Introduction
I combine high technology with high technology. I teach what I call Rapport Selling, in terms of being truly customer oriented and engaging on a very personal level. But I also use high-tech, with videos, podcasts, blogs, Flickr slideshows, etc.
I think this is really important, because organizations and their leaders simply cannot ignore the impact of technology and the Internet throughout the sales process. This is not only for technology companies; it is for everyone. That's why I wanted to share with you how the Internet has changed sales.
So join me now when I collect interviews about my views on this area.
What else, besides the Internet, have you noticed changed in how people buy?
I would say that there are 4 changes in how people buy, and they are not directly related to the Internet.
The first is the technology as a whole, which has improved immeasurably to stimulate communication in a mobile mode. Yes, the Internet allows a revolution in social networks, but the devices should have been there in the first place. This allows buyers to buy on the go, truly mobile.
The second change, globalization, is a rather big word, but for consumers it means that they have much more choice than a few years. back and can buy from the new economies of the Far East and South America. In fact, consumers demand more choice and are waiting for it.
Third, buyers are much more demanding than ever before. By this I mean not only the appeal to the product and services and their suitability, but also the levels of service that surround them. Consumers want better customer service and can now voice their opinions and be heard.
Finally, I think that buyers control their purchases much more than ever before. Yes, the Internet has allowed it, but it is also the best education and access to information that we have never had. And this leads to the fact that buyers will no longer be sold. Yes, they love to buy, but will not be sold to anyone, these days are long gone.
How about the influence of the Internet? What does this mean for sales leaders and their teams?
The Internet has caused major changes in how consumers consume products and services. These are the game change and sales teams that bought to get changes or whiter on the vine. And, frankly, many of them, but some of them still pull their heads, refusing to move away from their 1980s.
How does the Internet affect? Let me take a look at the three main hits.
Firstly, the sale process has undergone a seismic shift over the last 5-7 years, since the Internet has really appeared. This shift is a result of the fact that the Internet is becoming a truly shared experience with consumers providing content, rather than just the big web developers of the wig who created the web pages before 2004. Known as Web 2.0.
Imagine that the earth is shifted to its axis, just a couple of degrees. The impact on the environment, the weather will be catastrophic, and Hollywood made a series of films about the disaster at this event.
The buying process has changed and no longer corresponds to the traditional sales process.
In the old days, customers understood that they needed something and went to the legions of vendors on foot, by telephone and interacting with vendors. They will find merchants through advertising, on High Street, or they will ask their friends for a recommendation. Sellers would ask questions about their needs and promote the most suitable product they knew a lot about, and if they were good at closing, it would ensure a sale. It worked.
The second effect is that buyers now have more control over the sales process.
Now consumers understand that they have a need, the desire to buy has not changed, but this time they do one of three things. They themselves will fix this problem by contacting the Internet, Google, YouTube. Or they will turn to their friends for a recommendation, but this process is multiplied because we all have so many friends on the Internet on our social networks, we will even consult with respected sellers from strangers, because we believe that these people are more than advertising that still intrudes into our lives.
But the most common way to satisfy our needs, the itch is to look for a solution or scratches from the Internet. We thoroughly and thoroughly research the Internet on the Internet, looking for recommendations as we go. Much is available for us to buy there and then; Soon I will talk about commoditization. If they are looking for the services of a company to meet their needs, they also explore competition with you, and in some situations they will get more knowledge than your company than you might know.
Consumers have become an expert in researching and using the Internet to find out what they need.
The fact is that by the time when we are reluctant to call the seller or visit a company that sells a product, we have already made a decision about this decision. We know what color we want, what specification and how cheap is the price for the service. Sellers have become producers of orders and cannot use their charm and persuasive ability to change their mind.
Consumers enter the sales process of the seller halfway through the price stage negotiations, which completely eliminates the seller’s need — the robot can do this if the product is simple and convenient for the goods.
