by Nick Morgan
Don’t throw dollar bills on the floor
In the 1987 comedy Tin Men, 1960s-era aluminum siding salesman Bill “BB” Babowsky, played by Richard Dreyfuss, initiates a younger protégé into the magical world of sales.3 In one call on a Chapter_10.indd 218
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homemaker, Babowsky drops a dollar bill on the floor and allows the woman to pick it up for him. He explains to the initiate that he can tell whether or not he’s going to get a sale with this trick. If the woman picks up the bill, she’s a nice person and can be talked into aluminum siding. If she doesn’t, she won’t be won over.
The psychology is right, but the execution is wrong. Babowsky should have been seeking to create a real trust relationship with his customers, or his partner, rather than just exploiting them.
And by getting them involved, not in sneaky tests of their malle-ability, but in genuine steps along the road to the sale, he would have increased the amount of aluminum siding gracing the houses of Baltimore.
Take your customers from passive to active. Involve them in the process. Don’t do all the work. If you take your customers on the right journey, you will move them smoothly and comfortably from connection to trust to commitment to sale.
And don’t forget to let other people speak for you. That’s the essence of sales success in the virtual world. But you also need to become comfortable with, and expert in, the networked world. More and more people spend more and more time on mobile phones in the Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat universe. They access these worlds constantly throughout the workday and on their own time as well. These worlds essentially run 24-7, and you need to be responsive. You need to understand how your particular customer set lives in the real-virtual collision of worlds and how they want to be messaged, connected with, and sold to.
How can you create reciprocity?
In the online world, then, once you’ve established a connection, think about creating reciprocity. What can you do that will Chapter_10.indd 219
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220 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels create people’s sense of obligation to you? Not so huge that it induces guilt, but enough so that the person wants to do something for you.
The next step online is to get permission and establish the right levels of interactivity. Don’t get pushy; do get permission to use their name, to email them, to call them—whatever the relationship might consist of—respecting their need not to be hounded or outed.
Then, think about how much interaction they are ready for. It’s easy online to overdo it, because interaction is relatively friction-free. It doesn’t cost much, so you tend to err on the side of too much rather than too little. Get the amounts right.
Do so by asking; don’t try to guess. Online, it’s best to be formal about the privacy, handshake, interaction, and other relationship rules first and then to be informal about the relationship itself. Share your sources and links, and be open about what you’re up to. The potential customer or client is going to find out anyway, and information on you is only a few clicks and minutes away.
Online or in person, don’t try to be something you’re not.
Fundamentally, it’s good to remember that the brain’s basic responses haven’t changed online. To connect with people, get their attention first. Then engage their emotions and activate their memories. Use novelty to surprise them and get them moving toward a sale. When they’re ready, or close to it, motivate interest with the classic methods of influence: authority, liking, scarcity, commitment, consistency, social proof, and reciprocity.
Use people to connect to people
We humans are most interested in other humans—what their intent is; what they look like; and what they might do to us, for us, or with us. We like to engage with other people, internet Chapter_10.indd 220
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kittens and puppies notwithstanding. We seek ways to allevi-ate pain, we are drawn to contrast, and we like to be rewarded for our efforts. We’re biased toward attractive people, baby faces, and aesthetically pleasing objects. We’re fascinated by archetypes and anthropomorphic forms. We find pictures of nature relaxing and cities stimulating. And always, the simpler the better.
When we’re wearing our logical hats, we believe that hard work is always rewarded; that feedback improves us; that if we do a good job, politics doesn’t matter; that our work speaks for itself; and that persuasiveness is logic and facts. None of those statements is actually true.
Emotionally, we want to be understood, heard, and valued.
We want to be treated as a respected member of the team. Yet we want autonomy, too. Our status must be acknowledged, and our role understood. None of those desires is logical, but they are extremely important to relationships, and thus sales.
There are many kinds of roles and relationships that you can use to successfully influence a sales process: mentor, partner, storyteller, learner, backup, celebrity, decision maker, provider, guide, performer, supporter, ambassador, and so forth. To be successful in the long run, pick one of these roles, and become expert in it. They are recognizable and understood, and the clarity helps online.
Memory can be a challenge in the virtual world The statistics of remembering are unkind to salespeople everywhere. The research shows that people don’t remember much overall, they don’t remember the details well, and they especially don’t retain stuff that they disagree with or that conflicts with their worldview.4 Apparently, when we don’t like what we hear, we just tune it out.
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222 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels Into this depressing landscape comes a spate of recent studies finding simple ways to improve memory and retention.5 If you are a salesperson, you can use these ideas to ensure that your customers remember something of what you worked so hard to get those fickle people to pay attention to.
