How to Sell When Buyers Are Already Making Up Their Minds
Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth & Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce
Nearly 60% of the buyer’s journey is already completed before a sales rep ever gets a chance to engage. That’s a huge chunk of the vetting and decision-making process already done before a brand even gets a chance to “get sales involved.” Here’s how you can effectively improve your performance during the remaining 40% of the journey and convince the customer that you have the right product or service they need.
Follow the digital breadcrumbs.
Digital breadcrumbs are all of the activities someone does online as they move through their buying journey. Now more than ever, it’s imperative to know as much as possible about what the buyer has already done during that first 60% of the journey. The truth of the matter is there’s no way to capture that information at scale or learn about their personal preferences or interests without technology. By knowing what they have read, downloaded, or shared on social media, you can be much smarter with the remaining portion of the journey.
Know your customer.
This is the natural next step: If you have moved a customer from “unknown” to “known” along their buying journey, then from that point forward, you should communicate with them like you know them. It may mean doing additional research on the customer’s company and industry so you can determine what will resonate and what challenges the customer potentially might face. Arming yourself with in-depth views helps to set up a much more impressive and fruitful initial conversation.
Be predictive.
Now that you know who the customer is and what they might want, it’s time to predict what they will want next. All of this might sound like you need a crystal ball. But you can anticipate what they want next based off previous behaviors and patterns with like-minded companies. If you’re capturing all the information along the way, you can take the sales process out of the reactive mode and make it much more proactive and predictive, especially with the use of AI. AI can help eliminate many of the non-selling activities so reps can focus on the best personal engagement and customer experience possible. And when you only have 40% of the journey left, you can use all the help you can get.
To read the complete article, How to Sell When Buyers Are Already Making Up Their Minds, visit Quotable.com.
