The Confident Seller
Sales floors are packed with hard-chargers. Many reps have dynamic, forceful (confident) personalities that allow them to command a room. They are so vocal that others may have to cut them off to get a word in. This physiological sales enablement solution helps them to deliver long-winded pitches. They are resilient, and therefore able to deal with the ups and downs of the industry. They have high-energy, which keeps them motivated and enthusiastic to engage with prospects throughout even the longest sales cycles.
Mismatched Relationships
These traits are necessary and indispensable to the sales process, but they could serve as a big turn-off to prospects with different communication styles.
- A soft-spoken prospect may feel steamrolled by a talker.
- An introvert may be over-stimulated by a boisterous pitch.
- A person who learns by asking questions may never engage with a presentation-style approach.
Personality clashes are the silent killer of ROI.
The problem is that the hard-charger is not accustomed to hearing or responding to the social cues that tell them when to switch gears. Their sales presentation skills are stuck in one gear, and they lack any kind of active sales performance management.
It Starts at the Sales Manager
The effective sales manager purposefully hires hard-chargers, knowing full-well that the big personality isn’t going anywhere. Effective sales managers would rather work to change the style in which reps communicate with prospects, preferring a personality type with stick-to-itiveness.
However, with practice, even larger-than-life reps can learn to appeal to any audience. It’s all about gauging temperature.
Coach reps into adopting these simple practices
Take the prospect’s temperature before the call.
Whenever it’s possible, do reconnaissance before a sales call. With company websites and online social profiles, it’s easier than ever to learn the personality style of a prospect long before meeting them. Leverage digital sales and browse Twitter feeds, blog posts, company bios and LinkedIn connections.
In cyberspace:
- Is the prospect more frequently asserting their own opinion, or responding to the opinions of others?
- The former is a hallmark of a talker, and the latter is a hallmark of a yielding type
- Are they connected with thousands of people online, or a small circle?
- The former is a potential extravert, and the latter a likely introvert.
Take the prospect’s temperature during the call.
Don’t believe everything you read on the web. Online and “Real Life” personas are not always congruent. Thus, approach the prospect in a neutral way and let them set the tone for the sales presentation.
- Are they asking for a loud, fast-paced, quipping conversation? Or maybe they’re coming with low-energy and a pessimistic attitude.
- Assess whether the prospect wants a formal conversation or an informal one.
- Determine whether they’re interested in quick fixes or the long view.
- Determine whether they’re high energy or lethargic, and optimistic or pessimistic.
Adjust to the temperature of the prospect.
When reps force the prospect to adjust to their personal style of communication, they [the prospect] will disengage and even walk away angry. Prospects are responsive to reps who communicate like they do. It’s invaluable for reps to mirror the behaviors of the prospect.
- Did the prospect seem more cautious and pessimistic than optimistic?
- Don’t respond with a can-do attitude. Validate and speak to their worries and concerns.
- Is the prospect seeming low energy and buttoned down?
- Don’t show up with a coffee buzz, a tailored suit and a briefcase. Dress casually and speak informally.
When using the mirroring approach, the prospect will be inclined to hear what the rep is really saying and respond with favor.
Leverage Your Marketing Team
Often overlooked, it is imperative that you (the Sales Rep) don’t downplay the value of your internal pot-of-information-gold sitting in the office down the hall; your Marketing Team.
When you leverage your Marketing team, you achieve one of the most powerful business practices available; Sales and Marketing alignment.
Sales and Marketing alignment is an example of structural, if not real sales enablement. Your Marketing team may have captured and nurtured that lead using content management software like Marketing Automation. If so, you’ll have insights into:
- What content they consumed
- When and how they entered the sales process/funnel
- What Social Media interactions they’ve had with the business
- What details they provided in a contact form
- And a great deal of other insight
This knowledge will ensure that you aren’t only providing a personality character to fit the buyer, but a needs assessment based off their behavior with content, because actions speak louder than words.
If you’re keen enough, you could delve a little deeper and uncover what device they’ve used, time of day they interacted with content, location, and etc.
Then you start your Sales presentation, add a little personal insight, maybe they used a Blackberry phone, start with some zingy off-banter chat. They could have consumed content at 6am, maybe bring a coffee? The choices are endless when content insights are applied, Sales and Marketing alignment is in place, and the rep is hungry for a close.
It’s Not Just Marketing that has Fancy Tools
If you’re sitting and wondering why Marketing teams have snazzy Automation systems with content behavior analytics, and Sales Reps don’t, look no further!
Adaptive Sales Enablement is a sales analytics software that delivers ‘closed loop marketing’. That means all those insights about content management and consumption that Marketing Automation creates, exists equally for Sales Reps.
Some insights take practice, planning, conversation, and a little luck. Others are as easy as applying the right sales rep software, pulling some behavioural facts, and delighting the buyer by knowing more than they knew themselves.
Are you looking for a robust sales enablement solutions (the latter)?
You came to the right place.
