ACING MARKETING & SALES

Marketing and sales are proficiencies all humans need almost as much as water and food! Let’s be honest, unless one is an asocial hermit, we are all marketing and “selling” ourselves on a daily basis?

You design your profile and craft your posts on social media meticulously, why? Well, you want to attract attention and garner responses? So you are essentially marketing yourself, putting yourself out there in cyber space to attract interest.

Now someone whom you approve of connects or links with you and you start building a relationship by way of two way communication. Your object is obviously to establish, grow and maintain a relationship of some sort. But in order to do that you need to convince them that they need what you have to offer, that you can contribute positively to their being in some way? Thus you are obviously “selling” yourself.

This example clearly shows the foundation of marketing and sales: communication. Where marketing entails baiting the fishing line and casting it into the area where the fish are, sales focuses on hook-setting, reeling in, netting and delivering the fish for processing.

Both marketing and sales are specialized commercial fields nowadays and contain a lot of theory relating to other aspects than simple interaction between the marketer or salesperson and the (prospective) customer, like cost of sales, market trends, demographic and geographic influencers, etc.

But without communication skills all the theory in the world would be useless? You would know what you know, but you wouldn’t be able to bring your target audience to know what they need to know. You would be unable to create any form of attraction and interaction and subsequently you would not make any sales, have no cash flow and promptly be forced out of business?

From the above we should realize that we are all marketers and salespeople, albeit of self, but that professional marketing and salespeople need superlative communication skills to succeed in their vocation. But the basics remain the same: you have the seller, the object and the buyer that need to connect.

The first three pillars of communication, empathy, acceptance and being real, are essential to this end.

Empathy

As a marketer or a salesperson you have an object, a product or service, that you need and want someone else to buy or subscribe to?

Empathy entails putting yourself in someone else’s, the buyer or subscriber’s, shoes. You firstly need to ascertain your prospect’s need, from their perspective and not yours. Obviously the internet and social media has simplified the gathering of information on prospects which should contribute to marketers and salespeople empathizing much more accurately and efficiently with their market and consumers in general.

So, you need to do your homework or research for starters and, enabled by this knowledge when approaching your prospect, you need to convince them that you are on the same page, that you understand their needs and are there to address them. By way of experience and doing the necessary research into your prospect prior to pitching you should be able to anticipate and be well prepared for most, if not all questions.

This is obviously where communication skills come in, not talking to the prospect and prescribing your product but speaking with them and presenting your product as a viable solution.

Too many times one encounters manufacturers and suppliers who are rather nonchalant towards the customer’s real need, offering a partial or semi-satisfactory solution but refusing to go the extra mile in providing a completely satisfying product. Granted, not all variations to a standard solution are practically or economically viable, but what I find frustrating is an unwillingness to perform a minor tweak to the product presentation, which might even be welcomed by several other customers or prospects too!

A marketing and sales approach of “this is what we offer and you either take it or leave it” shows a complete absence of empathy and given that you actually need the customer or prospect to take it, and they are well aware of this fact, you probably aren’t going to get it taken, especially if your competition would gladly perform the required tweak! Where this refusal to empathize is not due to practical or economic considerations but sheer laziness, it is completely unacceptable and definitely does not bode well for a company applying such a marketing and sales philosophy.

With sufficient communication between sales, the people dealing with individual customers and prospects directly, and marketing, strategies can be so much better defined: real field intelligence being incorporated into marketing campaigns and slogans.

Likewise, as a result of empathy with the customer or prospect, communication between sales and other functions can fulfill customer expectations relating to simple things like packaging, lead times and even new products extending the existing range. How often do we see or hear the words “we heard you” in a marketing slogan when varying or presenting a new product? This slogan essentially says we empathize with you – your satisfaction is important to us.

Research appears to suggest that although price and quality should never be discounted, what ultimately makes a sale and creates a loyal customer is rapport between the salesperson and the prospect or customer. This requires of you going wider than mere business in showing that you aren’t just interested in making the sale and collecting your commission or making target, but that you care about the person you’re dealing with, as a person.

