Tag: online sales

Reality overcomes fiction, that slogan so busy in the movies when something surprises us out of the blue, manifested itself again today in the global business world. Years of experience, lectures, workshops, seminars where we were explained how to make a successful sale, suddenly must be modified from the root, because the very essence of these was based on the “contact” with the customer. Healthcare measures and also digital transformation as a process of cultural evolution leave this cornerstone altered and in some cases literally obsolete.

Sales managers around the world are usually a very high proportion of self-taught non-professional sales people, in other cases various professionals who had to incorporate sales as a “technique” to survive in their basic studies, and to a lesser degree some born salespeople. Whatever their origin, today they are facing a very different reality and therefore must “reinvent” themselves by adapting the best of the past and jumping on the bandwagon of commercial virtuality without delay.

The different sales processes, customer prospecting today is maintained through calls and emails, after a normally very basic analysis (by zonal divisions, by vertical category, etc.). In some companies more up to date CRMs connected to AI systems generate fine segmentations, but it is not yet common.

The next stage of negotiation has lost the space for that “magic” where the salesperson tilts emotions, temperaments, techniques, needs and benefits in the sacred moment of the sale. Today he must do this in front of a screen, where the interlocutor has less time and more space to hide behind a mute or a blocked image. Today we are faced with those reality shows where you meet a millionaire banker to whom you must sell your business idea in the few minutes it takes you to ride in an elevator, there is no more time.

Therefore, if this is already a trend, we must do it right, use everything that exists as a tool and transform the old salesperson into a SalesManager version 2020.

The first thing is obviously to get to know the media correctly, the platforms that are used today are varied, and we must prepare ourselves so as not to make a mistake, one wrong keystroke and our business is gone. Whether Zoom, Teams, Meet or other, they are simple, easy to use and can be used on smartphones, tablets, notebooks, etc. without major problems.

The recommendations in front of the screen are very important, look good, an appropriate background, regular wifi network, and above all good sound, many meetings are “heard” rather than seen. There is a tendency to multitask, this means that an interlocutor can be doing more than one thing while listening, or supposedly listening. It should not be this way, but it is a reality. We have been in group meetings with only black screens, this should never happen from a salesperson.

We have little space, and we must be concrete, hopefully practice several times with time, and rely on a striking presentation oriented to the one who will observe it, in substance and form, with limited time, language with precise marketing, benefits over features. This is what one must bring from years of business experience to the present moment.

The fusion of virtual sales and traditional sales will generate your success, but you must get used to be up to date, the times of “we have always done things this way” are gone, today we live in the change, every day new applications appear, we must navigate in the networks observing this, educating ourselves in youtube, webinars, elearning workshops, lives, etc. social networks migrated to commercial networks and every day new ways of giving added value to our customers appear.

Welcome to the digital economy, where no one is left out, and sales are perfected with simple tools available to everyone.