is so critical that it will determine whether they will choose to come to do more business with you, or not. So, how do your prospects and customers perceive their interactions with your business at every touch point? Is their experience a pleasant one that will make them rave to their friends and colleagues about your business, or is it one that will more likely make them warn people off you?

There you have it. The 10 critical customer touch points that make or break your business.

The post 10 Touch Points That Make Or Break Sales appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Digital disruption has pretty much forced both sales and marketing departments to adjust to the new world that both sellers and buyers now inhabit.

“The sales profession is in the midst of a radical change. Simple sales are inexorably moving to the Internet. The selling that remains is sophisticated and demanding. The salesperson of the future will become a business equal of the customer, a creative problem-solver and a value creator. These changes demand a high level of professionalism.”

Professor Neil Rackham, one of the pioneers of modern research into sales performance and methodology.

This means that the tried and true sales methods of old are being overthrown in favor of softer, advisory approaches. At the same time, hitherto proven marketing techniques – especially those that relied on print media to communicate with customers – are adapting in ever-changing ways to massively popular digital platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and others, as well as some new ones that are still emerging.

This change to the way that marketing is conducted has profoundly influenced the way that sales are made as well. In particular, it has created a new class of customers that is more responsive to the techniques that used to be applied almost exclusively in the B2C (business-to-consumer, or retail) world. These techniques are now becoming more prevalent in the B2B (business to-business or corporate) world. Combine this with the advent of data-driven marketing and big data analytics – both of which are also being felt in both sales and marketing departments – and you have a myriad of changes that are rippling through today’s vendor organizations.

Charting a course through these unclear waters has resulted in a wide range of experimentation into sometimes-unconventional practices – some of them successful and some of them not. Not the least among them is the practice of extending the paradigm of process-specific alignment to a more holistic paradigm of true collaboration between Sales and Marketing.

As Sales and Marketing adapt to new market realities and opportunities, they are often presented with a choice regarding their operational structure: either they continue to operate in discrete silos or they adapt to cooperate in ways that will not only make them more alert to their changing markets and customers, but will also allow them to become increasingly nimble in terms of adapting to the shifting market trends of the future. Organizations that use collaborative strategies to address the long-standing complaints of Sales about Marketing and vice versa will be powerfully equipped to compete in, and even dominate, their markets in the years and decades to come.

Those who doggedly refuse to release their grip on the sales methodology and terminology of yesteryear (which we’ll turn to next) will be those that will be left in their more nimble competitors’ dust.

The Gradual Obsolescence of the Old Sales Cycle

Previously, whether a customer would buy from an organization or its competitor depended almost entirely on the sales rep and his or her ability to build and maintain relationships with potential customers. The best salespeople were those who were able to constantly expand and persuade those within this sphere of influence. Salespeople thus propelled the selling process forward (or, in the case of poor salespeople, stalled the process or even sent it backwards).

We used diagrams such as the one here to describe the stages in this process that we called either the Sales Cycle or the Selling Cycle.

We liked to describe it as a cycle because we thought that as soon as we had finished making a sale, a new potential customer (a ‘suspect’) would be waiting at the top of the cycle and we would begin an identical customer-winning process with them, thus converting them into a new prospect. Also, when upselling was a possibility, the same customer could go through the sales cycle multiple times so that their potential as a customer could be maximized.

We also used these descriptors to measure sales progress and estimate the likely interval between stages in the cycle for reporting and forecasting purposes – otherwise known as the ‘Contact to Cash’ process. Potential customers are re-named at each stage: initially, they are targeted within their pre-defined market segment as ‘suspects’, approached by salespeople as ‘prospects’, and, once they have made their first purchase, they are, of course, customers’. You are probably familiar with the concept of the Sales Funnel or the Leaky Funnel: suspects are fed into the wide end of the funnel; some leak out, leaving the prospects behind. Some of these leak out again; finally, the remainder become buyers.

The Sales Cycle, with its organizationally inside-out perspective and language, was utterly vendor-centric. The power to move the sales process through its various stages was largely attributed to the sales rep, not to the prospect. Consequently, sales consultants and sales training vendors offered a myriad of sales techniques that could, they said, rapidly accelerate the sales cycle.

