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206 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels to be ready to honestly share. If you phone it in, they will know.
And you will know.
Sooner or later, the technology will misbehave. Be ready with your backup plans and alternative forms of communication. But also be ready to laugh; remember, it’s rarely a disaster of epic proportions, and it is the human condition to fail from time to time.
Fourth, change what you say. Don’t talk too much. Most speakers on conference calls, if they’re not checked out, fill up the silences with their voices. They are afraid to stop, afraid to let the group go for an instant because people might stop listening, afraid to take a full emotional moment. But it’s those moments that make a human connection memorable.
Talk the journey, not the destination. These days, we’re so afraid of losing our participants to their short attention spans that we cut to the ending without taking our fellow combatants with us. If we’re a team—or trying to become one—we have to go on the same journey.
Thus, lose the clichés and get inspired. Don’t move the nee-dle, drink the Kool-Aid, give due respect because it is what it is, have the necessary bandwidth, break down silos, or—God help us—experience a paradigm shift. These clichés are comforting and familiar, but they substitute for thinking. Don’t utter them.
Please. Do your own thinking, tell your own story, and take the team on a real journey, and you’ll naturally avoid these energy killers. We get inspiration from courage, from honesty, and from triumphing over failure. No matter how many silos you break down, you can’t beat honesty and courage. Inspire your fellow videoconference-goers with your real words, not borrowed ones.
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going on today that it is extraordinarily powerful when someone actually does us the courtesy of listening rather than thinking about what he or she is going to say. Try it.
Finally, build rapport by mirroring the other participants in your manner of speaking, your motions, and your expressions.
This activity builds trust. Building (unconscious) rapport takes roughly twenty minutes at the beginning of the call. Once you’ve established good rapport, you can assume leadership of the meeting by proposing your desired actions and outcomes. But listen and mirror first. People want to be heard—and seen.
Videoconferencing in some ways is a richer communication experience than that infamous twentieth-century tool, the phone. But it is accordingly more stressful. The preceding ways of working on a video call can greatly improve the experience for all. Practice them, and you’ll find yourself increasingly comfortable—and present—in the twenty-first century of half-real, half-virtual work and home life.
Practical fixes
The videoconference cheat sheet
Following these suggestions can vastly improve your videoconference’s chances of success.
1. Imitate the movie business; after all, you’re on screen.
2. If the videoconference is part of an ongoing work stream, set up a separate database to handle all the aspects of meeting and handling the team.
3. Check your impressions verbally; don’t assume that silence implies agreement.
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208 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels 4. Be sensitive to time differences, cultural differences, and levels of commitment.
5. Share documents well in advance of the meeting so that they can be downloaded and reviewed during the meeting.
6. Have a side communications channel and a plan B.
7. Circulate information about the team in advance—
include both work qualifications and social tidbits.
8. Establish the desired outcomes of the meeting in advance.
9. As in conference calls and webinars, practice active listening.
10. Give regular feedback.
11. If you’re dealing with multiple languages, avoid colloqui-alisms, and speak slower.
12. Find ways to strengthen social ties.
13. Like TV, the camera craves emotion. Find ways to show your emotion.
14. Keep ideas, conversations, debates, and discussions as simple as possible, but no simpler.
15. Act like a TV news anchorperson—look at the camera, smile, and project your personality.
16. Stand up.
17. Light your surroundings brighter than seems necessary.
18. Rehearse everything.
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19. Have help.
20. Provide frequent callbacks and looks ahead.
21. Just as in audioconferences and webinars, always show up early.
22. Don’t forget to move.
23. Aim the camera down, not up.
24. Arrange and layer your background like a movie set.
25. Know that you are going to be judged more negatively than you would in person.
26. As recommended for TV, don’t wear loud stripes, checks, or anything else that could be distorted on TV.
27. If you have any nervous tics, verbal or otherwise, try to avoid them.
28. If your face is immobile for any reason, move it!
29. If you are squinting because of the bright lights, open your eyes more.
30. Pick a coherent story, and stick to it.
31. Connect with the audience.
32. Give your audience time to absorb the messages.
33. Be fully present with the people on the conference.
34. Dress for success.
35. Sooner or later the technology will misbehave. Prepare for this eventuality.
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210 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels 36. Don’t talk too much.
