Selling is about mastering human connection:

• Finding the right people
• Accurately connecting your brand with their needs
• Maintaining trust throughout a long-term relationship

How you foster that human connection can be specific to your industry, but general principles will increase your likelihood of success and focus your efforts. 

We’ll cover seven of our favorite principles in this piece. Remember, while these principles are simple, successfully applying and implementing them can be pretty complex.

Understanding Your Target Client Base

The sales journey begins with a clear view of who you are trying to connect with. Understanding your client’s needs, what they’ve already tried (and why it isn’t working for them), and what they expect in the future is critical to developing a long-term relationship.

1. Create Multiple Ideal Client Personas

Successful businesses laser focus on their ideal client(s). Create a few avatars for your target market, including their age, average cash flow, and hierarchy of unmet needs. This exercise will help you craft unique marketing campaigns, correctly position your value, and make it easy for your target market to trust you.

But don’t go overboard. The most successful companies stick with 1-3 client personas. The fewer you have, the better you can understand and serve them. The more you will attract a larger portion of their demographic.

2. Thorough Market Research

Careful market research is an ongoing process, but it’s particularly important before your initial product launch. Market research covers a wide variety of your client’s backstory and forecast, including:

• How competitors position themselves with the same client base
• Where your target market looks for solutions and how they perform research
• Industry trends, future demand, and complimentary products/services
• Top industry influencers and trending topics
• Client attitudes about the industry, common pain points, and leading solutions
• Consumer price sensitivity and how they monetarily value a solution

Your methodology matters– surveys or questionnaires are only as good as the quality of the sample of the respondents. So make sure you perform your research intentionally and use the proper methods.

Connecting with the Target Market

Once you’ve identified your target customer base, it’s time to cater your sales pitch to that group. 

3. Craft Meaningful Value Propositions

Your value propositions are product specific and can be tailored to each of your ideal clients—a simple statement connecting your brand to why you are the best solution for your target demographic.

Slack is an excellent example of a high-impact value proposition. Slack states, “Be more productive at work with less effort”– a big claim in a market overflowing with product management and productivity solutions. 

But Slack delivers in a few key ways:

• An impressively high number of third-party integrations
• Easy setup and implementation
• Smooth and intuitive UI (user interface), both on computers and phones

This value proposition reinforces Slack as one of the most widely used and adopted project management solutions today.

4. Encourage Client Interaction and Personal Relationships

It’s never been more expensive to gain new clients, and they’ve never had higher expectations. Consumers want to have a human connection to the brands they shop.

One result of rising consumer expectations is the prominent use of videos in the discovery and sales process. TikTok has become a major revenue stream, and Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have increased their use of videos. Video marketing grabs attention, creates a personal relationship, and allows you to showcase your product or services.

Social media marketing is also an excellent way to increase consumer engagement. Capitalize on partnerships with other complementary brands and influencers to increase your credibility. Proper social media content engages viewers.

5. Utilize AI in Micromarketing

AI is an excellent tool to increase reach and personalization at a much lower cost. Let’s use Netflix as an example of AI in targeted micromarketing.

Netflix uses micromarketing in subtle ways to optimally position the same movies to different demographics. Netflix uses a handful of images for each of its movies so that they can position the movie according to the viewing patterns of each subscriber. By using an action shot with one viewer and a more romantic shot with another, they position the movie to their regular viewing patterns and increase the likelihood of staying and watching. 

AI can be used in similar ways for marketing products and services. By tailoring the images and value prop in a few iterations, you can use your bot to connect with different markets based on what will attract them to your product.

Making the Sale and Continuing the Relationship

There is unlimited content available on closing sales and fostering long-term business relationships. Our last two points will focus on client education and growing with your clients. 

6. Client Education

Experts agree that client education is critical in sales and relationship development. You need to make it easy for the client to understand the product/service. Properly educating your client will help you set expectations and increase customer satisfaction. 

Here are a few ways to integrate client education into your sales journey:

• Use videos prominently on your website
• Have a clear on-boarding or implementation process
• Use a dedicated staff member to walk the client through sales and implementation
• Create an easily accessible knowledge base for clients to find their own solutions
• Utilize chatbots to solve easy problems live while passing on more challenging issues to live support

Offering a combination of live support and static references will increase your customer’s sense of care and satisfaction.

7. Evolve With Your Ideal Client

We could say a lot about client retention, but we’ll focus on one aspect designed to retain and increase your sales. And that’s how you intentionally evolve your product or service line with your client’s natural evolutions. 

This includes developing complimentary products or services, making them easier or more available, or furthering development in your current selections. As you grow with your clients, you’ll become a one-stop shop integrated into their business. This mutually beneficial relationship saves you and your client time and money. 

Ready to Optimize Your Sales?

While these seven principles look simple to start at first glance, they can be challenging and time consuming to successfully implement and maintain over time. Having qualified support with an outsider’s view but an insider’s determination is an incredible asset.

That’s where we come in. Think of us as a third-party partner committed to supporting you from start to finish. That includes “diagnosis,” implementing changes, and sticking around to see your business recover. And we’ll still be there in a year or two to help you adapt to new needs and growth!

Contact us today for a consultation!

References:

• How To Reach A New Customer Demographic
• How To Successfully Differentiate Yourself In Sales
• Tips on How to Educate Customers in the Acquisition Stage
• Why It’s Important To Educate Your Clients (And 3 Easy Tips For Making It Happen)
• 7 Tips for Differentiating in the Selling Process
• Sales Differentiation – Differentiating & Positioning Your Solution as “Different” from Competition
• How to Do Market Research: A Guide and Template
• How to Write a Great Value Proposition [5 Top Examples + Template]
• Customer Retention Marketing vs. Customer Acquisition Marketing