Stop Selling. Start Relating.

How to Sell a Millennial

Want to impress a millennial with a sales pitch? Forget about telling them your agency is big, boasts a long history or posts huge sales numbers. Avoid charts filled with "impressive" statistics.

According to the Deloitte Millennial Survey 2016:

"Millennials judge the performance of a business on what it does and how it treats people. For example, among those saying business 'means more than a healthy balance sheet,' more than six in 10 would reference the quality of its products and services (63%) or levels of employee satisfaction (62%). A majority (55%) focus on customer loyalty/satisfaction. Innovation and efficiency also rank highly."

Those are all noteworthy qualities, right? And it's logical that if your company has those admirable traits, sales will follow. It's a pretty easy formula we all intrinsically know. But many businesses fail to emphasize those "softer" attributes, believing that to impress a potential client, cold hard facts are required. Yes,numbers have their place, but they shouldn't take the lead.

If that more human approach feels less professional or too "mushy" to be effective, consider what Matthew Cook (who has more than 20 years of sales management experience and is the founder of SalesHub and SalesForce Search) has to say about millennials:

"They grew up in the digital age, where all the information they could want is at their fingertips online — customers today don't need a salesperson giving them information. They grew up in a world where, as the buyer, they had all the control in the buying cycle — they don't want a salesperson pressuring them into a sale."

Ultimately, it turns out that what millennials really want is a relationship. Is that what you're delivering?

Originally Posted By AIMS Society, Tuesday, December 6, 2016.