The Successful Selling Strategies Series-Part-1

I have six important subjects would like to share with you in this sales training series.

Part 1- Personal Touch vs. Technology

Part 2 –The Value of Communication

Part 3 –The Top 3 Sales Strategies in a Changing Economy

Part 4 - Sales Motivation Through Meetings

Part 5 –Top 10 Steps to Keep Your Company Growing

Part 6 - Focus, Focus, FOCUS

Personal Touch vs. Technology

Remember the days when all a cell phone did was make phone calls? There were no cameras, no texting, and no mp3 players. There was no application to help you find the best place to buy socks at 4 a.m. in Chicago. All a cell phone did was connect your voice with someone else’s for instant communication. Yet, without the extra features, the world kept on spinning.

Technology has changed business in so many ways. It’s given us plenty of information about almost any subject or person in the world, right at our fingertips. Sure, you can go on google and find out a list of “facts” about a potential customer. Yet, there’s a difference between knowing about someone and knowing who are they are as a person. You can write emails back and forth and even ship the product to them without as much as a phone call necessary. But how can you earn a customer’s trust and fulfill their needs without knowing who they really are?

The answer is simple… you can’t.

One of the most successful selling strategies is to keep the personal touch.

If a customer needs 10,000 units of something last minute, do you think they’d go to a faceless company who is only reachable through email or will they go to the business down the street that may charge a little more but has a living, breathing person there to make sure their order follows through?

A client cannot believe in who you are and what you’re trying to sell if you’re not there to personally convince them of it. An email or a text isn’t going to be as convincing as seeing the passion in someone’s eyes and the honesty resounding from their voice. Emails and texts can be quick beneficial resources for communicating about simple matters or confirmations. However, in business, they should never be the only form of communication you utilize as there’s always a high chance for error (whether human or mechanical) that could come up.

These errors may include:

1) Your email or text could have gone in the spam box.

2) Your email or text could have been delivered to an incorrect email address.

3) The receiver of the email or text may have been flooded with other emails and not paid proper attention to yours.

4) The recipient may accidentally think it is spam and delete the message.

5) The recipient may have started to read you’re your message, gotten distracted, and forget to reply back.

6) You can’t seem to get a sense of how your message was received because emotion is quite difficult to decode in text format.

All of the previous potentials could inhibit you from being successful in getting that sale.

Now, I’m not saying that email, texting, facebook, or any other technology is necessarily negative, far from it. It really can help you in carrying out successful sales strategies. Personally, I’d probably be one of those people to have the application on my phone that helps me find socks in the Windy City at 4 a.m. More so, I love feeling so connected to the people in my life that aren’t physically near me. Thanks to technology, I used to be able see and talk to my mom on the computer who was 2,000 miles away. However, as great as that is, nothing would beat seeing her in person.

At the end of the day, selling is about working with people. It’s a people business. Even if you send someone an email, give him or her a call to confirm that they received it. You should always make sure that you offer that person your services and give it your all while doing so. Ultimately, being yourself can be your most successful sales strategy.

Grant Cardone, International Sales Training Expert and NY Times Best-Selling Author

www.GrantCardone.com | www.CardoneOnDemand.com