This was the halcyon era of “objection handling” and of “closing techniques,” and of more comprehensive, market-research-based programs, such as Neil Rackham’s “SPIN Selling” and Miller-Heiman’s “Blue Sheet,” “Gold Sheet,” etc. plans. But informed buyers and their online research have disrupted the old Selling Cycle, creating a new purchasing paradigm, to which twenty-first-century sellers must adapt. Let’s turn now to this new purchasing paradigm – the Buyer’s Journey.

The Buyer’s Journey (Buyer’s Perspective)

As the illustration below makes clear, when it comes to the Buyer’s Journey there is distinct criticality for the vendor around the timing of contact and the messaging to the suspect or prospect. In other words, it is now critical to be proactive, to send the right messages and information and, importantly, to do so at precisely the right time. Vendors now need to be seen by buyers as experts in their field and they need to stand out from the crowd in order to be noticed and accepted by the buyer on their journey.

Early in the Buyer’s Journey, vendors have a narrow window of opportunity to create a sense of desire/demand/need for their offering in a suspect’s mind. This is the time where Marketing is most likely to play the biggest part in attracting new business as it can utilize its armory of channels and positioning messages to help suspects to discover our products and services over those of our competitors.

In the days of the Sales Cycle, a suspect contacted sales reps to obtain more information on a product or service. However, in the era of the Buyer’s Journey, the buyer follows a very different trajectory. They are most likely to go online to conduct their own research, examining – often in meticulous detail – what the market is offering. Promotional materials (marketing collateral) play a part in this, but so do independent reviews and test reports.

Content marketing (which I’ll discuss in much greater detail in the next chapter when we take a closer look at the Marketing landscape) is playing a large and still-expanding role in these early stages of the Buyer’s Journey, and these effects are passing downstream to Sales. Sales reps who answer the phone are no longer expected to inform the client, at least not to the degree they once did. What the potential customer is seeking is not broad strokes but clarification. This means that sales reps are now expected to possess not only high-level selling skills but also a wide range of subject matter knowledge.

Any reluctance or inability on the part of the sales rep to provide the information that the buyer is after (i.e. instant value-add) will likely lead to the buyer continuing their journey with another organization.

The Buyer’s Journey is, make no mistake, far less predictable and controllable than any of the purchasing paradigms that predate it. Just one disgruntled buyer is enough to spread the message far and wide and to poison the well. Bad reputations go viral in a heartbeat and the entire organization may have to expend untold energies on damage control.

Numerous studies have shown that by the time a buyer is ready to contact a vendor they have completed somewhere between 60% and 90% of their decision-making process. That means that by this time they have already whittled down their list of prospective vendors to a short-list. It is absolutely crucial that, at this time of the buyer transitioning from focusing on Marketing’s messaging to sales rep contact, the handover is seamless and that both Sales and Marketing speak with one and the same voice. So much as a sniff of inconsistency and credibility can be damaged and the sale can be lost.

Let me make this point in no uncertain terms:

Sales+Marketing Collaboration has become mission-critical.

Allowing Sales and Marketing to speak different languages with buyers and the market at large can put the financial security of the entire organization at risk. Without collaboration, buyers lose respect for, and interest in, the vendor. When they walk, through the power of social media they can (and often will) motivate other to do the same. It’s game over.

Now that we’ve looked at the Buyer’s Journey from the buyer’s perspective, let’s turn to the same journey, but this time from the perspective of the vendor.

The Buyer’s Journey (Vendors’ Perspective)

The most obvious difference in the way that vendors are approaching today’s buyers is where vendors are attempting to intercept buyers in the midst of their journey. Visibility is not as easy to find as it once was (when, for instance, print media could be relied upon to reach a wide swath of potential customers). Niche markets and segments are the new targets for visibility – particularly when these areas are rich in customers in the early stages of their journey. These are the buyers that today’s vendors are focusing all of their efforts to intercept. Effective and on-point messaging all the way from the epiphany stage (i.e. their identification of a need or requirement) to the end of the consideration/research process is now seen as the best way to win (and keep) their attention.

