It’s well-established that in school, students learn faster and retain information much better when they are interacting with the material rather than just hearing a lecture. The exact same dynamic applies to selling.
You can dramatically increase your odds of capturing prospects’ intellectual attention and emotional engagement if you can evolve your sales communications from “presentations” into “experiences” in which the prospects become part of the conversation.
Of course, the classic example is in car sales, where salespeople are encouraged to get prospects out of the showroom and behind the wheel. They know that there is no substitute for the customer getting involved on all sensory levels. Simply looking at a brochure of a car and listening to a sales pitch in the showroom misses the opportunity to really get the customer engaged.
So how do you do this when selling less visceral products or services, especially now if you cannot even visit the client in person?
One way is to develop a series of questions you can walk through together, that is, a process you can follow along with your clients so they feel more engaged and in control of the meeting. The key is to develop a process – a roadmap if you will – which encourages customer interaction and builds toward reasonable conclusions.
For the most part, prospects love to engage and do not like being “presented to.” It’s boring to listen to a one-dimensional “pitch.” It is your job to get your prospects’ minds, and hearts, into a discussion about how your goods and services will help them reach their goals, hopes and dreams.