First, an overall strategy. Again, you need to make the customers do some of the work. That way, they will feel that they own, at least in part, the result. So, get them telling stories, designing solutions, playing games, competing for recognition, brainstorming, making real choices, or teaching. When customers help cocreate the relationship, they feel deeply involved and they remember far more of what has gone on.
What else can you do? Have your clients use their imagination rather than their intellect—especially how it relates to them.
Using our imagination invokes the emotions, and the emotional part of our minds is where decisions are made. Get your clients or customers involved for forty seconds or more. This length of time seems to strengthen memory. So does writing something down, as opposed to speaking or typing something. The physical act of writing is a powerful aid to memory. Drawing pictures helps anchor the memory, too.
Mirroring is also a key to memory
Finally, we are more inclined to trust people who look and feel similar to us, and you are precisely raising that trust when you mirror someone. Recent studies show that mirroring makes a sales pitch 20 percent more effective, and that in salary negotiations, you can get up to one-third more money by mirroring your potential boss during the bargaining.6 You don’t have to be face-to-face to mirror, because you can use the patterns of the voice on a phone call or even repeat patterns of word usage in Chapter_10.indd 222
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an email, but of course, mirroring works much more powerfully face-to-face.
Humans—and indeed primates in general—copy one another unconsciously when they agree with one another, feel comfortable with others, or want to show solidarity with them.
Most of us are usually completely unaware of this behavior at the conscious level. If things are going well for you in a conversation, and you can spare some of your precious conscious thought for noticing it, you’ll see the other person or people mirroring you to the extent that
they can, depending on how they are situated in relation to you.
When you become aware of mirroring behavior, you’ll see it everywhere. You’ll begin to understand how the best salespeople persuade customers so effortlessly, how the most successful politicians bind voters to them despite the issues, and how the most powerful executives build trust among their direct reports and colleagues.
Mirroring reflects alignment. When we’re aligned with someone, we mirror the person’s behavior, and vice versa.
When you meet someone for the first time, if you like and begin to trust him or her, you’ll demonstrate that affinity with mirroring. You may demonstrate it in other ways as well, but mirroring is probably the most reliable indicator of the growing bond between you.
This sort of mirroring will seem utterly obvious to you, but if you perform it smoothly and subtly, without overdoing it or responding too quickly or mechanically, the other person or people will never notice consciously what you’re doing.
You will make a much stronger connection with them and make them feel much more positively and trusting toward you. Don’t neglect this simple body-language tool in your sales toolbox.
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224 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels Meet a successful virtual salesperson
Ryan Estis started out as a traditional, pound-the-pavement salesman, making cold calls and driving all over town to get a few minutes of face time with a potential customer. He didn’t set out to do so much of his work online. But he has become incredibly successful at selling in the virtual space. He is in high demand as a keynote speaker, and he and his team are constantly busy fielding calls from new clients.7
“I still believe there’s no replacement for face-to-face interaction,” Estis says. But a world where face-to-face interaction often comes after weeks or months of virtual interaction online creates new challenges for salespeople—and new opportunities.
The digital world we all inhabit today is fast-paced and flooded with information. “Customers today are time-poor,”
Estis says. “They’re distracted, they’re overwhelmed, they have shorter attention spans, there’s more noise out there.” Breaking through that noise can be an enormous challenge. And yet, Estis says, “I believe that the opportunity far outweighs the challenge.”
The world is more connected than ever—a situation that creates huge opportunities for connecting with customers. “This is the single greatest time to be in the profession of business development in the history of the world,” Estis says, “because the world is a connected place.”
Sales used to be all about relationships, Estis says. Today, it still is—but those relationships can be formed and sustained in new and different ways. “Selling today is no longer about who you know,” Estis says. “It’s about who knows you. It’s about getting referred and getting found.” Estis says he no longer makes cold calls. He makes “warm calls,” reaching out to people who already know of him, either because of his reputation or because they’ve been referred by a satisfied customer.
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Become a subject-matter expert
So how do you get found? How do you set yourself up to make these warm calls? The first step is to set yourself up as an expert in your field. No matter what business you’re in, you’re facing more competition than ever before, Estis says. “Customers are overwhelmed. They have the paradox of choice,” he says.
Imagine, for example, that you want to book a vacation. What would you do first? Go online and start looking at options—and within five minutes, you’ll have more options than you could ever possibly evaluate. You’ll be looking next for expert advice to help you sort through this flood of information.
Blogging is one great way to set yourself up as an expert.