Back in 2012, ITSMA reported that over 68% of B2B technology buyers identified this stage as the one in which they preferred to be contacted by sales reps (https://www.itsma.com/research/results-from-itsma-how-buyers-consume-information-survey-2012/). This is where salespeople can take on the crucial advisory role that sophisticated buyers are responding to, and are even actively seeking. While they were assembling research for their recent, cutting-edge sales manual, The Collaborative Sale Keith M. Eades and Timothy T. Sullivan found that vendors who engage with buyers at these early stages in their journey were five times more likely to win business than those who waited for buyers to initiate contact (http://www.amazon.com/The-Collaborative-Sale-Solution-Selling/dp/1118872428).  Simply put, informed customers are raising the bar that they then expect vendor company reps to clear for them. As shown in the illustration vendors need to become more proactive in charting the journey for the buyer to follow all the way to a successful sale, and beyond.

Since salespeople used to be the ones who were most immediately engaging with their customers in the age of the Sales Cycle, they have now been the first to experience the challenges of this newly raised bar. The vendors who are having the most success are those who increase the run-up to this bar by shifting their focus to catching buyers’ attention early in their journey. When it is a high-value product or a complex solution that is on the table, sales have never been easy to make, but increasingly informed buyers have compounded this difficulty for salespeople. One thing is sure: addressing savvy twenty-first-century customers requires sales techniques that are more sophisticated by far than those that were successful as little as a decade or two ago.

The relatively recent vocabulary shift to the Buyer’s Journey underscores the need for a sales process that empathizes with the customer – seeing the sales process through their eyes – and fortifies the points at which the customer engages with sales reps or marketing-generated content. Digital Age buyers are armed with a different set of questions, some of which are catching unprepared organizations off guard:

• Do you know what my challenges are?
• What do you know about my competitors?
• What do you know about your competitors and my relationships with them?
• What ROI (Return on Investment) can I expect?
• What don’t I know?
• Besides ROI, how are you adding value?

Each one of these questions represents an opportunity for sales reps to demonstrate the consultative and customer-centric approach that buyers are now looking for. However, while the Buyer’s Journey offers opportunities, it also harbors its own set of challenges.

First of these is being able to gather, assess and act upon customer feedback. A 2014 research report by Aberdeen Group showed that best-in-class performers were those that consistently focused their resources in a customer-centric way, i.e. the ones that are opening feedback channels and who are meticulously managing the actionable data that lies therein.

According to Accenture in a very interesting paper, called “Connecting The Dots On Sales Performance” 67% of these best-in-class performers enabled and encouraged customer feedback at every touch point, whereas only 46% of leader-trailing organizations did the same. The importance of the new customer’s voice cannot be overstated. More than anything, the new customer wants to feel that their feedback influences the way they are approached, addressed and acted upon by the seller.

Others put this figure as high as 80%, meaning that by the time the buyer makes first contact with the vendor the customer has often already covered most of the ground that used to be the territory of salespeople. Buyers are initiating contact with sales reps merely to verify what they’ve learned through their own research. It’s no surprise, therefore, that as much as 63% of sales are going to the first vendor with which customers are engaging.

According to Bob Apollo of Inflexion Point, today’s time-poor buyers are beginning to feel that yesterday’s sales model is a waste of their time (http://www.inflexion-point.com/Blog/bid/67962/B2B-Sales-and-Marketing-Is-Misalignment-Taking-10-Off-Your-Sales):

• 33 percent say they are regularly presented with too much information that is not useful to their search for a solution that suits their needs
• 29 percent complain about a lack of relevance to their specific situation
• 24 percent say that the information provided fails to address the needs of all the members of the buying team
• 23 percent feel that there simply isn’t enough truly educational content
• 23 percent believe that the information provided isn’t in a form they can share with others

Not only are vendors finding new customers an increasingly rare species in competitive markets, customer loyalty is harder than ever to obtain. The reasons for this change are, for the most part, reasonably predictable.

