Here's how you can adjust your sales approach to align with evolving customer needs in Direct Sales.

Your present client interactions are a great indicator of how you can realign your strategies. Understanding the challenges every layer of the organization faces from the stakeholder to the end-user perspectives. Decoding these challenges and presenting solutions is the way to speak the customer's language.

One thing that is very important is to remain up-to-date with recent news and change in policy. If you are not aware of things affecting your customers and their ability to use your service, you will never be able to fulfil their needs.

The world is dynamic and consumer behavior changes with time. It's imperative to track consumer behavior, market trends and obtain relevant insights with the use online methods like emails, social media, online activities and offline with research methods, surveys, focused group discussions, one on one communication. Online methods should be a 2 way fast response communication flow. There are ubiquitous sales tools to analyse and track sales activities including but not limited to Google analytics and CRM tools. The sales team must be proactive and not reactive to consumer engagement and monitoring.

In my experience, the most effective way to understand industry trends is to review the annual report of similar publicly traded companies. Many times, the "letter to shareholders" will articulate industry trends positively and / or negatively impacting the company. Chances are good these same trends are affecting similar companies.

Listening to your client before responding is the most important part of the process. It is the definition of EQ: let your customers talk, talk, talk before you jump in to help and offer your solution. Here’s your key to make a sale

Listening is a very key skill in sales, it shows empathy for customer issues and it helps to obtain relevant information that would be beneficial for key decision making to drive successful outcomes. The perspectives of customer in one on one communication reveals body language, tone of voice and non verbal communication that would be key to gaining a better understanding for a more robust feedback and clarity on questions.

In my experience, active listening is 'key' to understanding a client's needs and building credibility. As a rule of thumb, you should be listening more than talking. This will position you well to respond in a way that best aligns your experience and knowledge to a client's concerns.

Information on demographics and psychographics to tailor fit a sales pitch to address the identified needs and challenges of the customers while making them excited. Data analytics are helpful in analysing data that's processed to become information in assisting customers to meet their individual needs and preferences. This value driven approach of personalization helps to build a stronger customer loyalty that drives in better sales numbers.

One service can cater to a 1000s of different people/businesses, but the key is to sell them the outcome they want. Never sell the product, sell the dream. And each dream is different. All you need to do is understand the dream (the outcome they expect) and sell that to them.

The internet aids and helps to simplify sales activities. Mobile friendly sales apps that are easy to use and very fast should be used for customer engagement. This simplifies business processes enhances speed in the customer experience. CRM tools are helpful in customer engagement. Social media activities help to have better customer engagement. Technology combined with the internet, increases the speed of sales activities at unimaginable fast speeds. In sales speed is very important because competition aims to dominate and Increae their market share.

Hubspot, Sales Navigator, Octopus CRM are all platforms that pop up in my mind. I’m sure you can sell without them, but you can always sell better with them. Learn them like the back of your hand and watch yourself flourish.

The internet aids and helps to simplify sales activities. Mobile friendly sales apps that are easy to use and very fast should be used for customer engagement. This simplifies business processes enhances speed in the customer experience. CRM tools are helpful in customer engagement. Social media activities help to have better customer engagement. Technology combined with the internet, increases the speed of sales activities at unimaginable fast speeds. In sales speed is very important because competition aims to dominate and Increae their market share.

In my experience, it is important to remain abreast of the latest techniques for successful client engagements. These can often be found within your own organization by benchmarking yourself against top sales leaders and reviewing what makes them successful.