Adam from The Authentic Sales Training Academy, coming to you today with another couple of tips in relation to connecting with your audience and this is going to be a live experience that I want to share with you so, I’m pretty excited about bringing this on.
When you’re trying to connect with your audience, it’s really important particularly if this is going to be a cold contact to understand what your audience is, or who your audience actually is. What your intention is in relation to the message that you’re wanting to give them and what the outcome is that you’re wanting to provide to their problem.
Remember in sales, it’s all about providing a solution to a problem and that’s it. Then, how can you help somebody with that? So, when you’re prospecting, whether it’s via phone, whether it’s via email, whether it’s via apparently now SMS, you’ve got to make sure that your intention is on your customer.
And the best way I’ve found to do that is to actually reach out and say, “Hey, it’s Adam here, this is where I’m calling you from and I just reaching out to see how you’re going with everything, if there’s anything at all that you need or if you want to have a chat, then please feel free to give me a call I’m here to help.” Don’t just go straight in for the kill.
If you go straight for the kill, you’ve lost them all together. With that intention in mind, you’re not coming from a space of service. When you’re coming from a space of service, people are going to be more open to talking with you and sharing information with you.
Your intention is firstly to connect, not firstly to sell. The second thing is to understand what their problems are, what their needs are if there’s anything at all that you can do to help them and if you can fantastic, if you can’t all good. And then the third point is to understand once you know what that is, can you provide a solution to what they’re looking for?
Remember, if this is a cold contact, it’s an unsolicited message out of the blue, people aren’t looking for what you’ve got if you’re approaching them cold.
Now, I want to give you an example and one of the most important things, when it comes to connecting with your audience is to have… we’ve got two ears and one mouth for a reason. I speak a lot about telling is not selling. Attentive listening is the best form of sales you could possibly do. Here’s my live example for you, this week I got an SMS out of the blue by a lady called Nicole from a mortgage broking company. I don’t remember ever having anything to do with this mortgage broking company, but be that as it may, she’s got my details.
She says, “Hi, Adam, it’s Nicole here from such and such, are you looking at doing anything with your home loan? I can get you a great rate of 1.88%. Let me know if you’re interested. Kind regards Nicole.”
That came to me, I first thought this was impersonal. Second of all, really cheesy. Third of all, why would I respond to an SMS? If you want to talk to me, pick up the phone ring me and let’s have a conversation. I don’t want to know or try to think who are you? And try to think, where are you from? And try to think, so all you really want is my money, all you want is my business. You actually don’t care about me. So I ignored that.
I got a follow up SMS from Nicole three days later saying, “Hi, Adam, it’s Nicole here. Just following up from my message that I gave you the other day, would you like to talk to one of our brokers?” And I looked at that message and I thought, well, at least you’re following up that’s something, most people don’t, I’ll give you credit for that.
Still, I thought this is so insensitive, an SMS. So, I responded back to Nicole, and I said, “Hi, Nicole, no, I’m not interested in talking to one of your consultants and the reason for that is I found your SMS to me to be extremely impersonal. Why would I want to do business with you if I’m feeling like there’s no connection? Kind regards, Adam”.
Nicole responded instantly saying, “Hi Adam, thanks so much for responding to my message. If you change your mind, feel free to text us on this number to set up a time.”
I couldn’t believe what I just read. I just told this person in black and white in text, I found your approach impersonal, no I am not doing business with you. That person then Nicole, who shall not be named, ignored what I said and then proceeded by saying all good text me if you want to make an appointment.
Clearly not listening to the information that’s coming, clearly not interested in connecting with a potential client and clearly not really interested in what that client wants, or needs are. Only interested in her wants and her needs. That is where business must change if you want to get better at business, if you want to get better at connecting with people, you’ve got to pay attention to what these people are saying to you.
My response back was: “Hi, Nicole. No, I will never do business with you or your organization for the point of that you just don’t listen, but hey, I’ve got some great sales training. So, if you’re really wanting to learn how to connect better with your audience.
At the end of the day, sales is simple, you only want to sell something to someone that they want or they need and the process is connecting, communicating and converting. If you’re connecting with the right audience and you’re communicating with them properly, your chances of conversions with them will go through the roof.”
