Don’t you just love all that new technology that lets you watch movies like you’re right in the action? 3D movies that jump off the screen and into your lap. Exciting. How come then that selling has seemed to go 1D – a boring and black-and-white version of action thrillers – real selling – that are turning customers and prospects off?
Russ, what the hec are you talking about? Thanks for asking – let me tell you.
Sales 2.0 BS
Everyone today is busy twittering, linking in, and facebooking. Email has replaced the phone and the phone has replaced good old fashioned meetings. Salespeople are busier than ever – but selling less. Seems like these new tools, social networking, and computers aren’t helping. When is the last time a buyer – you know the real kind with a checkbook they can spend money from – called you up and said, “Hey, I was surfing the web and saw that you have something I just have to buy NOW!” Probably never.
Heresy you scream – burn him, burn him now.
Not so fast. CSO Insights, perhaps the number one keeper of sales data in the US, says that less than 20% of salespeople made quota last year and that number has dropped every year for a decade. Funnels are anemic. Business development is terrible. New sales seem to be harder to find than hen’s teeth. So what is going on?
People Buy from People
Before you get out the wood and lighter fluid let me add that all of the techniques mentioned above are important, perhaps even vital to selling in this the 21st Century. They are not however how or why people buy. Often they get in the way. At least once a week I get an email string of 13 messages going back and forth over some issue that could have been resolved with a single phone call. Here’s the rule:
It’s not about technology or tools. It’s about PEOPLE
People matter. Relationships matter. While it might be comfortable sitting in an office pounding out emails that isn’t what builds relationships with people. Nor does social media or internet chats. Those things can be a part of your relationship building toolbox but they cannot replace the most important part: pressing the flesh. Unless you’re in a very transactional business or a low dollar churn-and-burn sales job, nothing replaces a person-to-person interaction. Nothing.
What is more exciting to you: listening to a radio program, watching a movie, or participating in the action? What do you think excites your clients and prospects?
1D – 2D – 3D Selling
The more touches you have with your prospects the more likely you are to sell something. I call this “Touchpoint Selling.” You can find out more about Touchpoint Selling and how that has changed average salespeople to 300% quota killers at www.180salescoaching.com. However most touches, or interactions can be divided into three categorizes.
1D Selling
Email is 1D selling. Any tactic or method that results in a one-way communication is simply 1D. You get your message out – you’ve communicatged. There just isn’t any room for your listerner to communicate back. This is a vital part of interactions. Social Media, FaceBook and other 1D methods share ideas. Email is critical for documenting and moving sales along. However they are not enough and frankly speaking have become a crutch for many salespeople. Like Voice Mail, these techniques are often a way of avoiding conversation.
2D Selling
Next up the ladder of selling’s communication tools are 2D methods: phone, webinars, and the like. Any medium where you and another person can interact without being face-to-face is 2D. Vital, efficient, useful – yes, yes, yes. But not always the best for building relationships and trust.
3D Selling
Here is where sales is made or broken – getting with people, face-to-face, in-person, flesh pressing flesh. I’m talking about handshakes here folks, the other kind is a different business altogether often confused for sales.
Tom Hopkens, the most successful real-estate agent ever and a prominent sales trainer today has said
Your sales success will be directly proportional to the time spent in-front of prospects selling!
That was great advice in the 90’s when Tom first gave it and remains true to this day, even with the invention of the internet, Sales 2.0, and all of the other ‘innovations’ of today.
Nothing beats meeting with people, nothing. It is the difference between hearing a baseball game and playing baseball (substitute here your favorite sport or activity). Surely you didn’t find your significant other (wow I can be PC can’t I) without dates, romance and long conversations did you? Apply that same thinking to your sales and you’ll be 3D selling. Trust will ramp up, people will want to buy from you, and your results will skyrocket.
So get out of the office. Turn off the computer. Go have lunch with a prospect today. Have a real conversation.
