Sell to me Softly

Selling doesn’t have to be verboten in today’s marketplace, just make sure you do it in the right way…

It’s good to talk, as always. And it’ll be even more important, as we work through these difficult days together, emerge from it all and start doing business properly again.

I don’t know about you, but right now I don’t appreciate people heavy on the ‘Big Sell’ to me, whether by email or phone. But, if it’s an approach by someone with something of value to me, who understands me, my business, my problems, and my needs…I still really appreciate a professional conversation.

Which is why, in my old company Europa Communications, having spent 25 years recruiting and training salespeople and researchers to do things properly, talking to decision-makers properly, winning their hearts and minds by being well informed, consultative, helpful, empathic…that still seems to work in a world like this, a business world sensitive to pushy oversellers.

There’s a tendency for some people to think that any sort of sales approach is a bad thing right now, and it probably is if you’re calling me from a call centre with no clue who I am, or what I do, and what I need. So my advice to those call-centre sellers who think I’m just another line on your calling list, don’t call me if you don’t know me, my business, or your own product really well.

BUT if you’re a professional, and you do things right, I’ll welcome a chat with you.

I have a feeling any agency offering those skills will be doubly-productive in this new world where people don’t appreciate chancy sellers wasting their time. And this new world is going to be with us for a long time after the virus is beaten. Europa’s clients are tech vendors with busy salespeople and account managers, charged with pitching solutions that take months if not years to close. They need our help now, as an integral part of their sales programmes.

Yet, while things might be slow right now, those salespeople need to be on first base when things pump up again. And to achieve that, they need to get out there and build better connections, understand their clients, better than the other vendors, nurture relationships for when those clients are ready to make a move. And, in the absence of events, conferences and other rare opportunities for ‘face-to-face’ engagement, there’s plenty still to be done whilst markets reform and reconsider their strategies.

Call centres are still busy taking inboundcalls, trying to help people in need, and that’s what they should be doing – providing a useful service to the people, even if they are calling from a scripted system to guide them thought it all. But their world isn’t ours, and it’s not what our clients are looking for.

When it comes to outbound sales consulting, that’s a different business, requiring a different breed of professional making those calls. People still want to buy new solutions that will help their business to emerge and grow again. However, they don’t want to talk to vendors of solutions unless they’re really good at what they do – really informed, empathetic, understanding and truly helpful.

I’m confident that the business we built, providing ways of communicating properly, across multiple languages, whether by email or phone, is now even more vital to our clients than it was before. They have the sensitivity, the market nous, proper solutions knowledge, and a mature consulting style which our clients appreciate, as will the people out there who can’t be doing with any other sort of approach right now.

I guess we were lucky to play it right all that time ago. That play will work just fine in this new sensitive marketplace…and the post virus world.