Knowing how to effectively communicate is essential for any person to become successful in sales. The purpose of communication is to get your message across to your prospects in the best way possible. Good communication takes skill, since messages can often become misinterpreted by one or more of the parties involved. When this happens it causes unnecessary confusion and moves you further away from connecting to your prospect.
Your communication is successful only when both the sender and the receiver perceive it in the same way. By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you convey do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communication breakdown. This breakdown can cause you to lose trust and belief in your prospect.
To communicate effectively, you must clearly understand what your core message is, and how your prospect will perceive your message.
Communication breakdown can pop up at every stage of the sale, causing you to lose out on many sales opportunities. Therefore, to become a more effective communicator and get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal should be to lessen the frequency of communication breakdown at each stage of the process with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communication.
Stage #1: To establish yourself as a master sales communicator you must first establish credibility with your prospect. This involves displaying knowledge of the subject, your prospect and the context in which your message is delivered.
Stage #2: Consider the message itself. Written, oral and nonverbal communications all are affected by your tone, your individual communication style of communication, what you leave in and what you leave out of the conversation. How you communicate both verbally and in writing is very important to how your prospect perceives your point of view. What you want your message to do is to motivate and inspire your prospects into taking action and buying from you.
Stage #3: Consider how best to communicate with your prospect. You may choose to communicate verbally in person, by telephone, email, letters, greeting cards, etc.
Stage #4: Keep in mind the actions or reactions you hope your message prompts in your prospect.
Keep in mind too, that your prospect also enters into the conversation with his or her own communication style. Their communication will include new ideas, feelings and emotions that will undoubtedly influence how they understand and relate to your message, and also how they respond. To be a master sales communicator, you must consider these possible responses before delivering your message. This will allow you to be prepared and ready to respond with the appropriate communication skills.
Stage #5: Your prospect will provide you with personal feedback, verbal and nonverbal reactions to your communicated message. To deliver your message effectively, you must commit to breaking down the barriers that exist in each of these stages of the communication process. If your message is too lengthy, disorganized, or contains incorrect information about your products or services, you can expect to be misunderstood. Also, the use of ineffective body language that confuses the message or shows your lack of confidence will also allow you to disconnect with your prospect.
Don’t offer too much information too soon. When in doubt, less is oftentimes more. Remember to listen more and communicate less verbally when you begin a conversation with a new prospect. Be respectful of your prospect’s time, and keep their interests and concerns in the forefront.
Once you understand how these five stages work and start to implement them into your sale’s message, you will soon discover your communication skills improving.
Debbie Allen is one of the world’s leading authorities on sales and marketing. She is the author of five books including Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters and Skyrocketing Sales. Debbie has helped thousands of people around the world attract customers like crazy with her innovative, no-cost marketing strategies and secrets to sales success. Her expertise has been featured in Entrepreneur, Selling Power and Sales & Marketing Excellence. Sign up for her FREE 6-week e-Course Business Success Secrets Revealed ($97 value) and take the online business card quiz to rate you marketing online now at http://www.DebbieAllen.com.
