personal sales They are very useful for establishing a relationship of trust with customers, understanding their problems and being more effective when doing business.
How many times have you been rejected before saying yes? No, I’m not talking about courtships, but about the times you’ve tried to sell something. If you are a person who faces situations like this, Personal selling is a great option for you because it helps you gain more trust from your customers, understand their needs and increase the possibility of doing business with them..
Those who are dedicated to sales face challenges of various kinds, among them, a natural resistance on the part of their potential clients. Why does this happen? When you’re on the buyer’s side and someone tries to sell you something, don’t you feel like that person often forces things for you to buy a product from them?
A correct personal sales strategy can help you generate greater confidence in your client, create more personalized experiences, understand their problems and address them more efficiently.
that 79% of buyers consider it absolutely critical or very important to interact with a seller who is a trusted advisor, not just a sales representative.
Customers now seek personalized interactions with brands and expect their sales reps to learn, understand and anticipate their needs.
For that reason, in this article I will explain to you what personal sales are about and how you can adopt a strategy to promote them in your business.
What are personal sales?
Basically, the concept of personal selling refers to a face-to-face selling process in which the seller interacts directly with his potential consumer to persuade him to buy his product, make effective demonstrations and adapt his sales pitch or presentation according to the needs he detects.
Personal selling is very useful to generate personalized experiences with customers and transmit key messages, as well as clearly establish the differentiators or added values ​​of a product or service with respect to competitors.
Selling is an art and, in addition to this, today we are full of ads that try to sell us things; in your , your Google searches, the emails you receive every day, etc. In this stage, personal sales help you stand out from the vast amount of messages with the same intention.
Since it is the opposite of a mass sales message, personal selling is usually much more effective, although it largely depends on the skill of the salesperson. But wait, before launching to do it there are things that you must be clear about.
How does personal selling work?
Personal selling can use different methodologiesbut usually these processes incorporate seven basic steps:
- Prospecting and qualification
- Preparation
- approach to address
- Presentation
- Management of objetions
- Closing
- Tracing
Now I explain each of them:
1. Prospecting and qualification
Everything starts here. It is the stage where you and your sales team look for new customers for your products or services. It is key to make a profile as detailed as possible about that lead. It is not only about addressing demographic aspects, but also about understanding their behavior and interests, in such a way that you can collect all the factors that influence their purchase decision.
Remember that a lead is anyone who has interacted with your company. You may or may not become a customer. A lead Qualified is everyone who has gone through the criteria to assess their quality as a potential customer and their willingness to buy.
đź’ˇTip: make a buyer person or document with the archetype of your ideal client. It is a fictional character, but built with real information that you have collected from your potential buyers. This will give you a lot of clarity on the key messages to keep in mind in all of your marketing.
2. Preparation
Investigating your client will give you the opportunity to establish the best way to approach him, since now you know more about his personal and work interests.
For example, if your potential client is the operations director of a company in the food sector, you must understand their pain points and problems that they must solve every day.
That is, knowing those factors that make you fail or succeed in your work. With this in mind, you will have more tools to prepare the best presentation.
3. Approach to address
They say that the first impression is never forgotten and in personal sales this is very important. At this stage you have the first contact with your client, whether by phone, email or even in person – especially when the contact occurs at an expo or an event.
In this part you seek to understand in greater detail the problems of your consumer to know if your product will really be useful to them. This way you will save time.
đź’ˇ Tip: avoid prioritizing your interests over the needs of your client. This will increase the confidence that he will have in you.
4. Presentation
In this part, the sales team makes the presentation of the company and the product. It is key to be very clear and concise in the message. Focus on the needs it solves, addressing potential use cases that may be useful to your client and help them understand in a practical way. If you have demos or presentations of your products, this is the time to use them.
đź’ˇTip: Reduce or eliminate technical language and instead approach everything from the business side. Try to be dynamic and agile, so that you spend part of your time answering specific questions about your product or service, which is the next point.
5. Objection handling
That’s right, no matter how good your product is, it will almost certainly raise questions about how your customer can use it, adapt it, consume it, etc. Some strict clients will do anything to bring you down and try to prove that you don’t know everything.
It is key to be empathic and respond honestly regarding the scope and limitations of your product. Of course you’re trying to convince your customer that your product helps them solve something—with a genuine conviction—so you need to manage expectations appropriately.
6. Close
If by now you’ve passed the exam you’ve probably been given, you and your sales team will try to close the deal or make the sale. To do this, clearly agree with your client on the steps to follow and the times in which it should happen.
But be careful, some products or services, such as all those focused on technology services for companies, require several follow-up sessions, so the closing may be slower.
7. Tracking
The most professional companies —and their salespeople— are not satisfied with selling a product, so they try to provide a high-quality after-sales service. For this, follow-up is key.
This stage is useful for getting feedback on your product and how it worked for your customer. It is also key to keeping the business relationship current and selling to you again in the future.
What are the characteristics of personal selling?
Personal selling has as its core the interaction with other people. For that reason, you should take into account some features to carry them out in a better way. Among the main ones are:
- Empathy
- establish a relationship
- Human contact
- Dialogue
- persuasive skill
Now I delve into each one so that you are clear about the relevance when putting them into practice.
Empathy
Don’t pretend you care; really empathize with your client. This will give you more confidence and, of course, will leave you well positioned. There’s nothing like understanding your problems and helping to solve them.
establish a relationship
Hand in hand with the above is the need to establish a relationship with your potential client in which, I insist, you must prioritize their needs so that they trust you. This will allow him to look for you later because he trusts you.
Human contact
It may seem obvious to you, but there is no personal selling that is not face-to-face, with you interacting with your potential client, listening to them and, as far as possible, customizing the process according to their expectations.
Dialogue
Forget monologues and generate a conversation in which communication is clear and agile. The information must flow in two ways, in which the buyer’s doubts and questions are key, something that does not happen in a marketing strategy, for example.
persuasive skill
It is key not to be invasive or press too hard. In colloquial terms, don’t stretch the rope too much. You must be convincing that he should take the path you suggest. There is a phrase that I love to explain this: “”. Study different ones that will help you convince and close those deals.
What types of personal sales are there?
You should know that there are different types of personal sales. —expert in business and marketing, author of various books—points out three main types:
- Who receives the order (order-taker)
- Who creates the order (order-creator)
- Order getters (order-getter)
Let’s see the activities that each one performs.
1. Who receives the order (order-taker)
It is a person who collects purchase orders or orders. It is limited to that only and it is not your role to find new customers or to persuade existing customers to increase the size or frequency of their orders.
Think of the staff inside a shopping center and you will have a perfect idea of ​​this profile.
2. Who creates the order (order-creator)
If the mountain does not come to you… It is exactly what this type of seller does. In simple terms, they seek out customers and convince them to buy your company’s products.
Perhaps the clearest example is the staff of the call centers —Yes, it is one of the few exceptions to the rule in terms of not being in person at a personal sale—.
3. Order getters (order-getter)
This is likely to be the most comprehensive profile as it requires not only sales skills, but prospecting and business development skills as well. They attract new customers and convince them to purchase the products.
We can understand that they are the ones who take personal sales to its maximum expression.
Advantages of personal selling
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, 79% of customers consider it absolutely critical or very important to interact with a salesperson, so the fact of having personal sales has many advantages. The main ones are:
- Effectiveness
- Impact and reputation
- long-term relationships
- first hand feedback
What do I mean by each? I’ll explain it below.
Effectiveness
Think about the possibility of personally interacting with the customer, listening to him directly and clearing up his doubts to help him solve a problem. It’s ground gold, right? Therefore, personal sales are more effective in closing sales.
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