This means that there obviously needs to be a great deal of strategic alignment between what Sales and Marketing promise and what the organization delivers.

This consistency is expected in follow-up, but it is also demanded at every touch point in the pipeline. Organizations that can deliver a uniform experience from first touch point to last are those that are most likely to pull away from their competitors in leaps and bounds. Whether it is the sales experience, the marketing presence, or their after-sale service, new customers are highly attuned to corporate culture, and they want to feel that, from the top down, every facet of the organization is aligned, and aligned to their needs at that. Even a slight deviation is often enough to make prospects and customers start exploring other options. Ubiquitous vendors and abundant choice brought on by the Internet means that just one bad customer experience at any of the touch points – or even the perception of a bad experience – has viral potential.

We now understand that a single mismanaged touch point, one poorly aligned Marketing to Sales hand-off, even an off-message rep can poison the well in an instant. Effective inter-departmental alignment can dramatically reduce or even eliminate such inconsistent customer experiences and thus avoid disaster.

Finally, the new breed of tech-savvy customers demand a technologically sophisticated, convenient and information-rich interface from the organizations they are considering doing business with. This is putting substantial pressure on vendors to respond to these expectations with an expanded social media presence, mobility options, data analytics, and cloud capability (SMAC), but also on the new breed of sales rep, who are as much subject matter experts as they are company representatives and solution-oriented salespeople.

As we will see later on, technology is not in itself the answer, but it is definitely one of the doors through which customers might beat a hasty retreat if vendors should fail to meet their expectations.

Digital-age customers undoubtedly expect sophistication, but the higher the purchase price, the more they expect that sophistication to manifest itself in organizational service, not just in technology per se. The longer the likely tenure of the post-sale relationship (e.g. when buying a new IT backend system or outsourcing service), the more scrutiny the vendor will come under and the more they will need to respond with timely and relevant information and personalized service. It is easy to see how there is a fine balance to be struck here and that every organization may strike it differently.

The most successful organizations that I have encountered are invariably those that have adapted their people, practices and technologies so that they can look authoritative at every stage of the Buyer’s Journey and with a high degree of uniformity. In large organizations, it is not unusual for management to devote entire teams to ‘CX’ or Customer Experience. These organizations can boast people and technologies that are nimble and adaptable; they are able to deliver a consistently high-quality customer experience, and their customers are rewarding their efforts.

Read part 2 – The Evolution of The Buyer’s Journey (Part 2)

The post The Evolution Of The Buyer’s Journey (Part 1) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Less than ten seconds is all the time executives now take before they decide whether a sales rep is worth spending their time with, or not.

Seasoned salespeople tell me that, ten years ago, they used to have 30 minutes, or even longer, to establish rapport with a new Prospect or Buyer. During the 2010s, this time shrank down to just a few minutes. The latest feedback is that this window of opportunity has now shrunk even further and is now down to less than ten seconds.

That’s all the time executives now take before they decide whether a new sales rep is worth spending their time with, or not. This anecdotal evidence is also backed up by research. In fact, the hardest part of the sales cycle now is no longer to close a deal, but to gain traction and engagement with a Prospect in the first place. Or, put another way: While it is easy to reach out to your ideal customers, it is now VERY difficult to draw them into a meaningful sales conversation.”

Further, Sirius Decisions tells us: “The greatest inhibitor to sales effectiveness is the seller’s inability to communicate a VALUE message.”

Add to this Forrester’s research findings, saying that “85 percent of sales interactions fail to meet the expectations of buyers” and you can see how the old linear method of introducing ourselves and our business first, before moving on to our products, services or solutions and related customer pain points, is well and truly passé.

Possessing an effective and professional business introduction that spells out clearly and succinctly the benefits that we bring to our buyers is now more essential than ever. If those benefits are also quantified then that’s even better.

So, why do many businesses and their salespeople turn off their prospects, right from the first contact?

Let me give you a concrete example:

The other day, I was asked by a senior executive in an international technology company to facilitate an introduction to a CMO whom I know personally.