37. Talk the journey, not the destination.
38. Lose the clichés, and get inspired.
39. Be present by listening to the others as they speak; don’t plan your reply while they are speaking.
40. Finally, build rapport and connection by mirroring the other participants in your manner of speaking, your motions, and your expressions.
The jump-cut story
Still worried about those incredible shrinking attention spans?
Digital worlds pressure us to move quickly and capture people’s attention immediately before their minds wander off again. You can grab the attention by suddenly changing the subject with a quick shift of tactics. The idea is similar to a jump cut, a film technique that abruptly shifts scenes to jar the audience. Pause for a second or two, and then begin to tell a story that ultimately has some relevance to the topic. But if the story has little immediate relevance, it will work even better—as long as it does offer an ultimate payoff. Make your listeners figure out how the story relates at first. That mental work will keep them focused.
The digital communication general cheat sheet All the following reminders apply to any medium of virtual communication, from email to chatting to videoconferences.
1. Email, audio, video—none of it is as good as face-to-face.
2. Don’t overdo—or underdo—the urgency of a communication.
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3. Don’t give in to the urge to short-circuit.
4. Don’t automate the un-automatable.
5. Know what you’re trying to achieve.
6. Make a commitment to communication.
7. Consciously agree on the forms and periodicity of communication that everyone will use.
8. Establish a virtual message hierarchy.
9. Make cultural differences a conscious part of your communication.
; 10. Set up several communication channels so that you can communicate quickly in case of emergency.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
• Videoconferencing is hard; take it seriously.
• It’s not the same as being there; recognize the differences, and practice for success.
• Figure out a way to make turn-taking clear.
• Assign an MC.
• Add a regular, formal perception check.
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10.
SALES
The internet and mobile phone together have changed our notions of friendship, family relationships, work connections, and personal ties. Whereas in the past we might have had regular, close interaction with immediate family, friends, and coworkers and weaker ties with a larger social circle we saw infrequently, we now might interact frequently with our weak-tie friends, perhaps less than with our closer connections, but perhaps more.
Indeed, many people today seem to have fewer in-person relationships and more weak-tie virtual relationships.
The result for many people is greater feelings of loneliness and, for a tragic few, an increase in suicide.1 Indeed, there’s a direct correlation between the number of hours teenage girls spend on their mobile phones and their incidence of depression and suicide.2 These consequences are not because mobile phones and weak-tie friendships are bad things, but because the human psyche is fed on in-person interaction. And at the same time, we may interact less frequently in person with our work colleagues and friends because they are spread all over the world and our ties with them are mainly virtual.
The photograph of the era is not something you see in Life magazine, but a selfie. My wife and I still marvel over the time a year or two ago, when we tried to get into the room where the Chapter_10.indd 213
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214 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels Mona Lisa is displayed in the Louvre, only to be turned back by the crowds. They weren’t studying this great work of art; instead, they were taking selfies in the same room as the great painting. They were in the same room as a painting that the Western world generally agrees is its greatest work of art, and they were taking pictures of themselves.
The Facebook generations have turned in on themselves and become self-referential. The documentation of the event is more important that the event itself.
But self-referentialism is not the same thing as selfishness.
These are not bad people. It’s just that they want to be able to post the picture to Facebook or Instagram to show their family, friends, colleagues—and weak-tie acquaintances—that they were somewhere notable.
In that context, how can you sell people things, services, and ideas? Has it become harder or easier to infect people with the desire to purchase that latest gizmo, service, or idea?
The sales cycle has changed
First and most important, the internet has fundamentally changed the sales cycle. When salespeople connect with a potential customer, they typically do so much further along the sales journey. The potential customer has already researched the possible options and the ratings of your company and your rivals.
For this reason, salespeople need to learn new techniques of selling—establishing a personal connection quickly, checking in on the stage of the sales journey appropriately, and moving the customer along at the right pace. All this relationship management must be conducted half in the real world and half in the virtual world. Because the exact balance will depend on the Chapter_10.indd 214
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Sales 215
customer or client, the salesperson not only needs to have facility in both worlds but also needs the ability to read the customer quickly and ascertain how to best connect with the person or group in the sales cycle. These requirements make listening, something that has always been important, especially important in the virtual-real world.
Your customer’s needs take priority,
even over your product
Most salespeople know that they should listen to the client, but too few of them do, and usually not soon enough. And they don’t listen in the right way. You should be listening for the underlying messages more than the superficial ones. What emotion is the (potential) customer putting forward? Excitement about a new purchase? Fear about a new technology? Resistance to change? Resentment toward the old product?
