Matching Your Communication to Your Sales Process

Strong communication skills are integral to any good sales operation. If you don’t understand how to talk to a prospect, you’re going to have a very difficult time convincing them to buy anything.

Bad communication can get in all of our ways. I’ve seen it happen in everyone from first-day sellers to seasoned sales reps. I’ve seen first-time sales leaders fail to communicate properly with their team and all-star reps collapse upon entering an international market 

At The Revenue Roadmap Workshop in Singapore, I delivered a presentation on the topic of sales communication. We talked a lot about writing a sales pitch and asking questions to learn about your customer. Perhaps most importantly, though, I discussed the importance of aligning your communication skills with your sales process. 

Here are an excerpt and some highlights from my talk:

[VIDEO]

Determine the Complexity of Your Process

Sales processes vary in complexity. There are transactional sales—where someone calls me up to ask if I want to buy Girl Scout Cookies. I say ‘Yes’ (obviously), give her my debit card number and start counting down the days until they show up.

And there are complex sales, where I have to sit through dozens of meetings and get buy-in from 10 of my coworkers before I’m able to purchase software for my sales team. 

It’s important to identify the complexity of your own process because that will determine how you communicate with your customers. If your deals are transactional, it’s likely that there are only one or two buyers involved. The person that you speak to on the phone isn’t going to have to justify their purchase to a boardroom full of people (I might have to justify to my wife that ordering a truck full of cookies was worth it, but that’s about it). 

If you’re involved in complex sales, your buyer probably sits somewhere in a large hierarchy. When you speak with them, then, you’ll need to convince them that the purchase is something their team will sign off on, as well. 

Understand the Organization (And the Buyer’s Role in It)

When you sell to a certain company, make a map of what that company looks like internally. How many decision makers and influencers are involved in the deal? Who is benefitting from the software purchase?

Most likely, you’ll find yourself selling to the same job title at similar companies. If you sell to the Head of IT at a large bank, you’re probably going to sell to the Head of IT at every large bank. And, if you find that there are seven other signatures on the contract when it closes (even if you never met those folks), you can bet that there are going to be at least seven other signatures on all of your bank contracts. 

Take note of all these players. Ask your buyer what their role in the deal was, what their investment in the product was and how it’s going to help them. Those same job titles are going to pop up in future deals and you’ll need to be able to communicate with them.

Help Your Buyer Fulfill Their Goals

If your product is a game-changer, there’s a chance that people are going to be promoted for buying it. I’ve seen it happen before. When I sold to Choice Hotels, I found that the person I was talking to was trying to move up from Senior Director to VP of Marketing. Buying our software was her way of establishing herself as an industry leader.

When you realize what your buyer’s goals are, you’re going to have a much easier time selling to them. Pay close attention, ask questions and figure out what their motives are. 

If you can identify who their bosses are and what needs to happen for those bosses to be impressed, you can build your communication around that. If you can help a buyer to fulfill their goals, you’ll be able to cite their success when you sell to other people with the same job.