To do this you obviously need to apply empathy again, but now on a more personal and almost social level.

Acceptance

Now this is a very special trait that salespeople absolutely need to have – the ability to put your beliefs, conviction or orientation aside for the sake of your job! In a personal relationship you can avoid people or try to convince them to conform to your personal views, but not in a professional sales environment.

If you are going to be successful in marketing and sales you absolutely need to accept that every individual you meet or deal with is special and unique in some way. By accepting this fact you need to be able to adapt accordingly and the more knowledge you have of diverse orientations like culture, religion, generation, gender, etc. the easier it will be.

Fact is no matter how “weird” or different they may seem to you, you need to accept the person that you’re dealing with for who and what they are and not try to enforce your preconceived perceptions and expectations on them.

This by no means requires you to vary or relinquish who you are and what you stand for, but to exhibit the necessary emotional intelligence in such a manner as to achieve your goal. In other words you need to guard against being petulant (a “snowflake” in contemporary jargon) or a chameleon, to accommodate but not flip-flop.

Very often animosity, whether obvious or subdued, is a result of someone other than you or something other than your product: a personal problem or situation or a previous bad experience with something similar. Applying empathy and acceptance will help avoid being “baited” into a reprehensible response and consequently losing the customer. Using empathy, acceptance and reflection, the fourth pillar of communication, you could very well swing the prospect around and recruit a very worthwhile and loyal customer!

Be Real

Although most people tend to discount them we as humans often pick up a “vibe” or experience a “gut feeling”? Interesting, these phenomena were previously largely ignored. But I read a piece a while ago that someone has actually begun studying them and that preliminary findings suggest they might be more substantial than we care to admit. Apparently they could stem from an unconscious high speed scanning and evaluation of a presentation, a situation or person, based on and combining previous experience, body language, tone of voice, etc. If this is true then these feelings might be quite rational and logical and well worth considering before making a decision?

For me personally a negative experience of these feelings can often be traced back to the person not being real – sugar coating or wearing a “mask”. Fact is the moment we cotton onto someone being insincere we tend to switch off. That is why I said, under the previous heading, that you are not required to vary or relinquish who you are but to accommodate who the other person is. In trying to vary or relinquish your real self you will probably be experienced as being incredible, unreal and consequently be rejected.

Not being a “huggy” kind of person I always avoided physical contact in consoling someone in a suicide negotiation or when consulting with a client in a divorce or deceased estate matter. Any attempt at physical-contact-consolation by me would invariably be extremely clumsy and uncomfortable doing more damage than good to existing rapport! 

Knowing if you’re being real is actually quite easy to ascertain: if you’re comfortable in the situation, you’re probably being real. If not then something is wrong.    

Being real is also essential to maintaining any relationship. Being real requires honesty, hence the discomfort in its absence, and honesty will never create unrealistic expectations but always satisfy them.

Conclusion

Without mastering communication skills all other marketing and sales skills are completely useless. It doesn’t help that you can do exquisite artwork, analyze data, do complex projections but you can’t convince a prospect or customer to buy your product, period.

And in order to convince you need to communicate: speak with your prospect or customer and not talk to them. This is no daunting feat as it only requires that you apply the Four Pillars of Communication that leaders and everyone else need to succeed.

These skills will assist, not only in identifying what content to use in campaigns, but where to use different content – one size never fits all. With these skills in tow you have the awesome capability to adapt your sales pitch to accommodate the individuality of each and every person you pitch to. Building and maintaining customer loyalty is a necessary consequence because we all want and need to be heard (understood) and this approach satisfies that need completely.

Applying these four pillars will also increase your emotional intelligence, equipping you to function in any dynamic environment with disparate variants, and adding your other marketing and sales skills to these base skills will definitely ensure that you ace it!  

Happy hunting!

The Four Pillars of Communication:

https://www.amazon.com/FOUR-PILLARS-COMMUNICATION-LEADERS-SUCCEED-ebook/dp/B07SLSGH15