Nothing Beats This One Tool When You Can't Sell Face to Face

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Thu, Aug 19, 2021 @ 10:08 AM

abc

The "ABC's" is an alternate term for fundamentals.

Unless ABC stands for Afghanistan, the Border, and Crime. The US Government has seriously botched the ABC's in 2021 and there's no way to easily undo what's been done.

However, there are some misguided selling strategies that can be undone and in today's article we'll discuss the benefits of the single tool that is the real deal and a huge difference maker.

Email sucks for everything except sending links and attachments, confirming meetings, saying hello, catching up, and sending along meeting agendas.  You should never sell over email and you know this.  How many unsolicited emails do you delete each day with offers to generate leads, appointments, SEO, website design, IT help and more?  Would you like to know what is always more effective than email?

The Phone is a much better way to have a conversation because you simply can not have a conversation over email.  You lose context, tonality, meaning, timing, spontaneity, and all of the dynamics of a conversation!  Please choose the phone for prospecting, following up on inbound leads, making outbound calls, and for follow up conversations.  Would you like to know what is always more effective than the phone?

Video is best.  While you can have an actual conversation over the phone, you can't see how your prospects and customers are reacting and for building trust, they can't look you in the eyes.  Video solves that.  I'm going to use my dog, Dinger, as an example.  You may recall that last year I proved that Dinger has better listening skills than most salespeople.

This 14 second audio provides an example of what you might hear when asking a question over the phone.

Link to Audio 

Now listen to the audio - but WITH video and watch how vastly different it is from what you expected.

Seeing how they react, how they respond and what they do is even more important than hearing their words.  I know, my example is with a dog.  Would it be any different if you asked a person?  Suppose you asked, "Is this something you would find useful?" and the human said, "yah, sure."

Let's assume you have the ability to observe them and you see them responding to email while they absentmindedly say, "yah, sure."

It's more important than ever that you choose video over phone if you can't meet face to face.  You want to have every possible advantage, tool, weapon, strategy and tactic at your disposal and video is the closest you can get to the good old days of face to face.

One of the new competencies that Objective Management Group (OMG) now measures is Video Proficiency.

When evaluating a sales team we also capture two videos of your salespeople delivering their elevator pitches and value propositions.  When assessing sales candidates, the Video Proficient competency, while not one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies, is still very nice to know.  Check out our best-in-class, sales-specific, accurate and predictive sales candidates assessments here.

Image copyright 123RF

Topics: Dave Kurlan, prospecting, video, selling skills, sales assessments

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Best-Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Sales Thought Leader,  Dave Kurlan's Understanding the Sales Force Blog earned awards for the Top Sales & Marketing Blog for eleven consecutive years and of the more than 2,000 articles Dave has published, many of the articles have also earned awards.

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