I was happy to make the introduction and asked the executive to send me just a short paragraph with a synopsis on their business for me to make the introduction with. Let’s call them xyz IT Company to protect their true identity.

Here is an anonymized version of what I then received:

“xyz IT Company is a US-based technology company founded in 2013, we provide a cloud-based application, designed for enterprise businesses who are committed to B2B and B2C sales transformation, and interested in automating the preparation of bespoke presentations to increase productivity and drive revenue growth, along with reporting and analytics to surface the most effective presentations. 

xyz IT Company integrates deeply with CRM’s, BI tools and any data sources to fuse company data and approved content, delivering a high quality, interactive experience. These automatically generated presentations save a sales (or account management) teams significant preparation time; meaning they can spend longer with their customers and prospects doing what they do best: selling. The presentations themselves are developed as web pages at a slide level, so there’s unlimited flexibility in how content is designed and the way data is visualized.

 xyz IT Company currently works with organizations across a range of industry verticals and company sizes, clients such as (customer brands removed) and we’re also in the process of launching pilots with companies such as (brand names withheld).”

Did you understand it? Did you read even past the first paragraph?

I know the company well, but even I couldn’t make sense of their introduction. Now imagine what the poor CMO (whom I was meant to introduce) would have thought both of XYZ Company and of me, as the referrer.

I get it that it is human nature to want to talk about ourselves and our business and how important and great we and our products or services are.

For a quick exercise go to your website and take a good look at the ABOUT US page.

For a quick exercise go to your business website and take a good look at your ABOUT US page. If that web page is really all about you then get it changed. Get it changed to ABOUT WHAT WE DO FOR YOU. Only then will it be more likely to engage buyers.

Let’s see how it looks from the other side.

Just put yourself into your prospects’, clients’ and customers’ shoes and imagine this:

If I were in their position, would I want to hear all about you and your company, how long you have been around, how many employees you have, in how many countries you operate, what products you have and the logos of your customers?

Or, would I first and foremost want to hear what’s in it for me (WIIFM)?

I like to break the process of starting a new business conversation down into three parts:

1. Answering WIIFM
2. Answering HOW we do it
3. Answering where we have done it before

Let me elaborate:

1. Answering WIIFM

If we spell out the exact business benefits in qualitative and quantitative terms then a buyer can decide very quickly whether they are interested in finding out more, or not. After, all for a sales rep it is just as important to qualify a prospects OUT, as it is to qualify them IN. It saves a rep a lot of time NOT to pursue a prospect who is not interested.

2. Answering HOW we do it

Once we have established active interest in our buyer’s mind they will want more information. Information such as how we deliver the benefits, what they need to do from their end to be successful and how our product, service or solution may apply to their business.

3. Answering WHERE we have done it before

So, they know what’s in it for them and how we deliver the outcome. Now, our buyer will want to be assured that this result can also be delivered to their business and that they are not a lab rat or Guinea pig. They want proof that what we can deliver what we promise. So at this 3rd stage they want customer success stories and testimonials.

All the above, however, depends on gaining that buyer’s interest in the first six seconds. So, how is your business introduction doing?

The post I Have 10 Seconds To Make An Impression? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Today’s information-rich buyers are increasingly unresponsive to yesterday’s sales techniques. This is making it more difficult than ever for salespeople to get through to prospects and decision makers on the phone, let alone to get them to attend physical business events or trade shows. Yet, without that person-to-person contact, they are unable to gauge prospects’ level of interest through traditional means such as body language and other non-verbal cues.

As so many salespeople watch their performance numbers ebb, they face a dilemma: either they adjust to the market by learning an entirely new set of skills (including how to work in concert with Marketing), or they continue to rely on those customers (an endangered species) who still seek out pre-millennial, old-fashioned pitchmen. Naturally, the wise money is on the former.

To put it mildly, the information-saturated, point-and-click world that is the Internet has forever changed customers and their buying behaviors. The buyer has taken control of the buying process away from the traditional sales rep. In the days of the Sales Cycle, it was the sales rep who was in a hurry to close the sale and move on. These days the buyer and the sales rep have swapped places. Today’s buyer is the one who is in a hurry to get to the satisfaction point of a purchase – once, that is, they have identified a need and researched their vendor options.

