5 things a salesperson could learn from a marketer to be more effective
Since the start of my career, I have been very fortunate to grow as a marketer in companies with a strong sales force and culture — PhillipCapital and OrangeTee & Tie are leaders in their respective finance brokerage and real estate agency sectors. Remisiers and real estate agents are primarily business owners/entrepreneurs, who are utilising these companies’ brand and support to further their businesses. As such, the responsibility to convince prospects to become customers, willingly handing over their hard-earned money in exchange for products or services lies with both sales and marketing. “Constructive interference” can be observed when the sales team and marketing team strategies are in tandem. Ultimately, the marketing team story tells and engages in activities that get people interested in the company, while the sales team aims to develop effective interpersonal relationships with prospects and convinces them to become actual customers. I will be sharing what are 5 things that sales reps could learn from a marketer to be more effective.
#1 (Really) knowing your target market(s)/audience(s)
Here is one unfortunate truth — the whole world, is not your target market. A target audience can be defined as a group of individuals or entities that have similar needs or characteristics that any business hopes to serve — they are usually the end users most likely to open their wallets and part with their money for your products or services.
In marketing, one of our worst fears is when we receive tonnes of irrelevant leads which will lead to low conversion rate. Similarly for a sales rep, it will be incredibly wasteful on important resources such as your time and money if you are receiving many irrelevant inquiries which will lead to a low conversion rate as well.
This is why sales reps (and even marketers) should focus majority of their efforts on understanding their target audience persona instead of just hoping to develop a perfectly convincing pitch — because it will be near impossible to develop such a pitch if you do not know your target audience needs and wants sufficiently. A good starting point will be to show empathy — putting yourself in your clients’ shoes and sooner or later, you may identify what needs are you satisfying for them.
#2 (Really) Listen and complete their stories
As a marketer, telling stories is our bread and butter. Yet ironically, sales reps are the ones who have the true unique opportunity to communicate to your clients, many times one-on-one on how you can help their ‘story’ end up to be. Listen and absorb attentively to what your clients have to say to really understand the needs you can and about to fulfill for them. Identify their problem, and then propose the solution. Help them visualize how their life would improve with your proposed solution — painting a beautiful picture in their story.
Assuming you are a remisier or dealer in the brokerage industry, listen to the life goals of your prospects, tailor investment solutions and communicate to them how your proposed solutions can help them take concrete and tangible steps towards that goal — somewhat like a trusted partner along their life journey.
#3 Communicate your Unique Selling Points (USPs)
Assuming you are a real estate agent/realtor and you are trying to sell a new project/condominium launch, the main thing your client(s) want to know is simple: what makes you different as compared to other agents out there? This is the essence, the very core of your sales pitch. It could be you are a true data expert and that you can simply analyse numbers to identify trends which you can show and convince your prospects that this will be the purchase not-to-be-missed? Or even the ability to run detailed financial calculations to prove your case. It can really be anything, the world is your oyster!
Communicating your own unique USPs includes a lot of preparation work before you should even speak with a prospect. You should spend time refining your message to clearly and concisely communicate your value relative to your peers and competitors in a way that motivates action — purchase/consumption.
This is where another popular marketing tactic can be used — A/B testing! Prepare multiple and be flexible with your sales pitch, identifying and paying close attention to the ones that appear to be driving the most success. Over time, you will be able to isolate the elements of your sales pitch that appear to be driving the most results. At times, you can discover amazing USPs about yourself when you ask your current customers, “why did you pick me?” Hence, do not be afraid, just ask away!
Also, learn to play it cool. As a sales rep, you are stuck with many negative stereotypes. In a real estate agent/realtor case, if you can portray to your prospects that you are not someone who is just earnestly or over-zealously trying to close the deal just to fill your pockets with commission (in fact, you are willing to walk away from the deal if it is not right for them), that will reflect well on yourself and for all your know, convince your prospects to trust and take that leap of faith with you, in the medium to long run.
#4 Do not be as annoying as “re-marketing”
For most consumers, when they approach or even hear the term “salesperson”, it will be a similar situation as putting two like poles of two magnets side by side — automatic repulsion. Interestingly, the same thing is happening to marketing but more specifically digital, because of this concept “re-marketing”. Re-marketing (also known as re-targeting) is essentially creating ad campaigns for people who have previously visited your website or other content. So imagine you are surfing the internet for a new pair of shoes and you start to google, visiting different shoes’ websites. I am sure many of you will concur that you will start seeing advertisements from those websites that you have visited before, stalking and following your across the world wide web (www). This is essentially, re-marketing at work! Similarly, rather than making sales pitches all the time, consider making conversations — trust me, it will be much less annoying!
One way you can consider doing this is by giving the potential customer all the required facts and letting them decide on their own, “…ultimately it’s your call and I know you will make the most correct decision for yourself”. Note that this does not mean sales reps should not follow up on their prospects, this is simply a suggested process of giving control of the purchase decision back to the customer, appealing to their ability to make wise decisions.
#5 Retention for the long haul and repeat purchase
Lets just say you managed to close the sale because of the relationship they developed with you as they enjoyed working with you throughout the sales process. Do not tarnish your own reputation by completely forgetting of their existence as soon as you cash in your commission.
For many marketers, we are now blessed with state-of-the-art customer relationship management (CRM) systems, technology which is generally used for managing all company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. This means that sales reps can easily adopt such technology (or even simply tools such as Microsoft Excel) as part of their sales process to assist them in turning clients into spokespeople of your brand, and spreading your good name via “word-of-mouth”. Having a good post sales process will require followup (which will be made easier by CRM technology) to make sure they know you respect and not treat them as a means to your end.
Conclusion
While fundamentally, marketing and sales have their separate roles, it is beyond doubt that there are some techniques that can be utilised across functions — like targeted campaigns and data-driven analytics. By using successful marketing tactics, sales is able to adapt and capitalise on changing business models and environment, to lay the foundation for strong, durable relationships with their clients.
The key question is, are there any other marketing tactics that could make sales reps more effective? Looking forward to hear from my peers in sales and marketing functions!