The third important influence of the Internet is commoditization, which I have already mentioned several times. This means that many products and services were beaten because of "bells and whistles" and were destroyed to their bare components and sold at the cheapest price. This is due to consumer demand and the Internet. If the Internet can advertise your product or service, it will happen. It's like a flood, the water will come, and you will not be able to stop it.
Take my main industry sector - financial services - here in the UK, this sector has recently experienced some major changes, becoming more complex and expensive to access. But still products are slowly processed and sold online or by phone. Car insurance, home insurance, medical insurance and a guarantee of life can be bought cheaply and online. The face-to-face financial advice bastions are being hit hard by online models that even require commoditized financial advice. One site Ensures that they have a diverse team of qualified financial advisors who can offer free answers to your personal financial questions for up to 60 minutes.
Currently, my profession, training and conversation are currently regulated by commodities, and this will change the way corporations are, but learning and development will be in the future. This morning, I spoke with a client from a large building society, and he explained that they were switching to an online learning model, since personal training in the classroom was prohibitively expensive. I am currently training more on video than face to face.
Another trend is automated purchasing software, called purchasing purchase packages, which allows companies to purchase all of their services and products using automated tools that provide the best possible deal and never face the seller.
Terribly. But the result of product productivity.
You work in different organizations in many countries. Do you think most organizations have “understood”?
I believe that most organizations “dig” change and influence. Some of them have gone a bit too far into social networks, but we'll talk about that later. There are still legions of vendors who study as talking brochures, not true problem solvers, but this is slowly changing.
There are my clients who have radically modernized their value proposition in order to be more consistent with postcommunication, but again, this is slowly taking off. Preventive selling is gaining momentum with the proper use of social networks to early start communicating with customers who have an itch. I will talk about this later.
They usually appear there, especially in the UK and the USA, but some countries are lagging behind the curve as the Internet begins to swallow its consumers. For example, in India, the Internet is being used, which is now being consumed through mobile technologies, just like in Africa, so this will change consumer models, although the infrastructure on these continents is different.
Now I’m interested in your opinions on the different roles of sales and marketing. What do you think?
The roles are blurred. Traditionally, marketing would attract customers, and the seller then pushes them into his sales process and closes them. There are four aspects here.
First, because customers come to us, finding us on the Internet, as a rule, through websites and social networks - working on YouTube, in blogs, on Facebook, etc. - is to keep them warm until they are ready to buy, do not send them to the sales teams as potential customers, because the customer is not ready and this can cause frustration in the sales team. Instead, marketing should incubate them, keep them warm until the client is ready to move.
The second point is that this incubator process requires the customer to be kept warm with information and useful media to help them find a solution. This noise must be created and sent to the Internet for consumers to devour. Noise is food for the incubator. And this noise should be created by sellers who need to be close to the problems and tasks of their target market. Sellers need to develop incredible knowledge not about their products, but about the problems that their customers face, and they need to start creating videos, blogs, podcasts, articles, forum posts, discussion materials on the solutions of their customers. This should be done by sellers, not marketing.
My third theme is that advertising to the masses no longer works, so marketing should stop. Yes, you have ad targeting on web pages, blogs, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on. P. And, for the most part, consumers tolerate it. I think that with the increasing use of mobile devices to consume this information, we will become less charitable in advertising that is annoying and annoying. I know how annoying I am when an ad interrupts my YouTube video and a pop-up window blocks my phone screen.
The future of marketing is individual advertising, which provides value and does not scream about the product in the old way.
He is known as SOLOMO - social, local and mobile. The use of social networks, including advertising, is local to you (within 1 meter of where you walk on GPS signals from your phone) and mobile, because they are received on your smartphone.
Finally, marketing must take into account sales opportunities for sales and abandon the functions and benefits of products and services. Sellers can get their education for this, because their customers will be. Now sellers need to know the market in which the product operates, and the problems it solves, and how it can be adapted or adapted to their target market.
