In today’s world, your potential customer now has an 8 second attention span, advanced email filters, and endless amounts of information available at their fingertips. These modern day obstacles prevent new challenges for sales reps trying to connect to prospects, and using old school selling techniques won’t get you the same results they did years ago. It’s important for sales reps to be aware of emerging technologies and trends in order to keep up with how buyers want to be sold to. Discover 5 things you should start adding to your sales process to avoid becoming irrelevant.
Change Your Mindset
Today’s sales reps are selling to smarter people armed with information. Digital technology has changed the way people consume and seek out different products and services. Oftentimes, people will do exhaustive research on their own before ever speaking with a sales rep or seeking out information from a company. As a sales rep, you need to figure out how your potential customers get their information, how they want to be sold to, and how you can provide value. It’s no longer a one size fits all solution. Be open to new selling techniques or marketing strategies that may not seem intuitive or natural to you, but will ultimately appeal to your customer so you can make the sale.
Use Technology
Not using all of the technology and sales tools available to you is the quickest way to get left behind. Today’s sales rep needs to embrace technology and use it to automate tasks and processes in order to free up time to focus on the activities that really generate revenue. For example, using a powerful technology to reach out to clients and prospects and manage the follow up actions will still allow you to engage with these people, but it will also make you more efficient and productive.
Leverage Social Media
Another technology sales reps should be familiar with and use on a daily basis is social media. Social selling has become an integral part of the sales process by developing and nurturing relationships via social networks, and it’s not enough to simply create a LinkedIn or Twitter profile. You need to be actively engaging with potential clients, posting relevant content, and targeting potential customers on the social networks your target audience uses. Keeping up with social media takes time and effort, but there are tools that will help you become more efficient. For instance, manageflitter can help you be smarter about finding and connecting with your target audience on Twitter, and Buffer can help you schedule curated content on your social profiles throughout the day.
And most importantly, having an active presence on social media will give you credibility. The first thing people will do after receiving a call or email from you will be to search for you online or on social media. If they’re not able to find you, they’re probably not going to call you back.
Create Content
When people are looking for a solution to their problem, the first thing they will do is look it up online and try to find answers. As a sales rep, you can take advantage of how people seek out information by publishing your own articles and content. People like to buy from influencers they are familiar with and who they can trust. By publishing content with great insight or expert opinion, you can then increase your credibility and chances of being found. Also, customers tend to seek out information before and during the buying process, so this is the perfect opportunity to differentiate yourself and provide information to help influence their buying decision. You don’t need to worry about having your own blog either. Using LinkedIn’s publishing platform or Facebook’s note section can help you get your content to your audience.
Networking
Finally, sales reps need to constantly be networking. While this is not a new concept, there are some new ways to go about it. For example, after meeting new people at networking events, your next step should be to connect with them on LinkedIn. Networking also applies to other sales reps. Since sales trends and tools are constantly changing, it’s important to see how other people in your field are working smarter and how you can too.
It’s becoming harder and harder to reach out to prospects in the same ways that worked in the past. Email filters and the elimination of voicemails at some companies makes it nearly impossible to connect, but using the techniques mentioned above helps make it possible for sales reps to thrive and overcome these new barriers.
