Are You "Conversational" Enough to Get More Clients & Sales?
Or HOW to artfully promote oneself to get noticed...
Here on LinkedIn, the networking and direct marketing activities have increased dramatically. In fact, here is a great article presented by Hootsuite's Paige Cooper (Feb 2019) - that shows 2 professionals join LinkedIn every second!
154 million American workers have LinkedIn profiles.
America has the highest number of LinkedIn users. Here's the link to that article.
When your LinkedIn post is purely promotional in nature, you can bet that no one will stick around to hear what you are selling after they get the first one. No one wants to be sold. Today, business professionals are way more savvy, and they are looking for real conversations in order to build real relationships with those they wish to do business with. There is so much fake and spammy activity going around...you don't want that business reputation!
Yes, there is an art to promoting one self. It is a learned skill. Here's a way to think about it that could be a key to unlocking more business for you - when you write a marketing message, either as a post or in a personal direct message, try to write it as if the person you are reaching out to is standing right there in front of you, and you are actually having a 2 way conversation. Think 'screen play'.
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Be a Great Listener!
There is a saying in sales - to be a great listener, one has to close their mouth...or something like that. We tend to half-listen when we are networking, because our brain is waiting for the moment when we get to speak, ready to pounce when the moment is presented, and give a blast of details about our own offerings. Well, that might work in a speed networking event, that is not the normal way to create a great business relationship. That two way street starts with one person doing the active listening. Active listening techniques are learnable and are valuable skills enabling you to be aware of your own efforts to understand what others are saying.
So, how do we do become great active listeners?
Ask many genuine questions! Ask one question, and then be QUIET. When they have answered, ask them something else, to get them to open up and talk about themselves and their product. Keep listening. It's all about them! Be sure to wait for them to ask YOU what they want to know.
When you act in this manner, eventually, they may come to realize they are taking up the entire conversation, and begin asking the same back to you, for the details about you and your offerings. Here is another key, when it is your turn to do the answering - answer in a way that demonstrates that you're the expert. Share that you've been in a given situation, sharing what may have worked for you, or sharing in a similar "pain" fashion, meaning they recognize that you have shared that same painful business experience, and allow them to provide their insights to you.
Now, in all of this there is POWER to be accessed, with the use of a scripted story. Scripting is a technique where you write out a pre-formulated story and practice it in order to help it become more natural to speak to it. There is emotion in a story because you will have included it in the script.
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Features tell. EMOTION sells.
By creating scripts for your conversational dialogues you will help them understand and feel the emotions associated with the pain of not doing business with you within your answers to their questions.
When you can influence another to do business with you in this natural conversational manner, you will find a higher closing rate in your own referrals and transactions will increase along the way. Being genuine is paramount to your success.
Try to keep the conversation interactive. Interactive defined: (adjective)
- (of two people or things) influencing or having an effect on each other.
- allowing a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user; responding to a user's input.
- mutually or reciprocally active.
- involving the actions or input of a user especially: of, relating to, or being a two-way electronic communication system (such as a telephone, cable television, or a computer) that involves a user's orders (as for information or merchandise) or responses (as to a poll)
One way to practice this idea of scripting - is to create objection response scripts. These are powerful prepared responses when the prospect says, "I don’t have the time." Or, "I need to think about it." Or, "Can you send me some information?" And so on. Another type of script includes the use of humor. Humor scripts are designed to build rapport.
Let me share with you now one of my client success stories, one I regularly share during my seminars. It’s about one of my star students named Arvee Robinson. I met Arvee at one of my seminars, and she signed up for my Protégé program, which included some one-to-one coaching time with me. During the coaching sessions, Arvee really connected with my messages. Arvee is one of the top trainers in the world, teaching people how to grow their business doing public speeches. She is very passionate about what she does, but at this time she was not producing very good business results. Why? Simply because she was uncomfortable selling and had a resistance to sales scripts. Arvee became outstanding at implementing my number one distinction for sales greatest, which is to "stay in the conversation," (I write about this in depth in Chapter 15 of my book The System.) So Arvee continued with our coaching sessions, our Protégé calls; she even continued to return to the public seminars I was teaching at the time. Then one day, it all clicked for her. Suddenly she didn’t just like sales, she embraced sales. She also embraced sales scripting. She began harnessing and using the power of sales scripting. Her income immediately shot up—she went from generating $4,000 a month in sales to $15-$20,000 a month in sales. With that increase in income, Arvee was soon able to realize one of her dreams of becoming a homeowner again. She had been renting for the previous eight years.
Pretty powerful, right? This is a sample of scripts.
Wrapping this article up - The consequence of not taking action is that, for every presentation you deliver without having an effective sales script, you leave money on the table.
Visit this link to sign up for my Sales Scripting course!
Thanks for reading, follow me on all the social media platforms and be sure to share this article with others who are in sales! To your Success!
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