One of your main topics, Paul, is “Selling the Rapport,” the interaction between people. How does this work in the online world?
In any case, the Internet has simplified this, but only where customers want it. Communication technologies have simplified and accelerated the establishment of personal relationships with customers. Take my example of a financial services website earlier. On the page there is a button with a phone number or a call request that starts a relationship. One of them says that the company can offer a Skype video call or Face Point in time with a client. We all have this technology - most smartphones have cameras in front and behind that allow video calls without expensive technology.
In the world of business-to-business, we can now explore our client using social networking tools and learn about them before we meet. This energetically accelerates the process of creating mutual understanding ... without the fact that we are starting to get creepy. We can check people, their credentials, who they know what they do for a holiday. Last week I examined a potential client before calling them, and noticed that they were a rugby coach for the youth team. Now that I do too, so for the first 15 minutes of the phone call that we talked about, there was rugby ... naturally.
In the lengthy sales process, other parties can be bought in a relationship using Skype technology rather than driving in-car lines. This demonstrates a large team to solve problems, but at the early stage leads the human factor.
Nearby are holographic files that allow you to appear in the meeting room as a three-dimensional image. Think Star Trek, Star Wars. The technology exists, but it is extremely expensive and a massive bandwidth leak. But he will come.
What do you think business leaders need to do to enable sales teams to thrive?
OK, we are now in solutions.
In the meeting room there should be a number of key changes in the strategy.
First, everyone must be included in the sales process and play a role in future business sales. Senior leaders need to endorse this and make everyone accountable. Everything from cleaner to financial director.
Then they need to develop a valuable firm proposal and be very clear about the markets in which they work, and the customers they can help, and how they can help their customers solve their problems and needs. This value proposition should be on top, as a strategy, and filtered to sales managers and teams.
The sales process needs to be adjusted at the top. In the B2B world, the Council should promote preventive sales, and this phase should be in the sales process. Proactive sales associated with a business customer before they even discover what they need. It employs retailers using social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn, Google alerts and search engine capabilities to discover the needs of their customers before they notice them. These are known as trigger points — internal and external changes that create problems and problems for the corporate client that need to be addressed.
As a preemptive nuclear strike from my youth in the 1970s. As long as we launch before the enemy can respond, we will be successful. In a similar vein, if sellers can interact with customers at this early stage, we can influence the decision-making processes and research that they usually perform in isolation.
The Council must determine how they will aim and measure this activity, and sometimes rethink KPIs and indicators so that they are correctly oriented and rewarded with a bonus and commission. Remember, what is earned is measured, and if sellers are measured against predominant sales, they will do it.
The final intervention for the board should be an increase in company resources for the two new elements of the sales process. At the beginning of a "noise", and at the end - customer service. More resources need to go to customer service e, so that we start giving what I call “wow” customer service. This forces customers to constantly interact with us, and when their needs reappear, we are in the frame when they begin to explore the solution.
Let's look at sales managers. What do you recommend them?
For a sales manager, I believe that there are three main areas for them. Initially, they want to explore their recruitment processes. We no longer need salespeople, we need intelligent technical experts who can relate to their market and customers inside, and who can think about problems and have an idea to solve them for customers. We need natural advisory types that are well versed and ask questions. The old-fashioned “mouth on a stick” pedestrian brochure is no longer needed. Move existing people from technical areas to sales and train them to close.
Next is the workout. Sellers need different training to cope with the new bazaar. They need to be trained:
- How their clients work, how companies work - report and accounts, indicators, return on investment.
- The industry in which they serve.
- How to solve problems and be creative - methods of consultation
- How purchases work in the companies they call because they will deal with them more than you think.
Coaching enters the rear. Ensure that the revised sales process is regularly practiced. Некоторые продавцы хотят, чтобы помощь и руководство с новым способом работы и коучинга могли помочь им добраться туда.