What’s memorable—and important to people—in communication is emotion; that’s what you should be listening for and responding to, not just the expressed content. If you acknowledge a client’s emotions and figure out an appropriate way to respond to them, you’ll be the favorite salesperson in no time.
Begin by establishing a connection. That means understanding where your customers and clients live in the universe of weak-tie relationships. You need to be in the same networks.
We want to feel that connection is real and strong enough to last through the after-sale (or repeat-sale) care, so don’t rush it or fake it. Connections between people get established at the surface first, but if they’re to be durable, then they must have emotional glue to hold them together.
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216 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels In the virtual world, what other people say is more important than what you say
Because we don’t know whom to trust online and our online trust relationships are more fragile than they are in person, we look to third-party endorsements to help us believe that a salesperson, whether of purses or cars, is on the up-and-up. Successful salespeople will invest heavily in online networks to begin to generate these third-connections and endorsements. They are the sales lifeblood of your new persona in the current sales world and in the future.
You find the endorsements and then sit back and let the customers find you. Well, of course it’s not that simple, and you need to market and advertise harder than ever in the channels your customers frequent. But customers now own the sales cycle to a much greater extent. It is your job to wait until they are ready for the close—unless they signal to you that they do want help along the way.
To close a sale, you need to have established two things with your customer: credibility and trust. And it’s credibility first and trust second. Credibility comes first, because that’s what happens when you show that you understand the customer’s problem.
Trust comes second, because that’s what you establish when you solve that problem.
It’s all about credibility and trust
Failing either one, your relationship with the client or customer won’t be durable. Without credibility, you’ll find that your customers will be likely to go elsewhere in search of expertise, even if they trust you as a human being. Do you really understand my paint color issues? Without trust, a client will be tempted to mine Chapter_10.indd 216
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Sales 217
you for expertise and then go make the ultimate purchase from someone else. Will you really follow through on the after-sale?
How do you establish these two key aspects of a relationship?
By listening. Show that you understand the issues as well as, or better than, the client does, and you’ll create credibility. She gets that I loathe chartreuse! Finally, someone who knows something about paint!
Then, show how you can solve that problem. You’ll forge a strong bond of trust with the client when you take away the point of pain that sent the client to the marketplace in the first place. That shade of lavender will be perfect for the room.
Credibility and trust underlie online sales success. They are the two key ingredients for building a strong, enduring relationship with a customer. Closing a sale is all about understanding the customer’s half-online, half-real decision-making process.
Where are your clients or customers
when they get in touch with y
ou?
Are they happy with the product they have, but want to be reassured that they made the right decision? Put them in the database to check in with them periodically so that you’ll have a relationship established when they are ready to change.
Customers in the first stages of decision making just need help with framing the problem. Less information is better. Just give them a statistic or a very brief verbal portrait of what the future might look like. Do you realize that the 2019 version of the Fabulator uses half the energy of its predecessors?
Or are they in the throes of the problem, uncertain of which way to go, looking for answers? Jump in with helpful links, information, and unbiased advice. This is the point to become as un-sales-y as it is possible to get. Customers deep in the Chapter_10.indd 217
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218 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels problem want information—comparisons, data, details. At this stage, all the product or service knowledge you have is actually useful. Don’t go to the point of their eyes glazing over, but do satisfy their urge for information. Both models will get the job done, but the Fabulator-B is smaller and quieter, not to mention faster-operating.
Or have they already decided on a course of action and are basically looking for you to take the order? More and more customers are coming to salespeople in that state of mind. It’s just a matter of recognizing this stage of readiness and negotiating the deal. Clients who have already made up their mind don’t want to be slowed down, so don’t make it hard for them to buy. You’ve made a great choice. The Fabulator Supreme will take care of all your needs and also make you a spectacular cup of morning coffee.
Now let’s get that paperwork out of the way.
That’s why it’s so important to listen to your customers before you launch into any kind of explanation. If you don’t know where they are, you can’t point them to where they should be going.
Finally, involve your customers with small steps to get them comfortable to take the bigger ones. It’s imperative that you don’t do all the work in the sales process. If you keep your customers passive, don’t be surprised when it’s hard for them to suddenly get active and agree to close the sale. Too many salespeople think that it’s all up to them. But the real secret is to get the customer working on the deal, too. Begin with little steps, those that don’t involve big commitments, and then work up from there.