As a Sales Leader and an avid Social Seller, (a subject I speak on, am widely published on and sit as a Non-exec on a specialist firm for) I profess to keep up with the latest and greatest of best practices in the sales arena.
To that end I wonder, if many of you like myself will recognise the following statistics and scenarios, all supposedly supporting a reduced use of the phone in selling?
- ‘67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally’ Source : SiriusDecisions
- ‘In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts’ Source : Telenet & Ovation Sales Group
- ‘The average salesperson only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect’ Source: SiriusDecisions
Add to this the growth of millennials in businesses and people new to sales who are from the Social and online born generation and we have the excuse bag growing. I have witnessed many new and younger to sales, defaulting to email as the communication medium with customers and prospects. When questioning if they have asked A. B and C, watching them say ‘I shall go ask’ and watching as they immediately start typing way to put it in an email. The default communication method has by habit and osmosis become electronic.
Now I get it, it’s hard to get hold of people, we want immediacy and the lowest effort to get something done and phoning someone means looking up their number, calling it, getting put through and often leaving a message or voicemail, waiting for them to call back, perhaps missing you and the saga continues. So it’s harder, right?
With email, you simply go to your email client, start typing their name and autofill kicks in most times, you quickly crack out an email, send it and its dealt with. The reply you get is hopefully the answers, so it’s a 1 to 1 send and receive ratio, instead of what may be a chain of effort to get a conversation.
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Ian Moyse, Natterbox UK Sales Director[/caption]
The issue is that this isn’t a conversation, it’s multiple one way communications. A conversation is interactive, email is not. You may think it is; A send to B, B replies to A and so on, but its measured, pre-thought out responses, without emotion, without clarity and understanding! When you speak to someone you detect tonality, query, misunderstanding, inflection, reaction delay, silences – on email all of this is removed. Achieving and interpreting EI (Emotional Intelligence) in email is a no-no and yet this forms a good part of a salespersons interpretation of what to do next, how to react and interact with a client. So, we are choosing to remove this 2 way asset from our sales arsenal and by doing so putting ourselves at a disadvantage.
Send someone some statements and questions and their response may have followed assumed understanding of what you meant, asking someone else what to put for their answers, which are then measured and thought through responses, rephrased/retyped and edited. When you speak you get the immediacy, can interject and ask additional questions (‘it sounded like you were not sure of that’ , ‘I sensed a pause was there a doubt on that?', etc.), all of this is lost in an email or electronic communication.
- '86% of telephone communication is made up of ‘tone of voice’ and just 14% the words we say' Source: Contactpoint
It is easy to fall into that trap and I am sure we have all done it – emailed when a conversation would have been better, gained use greater insight and built the relationship. What we ned to start doing is catching ourselves doing it and self-correcting. As Sales leaders directing sales to pick up the phone and speak to them on this, don’t email.
Perhaps email if you can’t reach them to communicate "We need to speak on XYZ as I would like to discuss how we can ABC", but drive to real conversations.
Where possible meeting someone is better than phone and phone is better than email. The more interpersonal and real the dialogue the more you can glean from it and build mutual rapport towards a better outcome. Let your competition be on email when you are on the phone, and when on the phone be meeting the prospect. This alone gives you an increased likelihood of winning the business and accelerates your debate with the customer. In one call or meeting you can achieve a lot more than a back and forth of emails that can span days.
"The Phone is Dead, Long Live the Phone"[/caption]
