(This article was originally published on Hubspot.com and has been edited for content and style.)
Whether you work in retail, auto sales or a B2B business you’ll have far more success if you’re familiar with the characteristics of your target buyer and thoroughly qualify each prospect against that matrix. This is called an ideal buyer profile and it’s like having a secret weapon. By finding the specific type of “anybody” who is just right for your product or service, you’ll avoid wasting time on poor-fit leads. And regardless of what industry you’re in or what type of organizations you sell into, a few sales axioms hold. These rules can help you sell more to just about anybody.
Make it about them
Do you have a friend or family member who monopolizes every conversation? They probably aren’t your favorite person to talk to. Add a bragging tone and they become especially intolerable.
Just like you don’t like listening to a self-absorbed acquaintance blabber, buyers don’t like listening to salespeople talk at length about their companies or offerings. What you perceive as informative and interesting, prospects perceive as obnoxious and irrelevant.
The cardinal rule of sales is to always make it about your target buyer. Every email you write, voicemail you leave, demo you give and meeting you attend should place the focus squarely on the target buyer. Constantly ask yourself, “What’s the relevance to this particular prospect?” and customize each interaction accordingly.
Do your research before reaching out
If you expect buyers to give you their time and learn about your product, you need to spend time learning about them first. In the age of social media, there’s no excuse to call or email a target buyer with no knowledge of what they do and what they care about.
Pre-call research doesn’t have to take a long time. Depending on your particular sales cycle, as little as five or 10 minutes per prospect might suffice.
Here are some places to research prospects before you attempt to engage them in conversation:
- Twitter (prospect’s individual account and company’s account)
- Company’s press releases page
- Competitors’ press releases pages
- Blogs
- Company financial statements
- Google (prospect and company)
If you’re using HubSpot’s Customer Profiles Software, you can siphon all of this known information about a prospect directly into your inbox.
Build rapport first
If a customer entered a retail store, you wouldn’t immediately say, “Hello, would you like to buy this blouse?” You’d likely start by asking, “How are you today?” and then, “What brings you in today?” You might sprinkle in comments like, “I love that top you’re wearing.” Or, qualifying questions like, “So, you’re looking for a cocktail dress. May I ask what the occasion is?”
Similarly, when you’re conducting B2B outreach to a prospect you haven’t spoken with before, it’s important to lean heavily on the research element we touched on in step two.
If you notice your prospect lives in Phoenix, do a quick Google search of new restaurants in the area and open by asking if they’ve been and what their favorite dish is. Are they from Colorado? Open by asking how the snow is this season and if they’re a skier.
The bottom line: Genuinely get to know your prospect before you launch into what you have to offer, why they should care and why you’re better than your competitors. After all, we’re just human beings. Talk to your prospect like a human before speaking to them like a salesperson.
Contribute first, sell second
If you’re defining your target buyer correctly, you’ll spend the majority of your day talking to business leaders who have problems your product or service can solve. But just because you know this doesn’t mean they do.
Don’t jump in with your pitch right off the bat. You run the risk of angering the prospect or scaring them away. Instead, offer your help in the way you think would be most valuable. Not sure where you can be of service? Ask.
Maybe you can send along a breakdown of the latest features of a buyer’s target car or send them a piece of content that speaks to their needs. Perhaps you can draw on your expertise to speak about industry-wide trends the buyer might not be privy to.
Pro tip: Save templates of common questions you receive from buyers, so you can quickly follow up with a relevant message. Position yourself as an advisor who wants to help, rather than a salesperson thirsty to sell. With this approach, you’ll find a more receptive audience when you finally get around to connecting their problem with your offering.
In short: Always be helping. As social selling expert, Jill Rowley, put it, “Think ‘jab, jab, jab, right hook’ as ‘give, give, give, ask.'”
Ask questions and listen
No matter how thoroughly you’ve researched your prospect, there will be gaps in your knowledge and you won’t be able to help the buyer solve their issue if you don’t fully understand it. For this reason, it’s critical to ask thoughtful questions during your conversations—and a lot of them.
