Customers have become choosy these days. They want to do business with only those they recognize, like, and believe. That’s simply because they want to be understood and get personalized experience. The stats also indicate that 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences. This is probably why personal selling is still such an important selling technique.
Long ago, 100% of sales were based on personal selling. But as time evolved and technology advanced, personal selling became just one of the many selling techniques available for salespeople to close deals.
Still, we cannot overlook the value that this form of selling brings to the table. Not only does it help build deep customer relationships, but also builds trust and improves customer satisfaction.
Personal selling is extremely important for many reasons and is a skill every good salesperson must learn. Let’s explore more about personal selling and how it can benefit you.
1. What is Personal Selling?
As the name suggests, personal selling is a selling technique that uses direct, in-person interactions with potential prospects to sell products and services. It usually happens face-to-face, but can also happen over the phone, email, or a video call.
The aim is to understand the problems of the customers and tell them personally how your service or product can help them. This will make your prospects see you as their partners who care about their success and not just any other brand that is dying to make profits.
Think of the personal sales strategy as a way of finding out about the likes, dislikes, and needs of the prospect. The more you know about them, the better it will be for your business as you won’t be wasting time chasing the wrong prospects. If they make the right fit, you can dive into their psychology and influence their buying decisions.
Remember that the focus is on building sincere relationships with your prospects and not just making a sale. Ask the right questions, build rapport, and carefully note their pain points to see how your brand can help.
1.1. Why is Personal Selling Important?
Personal selling is important for several reasons as you don’t just convince your prospects to buy a product or service. But you build a personal connection with your customer that automatically leads to trust and loyalty. Your prospect buying from you is just a by-product of the effort you put into building a relationship. This can further result in repeat business and referrals in the long term.
If you have complex, technical business offerings where the prospect needs human contact and quick communication to make a purchase, personal selling skills can do wonders.
While selling high-priced products and services, mass communication doesn’t work. You need direct interactions with the prospects to tailor your pitch and offerings to their specific needs. You also get an opportunity to address customer doubts directly which builds their confidence in your brand.
Also, when salespeople actively listen to the concerns of their customers, they can provide convincing responses and easily overcome the potential barriers to a sale. This can also help them identify possibilities to upsell and cross-sell.
1.2 What are the Different Types of Personal Selling?
In general, personal selling is categorized into three main types. Depending on the sales activities, companies can use more types. While creating the sales strategy, salespeople decide the ideal types of selling for improving their business performance.
Let’s now take a look at the different types of personal selling.
1.2.1. Order Creators
As the name suggests, in this type of personal selling, salespeople create orders. They tell their customers about their products and services and try to create the needs for the same. They don’t really sell the products or services themselves but initiate a process that leads to the sales.
A personal selling example here can be a pharmaceutical company reaching out to doctors to convince them to prescribe the medicines they make.
1.2.2. Order Getters
In this type of personal selling, organizations employ frontline salespeople to reach out to customers and persuade them to make a direct purchase. These are the in-field salespeople who assist clients in making a purchase with the business.
1.2.3. Order Takers
In this type of personal selling, salespeople handle customer requests and queries. Customers contact salespeople and share their needs and problems. These salespeople help customers understand how their products or services can fulfill their needs or solve their issues. They take orders from the customers.
Another personal selling example can be a retail sales assistant focusing on finding out what the customer is looking for and pointing out the inventory that fits their needs.
2. What is The Personal Selling Process?
Each step of the personal selling process is designed to move the prospective customers closer to buying. As a salesperson, you must understand these techniques and optimize your selling process accordingly. You must also understand what your customer needs and how you can persuade them to make a buy.
So, let’s take a look at the different steps of the personal selling process.
2.1. Prospecting
The first step in the personal selling process is looking out for your potential customers known as prospecting. There are several ways of prospecting such as cold calling, inbound marketing, online research, or in-person networking.
Remember, the goal of personal selling is to find solutions for your customers. This requires you to qualify leads before approaching them because not everyone would be a fit for your product or service.
So, collect enough information about your prospect before getting on a call. A result of this would be your customer’s trust in you because they would know that you understand them.
Lead qualification might take some time but it’s worth it. Stats also show that two-thirds of sales are lost only because the sales reps don’t qualify leads.
So, instead of wasting your time and money on leads that may never become your customers, it’s better to spend some time qualifying them and reducing churn too!
2.2. Pre-approach
Once you know who your potential customers are, take some time to research more and be sure about everything in advance. It’s time for the salespeople to prepare before they contact the customers. Preparation is also important because 82% of B2B buyers think sales reps are unprepared.
This involves digging into your customer’s needs, preferences, and buying habits. It also involves preparing a sales presentation about the product or service you are selling.
2.3. Approach
This stage involves salespeople making initial contact with a prospect by reaching out, introducing themselves, and using an opening question to start a conversation. This can happen over a call, video call, email, or in person.
The aim is to understand the sales prospect better and understand what can help them with their problem. This is why your sales team must ask the right questions to find out if and how your product or service fits perfectly for the needs of your customers.
Based on the answers you receive, you can tailor your presentation and speak about their specific needs.
2.4. Presentation
After you have built a rapport with the customer, you will have to showcase your products and services and explain their features, benefits, and value proposition.
It’s up to the salesperson how they want to present. They can use product demonstrations, case studies, or testimonials to tell customers about the product’s benefits and persuade them to make a purchase.
2.5. Overcoming Objections
At this point, the customer may raise objections or concerns about the product or service you are selling. This requires the salesperson to be well-prepared to address these objections and offer satisfactory answers to the customer without sounding pushy or losing trust.
To convince the customer, you may have to provide additional information, offer better solutions, and address any misconceptions they have. 95% of customers buy from sellers who offer relevant content at every stage of the buying process. So, the more content you can provide them, the more convinced they will be to buy from you.
