Three Important Ways You Can Improve Conversations
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 6 seconds.
With a unique and challenging year behind us, now is the time to reflect on how the pandemic is bringing digital conversations to the forefront in 2021. Sales success will be determined by how well these conversations flow and convert.
The power of frontline sales conversations
Your salespeople will be on screen constantly this year, speaking with prospects and customers alike. So the way they present themselves and conduct their conversations has never been more important. It’s your company’s greatest asset.
Frontline sales conversation training, if done properly, can be both budget friendly and highly effective in terms of ROI. The key is to get your sales teams focused on skills such as sharing objectives, active listening, relating to their client’s concerns, and providing clarity in conversation. While you could use your training budget to create two or three hours of one-size-fits-all training, instead consider the power of 1:1 practice. Thirty minutes, one-to-one with a professional coach allows for a laser focus on building individual strengths and closing individual gaps.
Three ways your team can communicate more effectively with clients
1. Set objectives
Start by confirming the purpose of the meeting, from the perspective of your client.
Align to their specific needs.
Present a strong value proposition that includes your personal qualifications, credentials, and benefits to your client. This is essential to capturing your client’s attention and positioning yourself as a professional who can help them achieve their goals.
Check to proceed or ask permission to continue so that your client feels consulted, and to reveal new or previously undiscovered needs.
2. Listen actively
Pay attention, paraphrase, reframe, summarize priorities, pick up clues and respond accordingly.
Look at the camera to maintain eye contact and smile to encourage your client to continue. It may feel strange at first, but it makes a difference.
Pick up on comments or clues and ask targeted questions about them.
3. Relate to client concerns & provide clarity
Empathize with concerns or resistance to help your client feel understood and validated.
Open a two-way problem-solving dialogue. Give the client space to respond.
Provide feedback. Ensure your client understands it clearly, in their terms.
Collaborate as partners to work out the best possible solution.
Avoid judgement. We’re all working from home with kids hanging from us, and dogs barking. The new state of normal doesn’t leave room for quick judgements.
These are three simple skill sets that any leader, manager, or frontline worker can use to improve their conversations. Share this blog with them, or even cut and paste the above into an email. Sharing tactics always helps.
People buy from people they trust
The LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2020 confirms that virtual selling has gone mainstream. 81% of sales professionals are conducting more video conferencing since face-to-face meetings are so limited. 88% percent of buyers agreed that the salespeople they ultimately do business with are “trusted advisors.” And trust is highly correlated to the skill of listening. In fact, active listening was ranked the #1 attribute that buyers most value from salespeople.
So ask yourself: What does that mean for your sales teams this year?
Frontline sales conversations are powerful. Investing in practice builds these skills. People trust and buy from skilled frontline salespeople.
Where the rubber meets the road
In future posts this year, we’ll provide insights and actionable tools for helping your teams maximize the important conversations they have at work. We’ll focus on:
Leadership coaching: Provide management teams with clarity on the best sales strategies and the skills to effectively communicate those strategies moving forward.
Sales manager coaching: Help sales managers communicate effectively, and suggest ways to effectively coach and develop their teams to drive peak sales performance.
Frontline sales coaching: Enable managers to understand the total scope of their responsibilities and help their teams conduct extraordinarily successful sales conversations.
If you’d like to learn more, please Contact Us, or call us at:
Toronto: 416.366.6296
Toll-Free: 1.866.945.0648
We’re here to help your teams master the virtual business communication skills they need to build sales.