Sales training vendors have reacted to the new paradigm with a myriad of supposedly new training programs. To be fair, twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century sales training programs – thorough products of their time – worked well in the days of the Sales Cycle (provided they were implemented and managed appropriately). Now that the paradigm has shifted, there has been no small amount of scrambling on the part of sales trainers, who are doing their level best to hammer some old square pegs into some very new round holes. Yesterday’s techniques are being rebranded or adapted to supposedly suit the market’s new realities, but the changes seem mostly at the level of language.

In their essence, sales strategies (some of them now decades old) have remained unchanged. At the risk of potentially doing my sales training peers a disservice, it is my perception that the supposedly new and disruptive sales techniques are really little more than reinvented variants of yesteryears’ methods. A little more modishly dressed up, presented and packaged, but essentially the same. To me they look suspiciously like they are still channeling the basic elements of Neil Rackham’s SPIN method from 30 years ago. The difference being that we no longer expect our prospects to answer a multitude of situation-exploring questions before we attempt to sell them something. Prospects these days are far less patient and they expect modern reps who have done their homework.

The days of the charismatic but tactical salesperson are getting behind us, particularly in B2B sales. A winning personality still goes a long way, but today’s buyers aren’t looking for slick pitchmen. What they are looking for is a subject matter expert, somebody who knows exactly why buyers are solution-hunting in the first place, someone who has insight into their situation and solutions that are tailored to their most pressing issues. They don’t want to hear, “I’ll get back to you on that.” They want answers, and they want them now. Buyers are no longer looking for a sales rep; they are looking for an advisor. After they have conducted all their own research, they want to deal with someone who knows even more than they do about the problem they are trying to solve and the offering that they are most interested in. A poorly prepared or under-informed sales rep is likely to get very short shrift indeed. Don’t get me wrong, there are still buyers out there – particularly B2C buyers – who prefer to walk into a shop and buy from a sales rep on the shop floor. However, the trend is moving away from this long-familiar scenario.

During a guest lecture to the Executive MBA class of the Sydney Business School, I posed the following question to the attendees: How did you conduct your last major purchase? One of them described how he bought a big screen TV simply by walking into a popular retail store and asking the first rep sell them one. A small handful of other respondents cited similar or identical buying behaviors, all of them in a B2C context.

The vast majority of attendees, however, followed a very different path. To cite a single example, one lady in the front of the room said she had recently purchased a new family car. She described how she first went online to explore which cars were available that covered her needs within her price range. Then she went on to look at online vehicle test report sites and checked her impressions against the opinions of her friends, acquaintances and peers. Finally, she looked online at the personal perceptions and experiences of people who had previously purchased the same model that she was now considering.

By the time she was ready to speak to a sales rep she had already decided, not only what brand and model she wanted, but also what color it was to be, what options she required and what price she was prepared to pay. She told the class that she would have been quite prepared to even order the car online if that option had been available to her and that pretty much the only reason she and her husband visited a dealership was to take a test-drive in the car that they had decided to buy.

In summary, she had completed far more than 80% of her decision-making process before she contacted the car dealership. All that the salesperson could do was to take her order and to deliver the car. Can you see how the poor rep in the showroom had next to no control over the sale? All the power remained in the hands of the buyer. That is the power of the Buyer’s Journey.

We are now seeing signs that the above B2C mindset is starting to infiltrate the B2B sales world. Storytelling and sales presentations remain important pillars of the selling game, but they are increasingly trumped by situationally adept consultational skills that are complemented by extensive market insight and specialist solution expertise.

Modern information-rich pre-sales consultants are driving future sales. Even call centers are adjusting the way that their telemarketers or tele-prospectors work. Having traditionally been the light infantry of sales teams, they are changing their tactics, honing in on breaks in the line opened up, not so much by cold calling, but by highly targeted marketing campaigns. There is focus like never before on working the trigger points, i.e. those points at which the prospects’ buying journey and the vendors’ sales content or expert staff intersect.

