Tag Archive for: Dave Brock

You are here: Home / Dave Brock

Posts

business-handshake

Build Rapport with Potential Buyers

Feb 2014/in /by

What’s one sure-fire way to improve sales productivity? Work on developing a rapport with your prospective buyers. Yes, you want your clients to like you, but that’s not necessarily what rapport means. As Anthony Iannarino explains it on The Sales Blog:

“Rapport isn’t ‘I like you.’ Rapport is ‘I am like you.’”

This word implies a mutual understanding and an ease of communication. If that doesn’t sound like the typical relationship your salespeople have with potential clients, they may need to work on developing empathy. There are several steps that go into developing this kind of trusting relationship.

What Does Your Customer Want?

With the customer research tools available today, it’s easy to discover what your customer needs. Take a look at some big data analytics and determine what’s happening out there in the potential client’s market. What are the big events and potential problems? Part of being a good resource for clients is having an in-depth understanding of what they do.

Trust Your Customer

It’s important to have some faith in your potential client. Salespeople can be often be condescending when discussing customers, but this is exactly the wrong kind of attitude to have. Often, sales reps have a low opinion of clients, believing that they lie or they’re uninformed. These preconceptions have a major impact on how salespeople interact with potential clients one on one, according to Dave Brock for his Partners in Excellence blog. In order to be a great salesperson, you have to understand that client buyers are people who make mistakes. They may not tell you the truth every time, however, this is likely because they’re misinformed, not because they’re trying to mislead you. To be a trusted resource, you have to be able to connect with these individuals as people, not just buyers.

Be a Good Listener

So, you have the background details that you got from your customer intelligence research. That’s great, but these numbers don’t always tell the whole story. You need a real person to fill in the blanks. Don’t assume you know everything about your customer’s market. Use the data you do know to ask pointed questions. Listening to the answers is what will earn you trust, not telling your potential client something they already know. Use their answers to guide the conversation.

Meet Them on Their Turf

Let your potential client determine how you will communicate. This doesn’t just mean the channel, which you should also take into consideration. It means their conversational style, says Selling Power. Do they like to start out a conversation with small talk, or get right into the meat of things? Are they laid back or chatty? Matching their energy is another good way to build rapport.

Smile and Be Funny

When it comes to customer service, smiling is one of the oldest rules in the book. While business-to-business often seems radically different from say, a restaurant, some parts are still the same. To a certain extent, people are programmed to mirror the emotions we see in others. Your smiling face should be the first thing the prospect sees. You don’t have to grin like an idiot the entire time, just be happy to see them. Humor is also a good icebreaker. Don’t go overboard with the knock-knock jokes, but be affable. Being self-effacing also portrays some vulnerability, which goes a long way in establishing rapport, according to Iannarino.

With a little empathy, you can gain the trust of your prospects, paving the way towards a mutually beneficial relationship. It all starts with building rapport.

simple path

Get More Sales When You Stop Selling

Nov 2013/in /by

By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Market Development

In sales, there’s been a lot of hype about the importance of knowing your customers. While it’s easy to talk about, the truth of the matter is companies are struggling to gain insights into their clients’ realities. Although there are a number of tools available to help make sense of all the disparate data sources out there, many sales teams are still getting bogged down with complexity, and that can negatively impact sales productivity. With disrupters entering the market more frequently, businesses need to know their customers and their customers’ market conditions. While this sounds like a daunting task, making processes simpler can improve revenue gains and customer relationships. When you focus on customers, it’s easier to design processes with them in mind.

Stop Using Complexity as an Excuse
New sales methodologies crop up all the time, and it’s pretty clear that some organizations are agile enough to adapt. Despite this, firms need to put customers first. But if companies hide behind the excuse of tricky market conditions, difficult-to-know customers or internal operations, a competitor can easily enter the market and snatch business away, according to an article by Dave Brock for Salesforce. Many organizations default to doing the things the same way they always have.

In fact, organizational complexity can make it harder to solve problems because sales teams or other departments are trying to approach them the wrong way. Some companies have a set way of approaching issues and are afraid to diverge, even when there’s a new opportunity. Brock noted startups are often better at solving problems and addressing clients’ needs because they aren’t stuck in the same rut of taking an established route. Startups don’t necessarily experience less complexity, but they don’t rely on the same approaches all the time.

Simplifying sales methods, processes and organizational attitudes isn’t always an easy task. Past habits and beliefs can prevent team members from seeing the big picture and maximizing productivity. But if your sales reps are spending more time arguing in internal meetings than serving customers, something needs to change. You need to consider things from your customers’ perspectives to make adjustments.

Putting Your Customers—Not Your Pitches—First Will Improve Sales
They say you catch more flies with honey, and your sales team may land more deals by catering to customers’ needs and preferences, rather than having a pitch ready at all times. Although your reps should absolutely know your product or service offerings back and forth, this shouldn’t be the information they lead with. If you want to boost sales, you should address customers first. Talk about them—their companies, their markets—and ask questions rather than just speak, Tom Searcy wrote for Inc. magazine.

In the past, salespeople would go to meetings and talk about why their products were the best, but now your team needs to be more subtle. Don’t be caught selling. Your team can be a lot more successful by focusing on issues related to your clients’ businesses. You can then offer insights into these problems by placing the emphasis on the context of the business, rather than the context of products you are trying to tell. Reps that take this approach wait to be asked to solve the problem. They do not push their own solutions. But expressing this concern about customer pain points helps establish a deeper sense of trust. These salespeople transform themselves into strategic partners and advisors instead of just a contact after the sale.

Market Insight Is Key
Without a firm knowledge of the conditions, competitors and geopolitical events in a customer’s market, your team can’t deliver this kind of service to clients or prospects. Although your customers are more informed about their options, you need to know what they are facing to meet them on their own terms and sell without selling.

back to top
MENU