Rumors of the death of blogging are greatly exaggerated. It may change—and it is changing—from the traditional written post, to visual, video, and pictorial versions. And, of course, there are other ways to create content that positions you as a reliable source of information. But the key is consistency, Estis says. Don’t try it for a month or two and then conclude it’s a waste of time. Estis has been blogging regularly for eight years. “Writing and publishing three times a week is hard, but it makes sales easier,” he says. “By being known as a more credible expert, it makes me a more credible salesperson.”
Referrals have always been one of the best ways to drive sales, but they’re more important than ever in a world where customers are drowning in information. “It’s amazing how many salespeople don’t simply ask for referrals,” Estis says, “and put themselves in a position to earn referrals.” This old-world skill is crucial in the new digital world.
The first step is to exceed your customer’s expectations, Estis says: “Earn the right to ask, then ask.” And once you’ve asked, make it easy for people to refer you. Make yourself easy to find Chapter_10.indd 225
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226 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels online, so that a customer can share your website, your Twitter handle, or a piece of content you’ve created. Ultimately, Estis says, “we want to turn our customers into evangelists.” Make it so your customers can’t help but spread the word about you. A must-share online presence is hard to create, but it makes sales easy, Estis says.
The cold call might as well be dead
The cold call may not exactly be dead, but it’s certainly not your best option in a world where customers have so many demands on their time. “It’s always better to be found than to have to be the one initiating contact,” Estis says. But “if you’re going to initiate contact, the more customized and personal it can be, the better.”
Keep in mind that your call is interrupting your potential client’s day. “You’ve got to earn the right to interrupt somebody,”
Estis says. And that means doing as much preparation as you can before you pick up the phone.
Customization and personalization are critical in today’s information-rich world. “The traditional approaches to selling still have merit,” Estis says, “but you just have to think about them differently.” It has always been a good idea to customize your pitch for each customer, but today you have a lot of new tools available.
If you’ve got a call scheduled with a potential client, you can look the person up on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites.
Estis and his team research their prospects before they speak and send over content that’s relevant to their particular problems before a call. “It just changes the conversation,” he says. “The sale is closed. All they have to do is hear my voice and know I’m still breathing.”
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Creating a sense of urgency can also help move potential clients to a decision point. With so much information at our fin-gertips, Estis notes, it’s easy to put off making a purchase. “The sales cycle is lengthening, because people are overwhelmed.
They have the paradox of choice,” he says. “I’ve been shopping for a new car for seven years.” Of course, this sense of urgency has to be genuine. Customers will quickly be turned off by an inauthentic, used-car-salesperson kind of vibe.
“Professional selling should be about helping people solve a problem or accelerate an opportunity,” Estis says. If you genuinely believe your product is the customer’s best solution, that belief will come through. And if you can come up with a genuine reason why acting now is in the customer’s best interest, you’ll be able to cut through all the noise and make the sale.
Technology has changed the way we live and work enormously, and it just keeps changing. The best way to approach this era of rapid change is to think of yourself as a student, Estis says. “The best salespeople today are students, and they’re teachers,” he says. That means keeping up with new techn
ological tools, and trying them out. Should you be on Snapchat? How could you use Instagram Stories for your business?
“The best performers are constantly striving to level up their game,” Estis says. You should always be experimenting with new tools and techniques, and always be refining your approach.
Of course, the more independent you are, the easier it is to try out new tools and experiment with your approach to sales.
But whether you’re an entrepreneur or a salesperson within a corporation, you should use whatever tools are available to you, Estis says.
If you work for a big company, familiarize yourself with all the marketing tools at your disposal, and try out different ways of using them with clients. Try publishing your ideas on LinkedIn Chapter_10.indd 227
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228 Specific Techniques for Specific Digital Channels or whatever social media you can use. And keep in mind that “it’s not just what you’re sharing; it’s what you’re learning,” Estis says.
Even if you’re limited in your ability to blog or get your name out there, you can connect with potential customers online and get a better sense of who they are and what drives them. That’s an old-fashioned value—knowing your customer—brought into the new digital world.
Practical fixes
The ten commandments of online
sales and sales presentations
I. Thou shalt speak and write authentically, avoiding all marketing BS and self-serving promotion. Thou shalt sound as little like an American presidential candidate as possible, not trying to promise all things to all people.
II. Thou shalt focus on the other person. The success of a communication ultimately belongs to the receiver, not to the speaker. Thou shalt realize that in the end, it is the client that is important, not thee.
III. Thou shalt not use PowerPoint to present sales pitches.
Nay, nor Keynote, nor Prezi, nor any other slide software, as glitzy as it might be.