At these intersections, the savviest of today’s vendors are erecting what I call ‘beacons of expertise’, which vendors are using to attract buyers during the online research phase of their journey. These take a variety of shapes: webinars, white papers, interviews, and sophisticated multi-channel social media engagements. While in the past these have largely been the exclusive domains of marketers, more and more salespeople are beginning to cross into these unfamiliar but bountiful waters. At the very least, salespeople are learning to turn their own familiarity with the same materials that their customers are encountering online to their advantage, especially when the prospect reaches out and initiates contact, perhaps with questions that relate to this content. If the salesperson is able to display much more than just a passing familiarity with the subject matter, they can start to assist the prospect through the final stages of the Buyer’s Journey and direct them away from competitor offerings towards their own.

However, not all salespeople are ready to adjust to the new world order. As sales managers who have been around since the days of Palo Alto Laboratories and the innovations that arrived in the 1970s can tell you, the reality is that many senior salespeople are little inclined to adjust their methods or mindset to fit new paradigms. This reluctance to metamorphose into the new sales environment is a substantial factor in the diminishing bottom line for many sales-based organizations.

Many of my executive clients tell me that they need to evolve from a product-centric organization to a customer-centric, solutions-oriented one, but that their own reps are unable or unwilling to make that transition.

In one of the largest technology vendor organizations that I have worked with, management had come to realize that future sales margins were going to come from selling solutions, not hardware. They tried, as gently as possible, to move their sales reps into pushing software to go with the hardware as a kind of ‘thin end of the wedge’, something that could slowly but surely transition their selling practices more towards solution-selling. The prevailing attitude of the died-in-the-wool hardware sales reps, though, was that, “Software is only 10% of the revenue, but it is 90% of the trouble. I’d rather sell another piece of hardware (colloquially referred to as a ‘box’) than any software.” The sad reality for this organization was that fewer than 20% of their reps were realistically capable of adapting to the new solution-selling paradigm. In no time at all, they were left without options. They were forced to transition out about 80% of their reps and sales managers and replace them with new blood. There’s no way to sugarcoat this: the financial and emotional costs were immense.

Drastic as the move may have seemed to the terminated staff or to uninformed outsiders, it was absolutely necessary for the future prosperity of the organization. For the organization in question, adapting to the new paradigm meant an almost complete overhaul of their sales department.

The alternative is worse. Old-school sales techniques being applied to new-school customers manifests itself in closure rates plummeting, too many sales leads remaining unattended, and too may ‘stuck deals’ in the sales pipeline that are not moving forward.

Here are three things the most successful of the new-school salespeople are doing consistently and are doing well:

Here are three things the most successful of the new-school salespeople are doing consistently and are doing well:

1)     They are using social listening and in-depth research to catch buyers during their discovery and consideration phases

2)     They are surprising and delighting potential buyers with data or insights that interrupt or divert their journey away from competitors

3)     They are positioning themselves as subject matter experts and trusted advisors, rather than as sales reps

The first of these requires world-class communication between sales and marketing teams; the second demands significant dedication and flexibility on the part of salespeople, who need to broaden and deepen their scope if they are to adapt to today’s customers and their needs; the third requires the ongoing development of new skills and aptitudes. The demand for sales consultants who fit this mold is far outstripping supply, making it more difficult than ever for organizations to get out ahead of the rapidly swinging pendulum, which is swinging towards a vital new breed of sales reps who are as much subject matter experts and consultative solution salesperson as they are company representatives. These twenty-first-century salespeople are the avant garde in the ongoing revolution of sales practices.

Takeaway

The world of Sales has changed significantly over the last few years, and the boundaries to Marketing are beginning to blur.

Clearly, significant challenges abound and only a collaborative mindset is the way of a successful future.

Read part 1 – The Evolution of The Buyer’s Journey (Part 1)

Note from author – this is an excerpt from Peter Strohkorb’s book “The OneTEAM Method”.

The post The Evolution Of The Buyer’s Journey (Part 2) appeared first on Head Of Sales.