Customers Demand a New Sales Experience - Are You Ready?

In late 2021, McKinsey did a study to find out how customers felt about the current state of their interactions with salespeople. We just went through over a year of what we thought was a radically altered buyer/seller relationship, but it turns out maybe it wasn’t as radical as we thought.

80% of the customers interviewed said they have no interest in going back to the “old” way of working with salespeople, and they’ll switch vendors in a heartbeat for a more progressive and easier buying process.

When I hear alarming stats like this I realize there are three different ways to react.

The first option is to Resist - you question the validity of the research, don’t spend time trying to understand it, and just keep going the way you are.

The second option is a Wait and See approach. The points seem valid, and you’ll make some minor adjustments, but will mostly keep things the same so you’re ready if it all ends up being true.

The third option is to Embrace and Capitalize. Since you’re close to your customers and have some of these same observations, you realize that most salespeople will either take the Resist or Wait and See approach, which makes this a unique moment in time to separate yourself from everyone else - and win a disproportionate share of the opportunities that are in front of you.

I’ve spent my career winning and growing business from some of the biggest companies out there, and helped lead teams and companies to capitalize on shifting marketplaces. I call the approach Surround Sound which can apply to the way salespeople operate on their own via Surround Sound Selling™, how managers and executives can lead their people via Surround Sound Leadership™, and how companies run an entire culture with a Surround Sound Business™.

Creating a Surround Sound Customer Experience™ is about surrounding our customers with an experience that taps into their logic and emotions, considers how they consume and consolidate information, how they formulate their ideas, and most importantly - how they make decisions.

While there are a variety of topics, tools, and action plans within the Surround Sound approach, here’s a summary of the key things today’s customers want as part of the buyer/seller relationship:

Communicate with Clarity

Have you every been faced with a difficult or important decision and you’re not quite sure what to do, and when you ask a friend or peer for their opinion and you get a wishy-washy response or they just ask more questions? Sometimes we just need someone to nudge us towards a decision we already know we need to make, or that can help us think through that decision more clearly.

Customers need help making decisions too, and to do this they want to surround themselves with experts. Today’s sellers need to be a constant student of their industry in order to communicate with confidence, conviction and clarity.

Build Multi-Channel Connections

Science has proven that human beings learn better if they receive information in multiple modalities - seeing, hearing, doing, and touching. It’s called Multisensory Learning. I remember learning in high school that when I studied by reading material, and then writing it down, my brain could retain the information better. The same thing happens in sales - if we can communicate verbally, in writing, and in person, we’ll build a deeper cognitive connection with our clients.

In today’s world, there are so many forms of communication which can be intimidating but it’s also an opportunity to build a connection in deeper ways. Today’s organizations need to embrace all channels of communication so that our team members are accessible, responsive, and so that we can build a deeper connection. This includes phone, video calls, text messaging, social media, and meeting in person. By tapping into as many of these channels as we can, it will build a stronger, multi-modal customer relationship.

Operate with Empathy

There’s a phrase often used in psychology, “meet them where they are". The idea is that to help someone work through a difficult problem, you can’t just tell them what to do as the end result. You need to understand where that person is in their own emotions and thinking patterns, meet them there, and then help them work towards a more positive point-of-view.

When we are truly an expert in our field and functioning as an advisor to our clients, we often know exactly what our customers needs to do or what product or service we have that is right for them. But if we go right for the close, we’ll turn the customer off. We all know that being a great listener is important, but today’s customer needs us to take it one step further. We need to advise and educate our clients at all steps of the buying journey so we can help them confidently make small decisions, that will ultimately lead to big decisions in our favor.

Build Trust and Confidence

The #1 reason customers buy from a company is trust - trust that they are being advised correctly, being treated fairly, and that they are making the right decision. So it’s not just that we are trusted as salespeople, it’s that we help the customer trust and feel confident in their own decisions. Too often sales teams function in a one-dimensional way where they’re selling “to” or “at” the customer, as opposed to making that a collaborative effort with the customer involved.

As a small example, back when I was CEO of a sales technology company, when we were in the late stages of a sales opportunity I would send a simple email to the clients head of sales. A simple introduction, name dropping some key clients, telling them why I thought we could make a significant impact on their business based on what our salesperson learned from their team, and making myself available if they have any questions. That simple email helped us close a shocking number of projects, for the simple reason that it made the customer feel more confident in their decision.

Today’s sellers need to understand their customers underlying motivations so they can summarize insights and coordinate executive connections that empower them to make decisions with confidence.

Create Demand

Companies who want to drive growth can no longer sit back and wait for the phone to ring. A growth oriented business needs to have a mindset that creates demand in the marketplace by executing a marketing and sales strategy that makes the company discoverable at all steps of the buying journey. This happens through things like sophisticated search engine optimization programs, performance marketing efforts, social media interactions, thought leadership content generation, and live events. Customers are out there right now trying to educate themselves on what’s new in the marketplace that will help them be more successful - and we want that content to be ours.

Help Them Feel Heard

We live in a world of interacting with our screens - phones and multiple tabs and apps open on our laptops. The average American looks at their phone 344 times a day, and it’s gotten far too easy to glimpse over at our email on our second monitor while on a Zoom call - which means we aren’t really paying attention.

Being a great listener has always been a common characteristic of top performing salespeople and leaders, and these days it’s more important than ever. For all the reasons stated above, it’s an opportunity to separate ourselves from everyone else by truly paying attention to our customers - because most people won’t. And when in those interactions with customers, to be an active listener by asking clarifying follow-up questions, admitting it when we don’t understand something, reconfirming you do understand things they said, using screen sharing to keep people focused, and making sure everyone has a chance to talk and be heard.

Today’s sales landscape has changed in so many ways, and those who embrace that change is happening are the ones who will separate from the pack and amplify results.