What is sales education?
As ever your customers and the new customers you want to come into your business will research everything available on-line and to a point make their own mind up, as well as taking advice from key personnel and referrals that your product or service is perfect for their application.
A passive customer is somebody who you want as a client. Do your research; who are they and how can I find them? How can I show value to connect as well as further nurture them into a customer and ultimately an ambassador for your company.
So what has changed since Covid?
Obviously very limited customer visits, no network events and it's difficult to reach new & existing customers. You still have to offer value and expertise and continually understand the main reason why they continue to purchase or why they are not purchasing your products or services. What do you need to ensure retainership as well as winning those new customers you want?
Recently, I secured my first mid year planned customer HQ visit since Feb 20 - quite an achievement but maybe a sign that things are starting to get back to normal. I am sure this will increase over the coming months but your clients will most probably prefer to meet you online, so be prepared to share your offerings over a platform and make it slick and to the point. Take advantage of the fact you can be more efficient and reachout to even more customers...
What is the new normal now?
Teams, Zoom & Google Hangouts have been the backbone of nurturing and ensuring continued relationship building as well as trying to offer continued value, education and customer support.
In addition, how much more efficient have we all been where we can have video meetings with multiple guests? This is the future embrace it, we will all travel less and it's great for the environment and will allow us to all be more flexible and save wasted time on travel.
How do we navigate through the next 12-18 months?
Allow your customers to ask questions, ask them questions and feedback how you are doing and what more can you offer to support them with their challenges and goals.
Use a CRM, to track and ensure you don't miss any opportunities, to target your key account future customers and to reach out and build a strong and trusted relationship with, ensuring you achieve your own sales targets and goals.
And most importantly, look after the customers you have! We all know how hard it is to onboard new customers, so look how you can upsell to your existing customers to improve their experience.
So here are my tips for social selling as we all move forward to whatever the new normal will be:
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Ensure your customers & future customers are segmented and enriched within a CRM. Hubspot offer a free CRM that’s cloud based and easy to operate. Plus it aligns with your inbox & calendar.
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Allow customers to book time directly with you, via an online calendar meeting link. This will save back & forth emails to agree a suitable date/time. Keep it simple to book time with you!
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Ensure your product range or services are clearly defined and available to view easily, ‘KISS’(Keep It Simple Stupid) works best.
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Talk to your customers on a regular basis, ask for feedback & come up with some questions, improve your Status Quo, don't take them for granted!
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Send everybody within the CRM a monthly newsletter, what's new, Introduction of new staff and what online webinar events are you looking to host/operate, etc
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Ensure you have a good workflow sales growth process: target your ideal customers, connect & nurture to ensure awareness, consideration and the final decision process, so your prospects buy and most importantly keep on buying.
- Lastly and most importantly enjoy reaching out, don't be afraid to pick the phone up and speak to your clients on a regular basis, you will learn so much more about their challenges & goals and how you can further help & support them...
Steve Smith
Founder, The Tree Group - Your Business Growth Partner