Наконец измерение. Измените измерения досок до KPI и других показателей, которые способствуют поведению, которое вы хотите сейчас. Измерить их на создание контента - видео, подкасты, статьи и блоги. Оцените их навыки решения проблем, их навыки продажи в социальных сетях, онлайн-поиск.
Наконец, сами специалисты по продажам: есть ли дополнительные вещи, которые они могут сделать?
Принять концепции социальной продажи. Узнайте, как использовать социальные медиа для своей собственной выгоды - Twitter, Linked In - это основные, использующие Inside view, свою систему CRM на основе облаков. Социальные продажи касаются использования огромных ресурсов ваших профилей потенциальных клиентов, чтобы внедрить ваш опыт и выявить триггерные точки, которые помогут вам продавать досрочно. Социальная продажа предполагает, что продавец внедряет свои знания в социальные сети, которые их клиенты читают и предаются.
Продавцы могут исследовать своих потенциальных клиентов так много в наши дни, и это может сэкономить время, когда они встречаются. На самом деле они обязаны это делать. Больше не можете уйти с вопросом «Расскажите мне о своем бизнесе»?
Они захотят стать удобными в создании контента. Писать и вести блог об их опыте и о том, как это решает проблемы клиентов. Им необходимо постоянно наращивать этот опыт, выходя за рамки своего продукта и находить новые инновационные способы предоставления дополнительной ценности своим клиентам и решения их проблем. Им необходимо постоянно изучать проблемы своих клиентов, настраивая Google Alerts, поиск Google и использование Social Selling для достижения этой цели.
Получение рефералов от клиентов всегда было выгодным способом поиска нового бизнеса, и это не изменилось, за исключением того, что теперь у нас есть LinkedIn, который можно широко использовать для сбора нового бизнеса. Ищите рефералы от существующих клиентов, используя этот носитель; это намного быстрее и эффективнее. Уходите от лечения LinkedIn как только резюме онлайн - это намного больше.
Я знаю одно из возражений ко всему этому, что это занимает слишком много времени. Как ты делаешь это?
Для меня создание высококачественного контента - это показатель продаж, KPI, который я измеряю. Мои цели - написать 2500 слов каждую неделю, создать одно видео для продажи, создать два подкаста, опубликовать записи в блоге 2. Это цели для меня, и я должен получить самодисциплину для создания контента.
Я делаю это, используя пару стратегий. Во-первых, я использую один и тот же контент и выставляю его по-разному. Например, эта «Белая книга» найдет свой путь в 4 или 5 сообщениях в блоге, коротком видео, ряде подкастов и, возможно, в моей следующей книге. Таким образом, я просто переупаковываю контент для разных людей.
Я никогда не теряю времени в свой рабочий день. У меня есть мой нетбук со мной все время, поэтому я могу писать статьи на поезде, самолете, в зале ожидания, даже ожидая, когда моя дочь выйдет из практики своего хора в теплой машине. Когда приходит идея, я фиксирую это в голосовой записи, загружая в облако, и это напоминает мне статью позже, когда в офисе.
Я передаю большую часть технических материалов и ворчания. Например, рендеринг видео, загрузка их на YouTube и Vimeo, добавление музыки в подкасты и т. Д. Мой 17-летний учится у меня, пока он делает экзамены на уровне A, и я использую oDesk для другой работы.
Я очень активен на всех платформах социальных сетей, используя их как способ выталкивать свой опыт и ценность и предоставлять бесплатную информацию и ценность всем, кто ее хочет. Я автоматизирую должности, чтобы выпускать новые статьи и подкасты и т. Д., А также личные записи там, где это необходимо.
Я использую свой контент для инкубации моих потенциальных клиентов, некоторые из них занимаются этим контентом в течение многих месяцев даже за несколько лет до того, как они находятся в закупочной позиции, и что со мной все в порядке, когда они хотят знать, где я.