2.6. Closing
It is that stage in which the sales reps ask for a sale and finalize a transaction. By the time you reach the closing stage, you should have formed a personal connection with your customer.
You may use different closing techniques such as offering a discount, creating a sense of urgency, or emphasizing the product or service benefits. The stage also involves settling any negotiations, payments, invoices, contracts, or paperwork to close the deal.
2.7. Follow-up
The final stage of the personal selling process is following up. It involves the sales reps contacting the customers after a sale to ensure that they are enjoying the product or service they bought from them. They can also ask about their onboarding process to be sure that the customer is happy and satisfied.
This stage is meant to allow salespeople to maintain healthy relationships with their customers and secure future relationships.
3. What Are The Best Personal Selling Strategies?
Personal selling is easier said than done. You may need to take a look at the following strategies to make the most of personal selling.
3.1. Tell a Story
It is worth mentioning that 63% of prospects remember stories, but just 5% remember statistics. Storytelling attracts more bunch of customers than the statistics you may tell.
So, instead of trying to impress your customers with some dry numbers, tell them a story about your product or service that can add value to them. Relate to their current situation, then move to tell them how you will work with them, and at last, the results they can expect. You can also tell your case studies in the form of a story.
3.2. Talk Naturally
Before your customers buy something from you, they will buy your sales reps. If they don’t like your rep, they won’t like or trust anything they tell them.
You must encourage your team to build two-sided relationships by asking relevant questions. The conversation should be as natural as it can be while you pave your way to sharing success stories and building trust.
3.3. Ask Numerous Questions
The key to building great relationships with your customers is listening more than talking. Your team won’t be able to help and sell to your customers if they don’t know their needs and concerns.
So, encourage your reps to ask the right questions and motivate your prospects. This way they can also learn which features match their prospects’ goals and needs.
3.4. Focus on Benefits
Your customers are not interested in what features your product or service has to offer. They are more interested in how your product or service can benefit them. So, encourage your prospects to understand their customer’s needs and explain to them how they will benefit from what you are offering.
You can create a list of the benefits that your product offers. This will get your reps to have healthy, meaningful discussions with your prospects.
3.5. Address Customer Concerns
Your sales reps are like the personal advocates for your customers. If the prospects have any concerns or questions, they should do their best to address them.
This will help build trust and move them closer to purchase. After all, for around 88% of customers, trust is the most important thing, even in times of change.
3.6. Consider your Buyer Personas
While prospecting and qualifying leads, salespeople must remember their company’s buyer personas. For instance, if your company targets customers of some particular industries only, don’t waste time working with leads that don’t belong to those industries.
A lot of salespeople have a habit of selling by hook or crook. They even try convincing anyone and everyone. However, by focusing on nurturing good leads only, their chance of making a sale increases by 50% at 33% lower costs.
3.7. Ask for a Sale
It’s unfortunate that not all sales reps ask for a sale. In fact, 48% of the sales calls see no attempt to close the deal. This obviously decreases the likelihood of success.
To make the most of every sale, your reps must not just address your customer’s concerns and objections but they should also ask for a sale.
3.8. Follow-up After The Purchase
You are not there just to sell to your customers. Your relationship with them is beyond making a sale. We are talking about following up after every purchase. However, the stats show that 48% of salespeople never follow up which affects their repeat rates.
So, encourage your sales reps to follow up with customers via phone, email, or in person and keep the relationship alive.
4. Personal Selling Advantages and Disadvantages
Oftentimes, personal selling advantages and disadvantages come into play when you want to make sure if this concept works for your business or not. To make the most of this type of selling, you must be aware of the pros and cons it brings with it.
4.1. Personal Selling Advantages
There is no surprise that personal selling comes with a lot of advantages. Let’s see what they are.
4.1.1. Relationship-building
Salespeople can use detailed, personalized communication to build trust and deep relationships with their customers. They just have to answer their questions and demonstrate a genuine interest in the customer’s business’s well-being.
4.1.2. Handling Objections
Personal selling gives you the power of personalization. Based on what you gather about the customer’s requirements and concerns; you can tailor your selling approach to that.
Depending on what your customer tells you while you are trying to sell to them, you can observe their reactions adjust your sales pitch, and offer additional information to address their concerns.
4.1.4. Improved Success Rates
A personal relationship with a client gives salespeople a 50% chance of making a sale.
4.2. Personal Selling Disadvantages
Just like anything else, personal selling also comes with a few disadvantages. Though the positives outweigh the negatives, it’s best to know the disadvantages to be able to make an informed decision.
4.2.1. Expensive
Without a doubt, personal selling strategies can be expensive. From research to meeting the customers to closing the deals, the sales cycle can be long and require more resources.
4.2.2. Limited Pool
Consider other techniques of marketing, you may not be able to reach as many customers as you would have reached otherwise. This may even make it difficult to make significant sales.
4.2.3. Inconsistency
If the sales reps dealing with the customers are knowledgeable about the product, they may miss sales opportunities and cause negative customer experiences.
5. Conclusion
Undoubtedly, you can improve your customer experience by making personal selling a part of your marketing strategy. It revolves around a genuine interest in helping customers and solving their problems. It’s not about forcing them into making a sale just for the sake of hitting your quotas.
As a sales manager, you must encourage your sales reps to craft their strategies for the best benefit of the customers. As a sales rep, you must focus on building and maintaining great relationships with your customers. And soon, your satisfied customers will speak for your brand!
To get started with personal selling, you may require some tools and resources to develop your marketing strategy.
Kylas can help you in drafting your marketing strategies by providing you with insights into your customer’s needs and preferences. Schedule your Demo today!
