How human is your sales process?

March 3, 2013

Have you ever met someone famous? I have; Bernard Cribbins, the famous British actor. I met him when I delivered newspapers to his home back in 1978.

Bernard played the part of many great movies and one film I remember him most for was Doctor Who and the Daleks, first screened in 1965, and the film that scared me totally when I watched it as a child.

The Daleks still scare me even today.

All machine, no emotions, all process and destruction.

In a way, that’s how selling is becoming nowadays as the internet takes over more and more, and that worries me. We use email, tex and other non-human communications and have left out the human element.

Here’re some quick ideas to help you become more human in your selling:

On emails to prospects and customers, try to put in the human touch, maybe something quirky or humorous; otherwise people hit the delete button without hesitation.
Rather than using those awful PowerPoint based webinar programmes, try using Google Hangouts or Skype Group Video Calls and put some human faces on the screen.
When meeting your customer, make sure you gain their trust quickly and let them know you are human. Aim to create rapport.
When presenting, drop the PowerPoint and tell stories instead. Not long winded ones but less than 1 minute client attraction stories. Introduce a character and scene, set them on a journey, let them hit an obstacle and only with your product will they overcome the obstacle. Worth a thousand PowerPoint decks and your customer will remember them.
Rapport is great but remember humans relish empathy. Use NLP perceptual positions. Get off your ego (position 1) climb into their body (position 2) then observe both from a safe distance picking up non verbal and other signals to help communicate.
When listening, stop thinking about your next question, the solution or what you want for tea. It’s so easy to process what they’re saying as they say it. This prevents fruitful listening.

These ideas are not new, but they’ll certainly let you shine out from the crowd of Daleks that are beginning to predominate in selling. Maybe that’s a bit unfair but you get my point.

Exterminate, exterminate…