Here are some examples sales trainers Rick Roberge and Sean McPheat advocate:
- “How did this happen?”
- “What are the most important features for you?”
- “Has it always been this way?”
- “How should this product make you feel?”
- “How is the issue impacting your organization?
- “What do your customers think?”
- “What are you currently doing to address the problem?”
- “In a perfect world, what would you like to see happen with this?”
- “Can you give me an example?”
Be curious. It’s good to have a list of questions prepared as a jumping off point, but you don’t have to stick to them if the conversation takes an unexpected turn. People like talking about themselves and their situations, so your genuine interest and curiosity will help them warm up to you.
After posing a question, simply listen. Really hear what the buyer is saying, and don’t just wait for your turn to speak. Then, after they’ve finished their thought, communicate their message back to them, ask them to verify if you understood them correctly and pose a question providing further clarification.
Congratulations—you just became an active listener!
Not only does careful listening help you get a grip on the problem, but it also makes the prospect feel good. And if you truly tune in, they’ll be more likely to return the favor when you have something to say.
Be sure to track this information in your (free!) CRM, so that your whole team has access to the info and you don’t have to ask repeat questions to your buyer.
Lean into psychology
Our brains are wired to respond to certain situations in specific ways. Being aware of these psychological tricks can help you harness them to your benefit.
Here are just a few of the quirks relevant to salespeople:
- Anchoring effect
- The information we receive first acts as an anchor against which we evaluate all further data.
- Decoy effect
- A third option can sometimes help people choose between two possibilities.
- Rhyme-as-reason effect
- Rhyming statements seem truer than non-rhyming ones.
- Loss aversion
- We react more strongly to the possibility of losing something we currently have than the possibility of gaining something we don’t.
- Peak-end rule
- People remember the end and a high point within a presentation more vividly than any other section.
- Curse of knowledge
- When someone who knows a lot about a given subject is unable to relate to someone who is not as familiar.
- Confirmation bias
- We are more likely to accept information that aligns with our beliefs than contradictory evidence—no matter how compelling.
Approach them on their level
It’s great when a salesperson brings their unique personality to their selling process. But bear in mind you should also pay attention to your prospect’s personality and tailor your approach accordingly. Our personal attributes have an impact on how we like to be sold to and what information we prioritize.
Here’s a brief breakdown of the four main personality types and their preferences:
- Driver
- Interested in results and the bottom line.
- Amiable
- Interested in creative ideas and big-picture visions.
- Expressive
- Interested in people and how ideas affect others.
- Analytical
- Interested in facts, figures and data.
Once you know which category your prospect fits into, play to their preferences and customize your messaging and presentation to nail what’s most important to them.
Reach an emotional high point
There’s no such thing as a purely rational decision. Like it or not, our emotions color how we process information and make decisions. With this in mind, salespeople who appeal solely to their buyers’ logic are doing themselves a disservice.
Every sales message, presentation and meeting should speak to the prospect’s emotions as well as their rational mind. According to sales expert Geoffrey James, the following emotions impact decision-making:
- Greed
- Fear
- Altruism
- Envy
- Pride
- Shame
Some of these are unpleasant feelings you don’t want buyers associating with you or your company. So, make sure to use a light touch when making emotional appeals. In addition, don’t try to bring forth all of these feelings—choose one or two that will resonate and subtly mix them in.
Remember, you’re selling to a person
When you’re sending countless outreach emails each and every day, it’s easy to forget that leads are people. But they are and they want to be treated as such.
Use yourself as a litmus test—would you like getting this email? Would you appreciate this voicemail? If not, there’s a good chance your buyer won’t either.
It’s important to be professional in sales, but it’s also important to be personable. Buyers have lives outside of work and things they’re passionate about that have nothing to do with their jobs. Build real rapport with your prospects by letting the conversation drift to the personal every once in a while. It doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, all business all the time.