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Patient Sales and Marketing

Guest post by: Hussain Zaidi

Article Overview: Sales and marketing is a waiting game where timing and preparedness are more important than your slick pitch! Your job is to enable customers to see your vision by being approachable and interacting with them meaningfully.

Patient Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing is a waiting game wheretimingandpreparednessare more important than your slick pitch!

Have you ever wondered about the main complaint of the average person with regards to sales and marketing? It is that too often we, as professionals, simply regurgitate a whole bunch of facts and figures about how great we are and how you should buy my product or service. Sales used to be the real villain as portrayed by the endless stereotypes of “snake oil salesmen” and the like in our social consciousness but now marketing has come to the fore of being just as criticized by the general public. As a society we are inundated by commercial messaging telling us tobuythis or that and for the most part it is something that is ignored at best and reviled at worst.

How can you turn the tables in this climate of perceived hostility that customers now have against beingsold toormarketed to? The answer is to be lessactiveand morepassive. Even the phrase “selling to” or “marketing to” points to the direction of the problem: we feel that by making strenuous and persistent efforts we canconvincesomeone to do something that they would not otherwise do. The truth of the matter, however, is that people do what people want to do. Have you figured that out yet? All you can do, then, is to make yourselfavailableand make eachinteractioncount.

I am not advising that you stop selling or marketing to your customers. Rather, continue to persist in refining your message and communicating directly to customers about their needs and how you can help them. Then move on and spread the message without expecting or trying to force aresponse. What you will find is that customers who areinterestedwill let you know, will ask questions and willthemselvesbecome involved in the process of buying from you. Along the way, your focus should be to maintain yourpostureand get to know andeducateyour customers without being the slightest bitaggressiveordemanding. Don't you hate being forcefully sold to yourself? Then why is it that we treat our customers as if they are any different from ourselves?

Patient sales and marketing does not mean that you let the customer run the process. Rather, what you arewaitingfor is for them to becomegenuinelyengaged. If a customer asks about your product or service then don't just give them the information and send them on their way but rather seek tounderstandtheirsituationandmotivations. Each step of the sales and marketing process, each conversation you have with your customer should be about building arelationship. Both the customer and yourself will figure out after a few conversations whether or not you are agood fitfor each othernaturally. Instead of trying to impress your customer with how good your product or service is, impress how much youcareabout them and what you do.

Focus on being a consummateprofessional. After each interaction make sure your customer comes away feeling satisfied that they have been able toexpressthemselves and that they wereheardand that theymatter. This is the real art of sales and marketing, to be available to help facilitate your customer in every reasonable way. It is because you perceive aneedof theirs that you can fulfill that you are involved in developing a rapport with them, not just to sell them something. When you cangenuinelyconvey that feeling, customers will learn totrustyou and will return to you again and again. Your job is to enable them to see yourvisionby beingapproachableand interacting with themmeaningfully.

At the end of the day it is the customer who decides whether or not he or she is interested in your product or service and whether or not they are interested inyou. If you just accept that fact at face value it will relieve you of the stress of trying topersuadepeople to do this or that and be left wondering why they resist or ignore you. Rather, create the rightenvironmentfor your customers to interact with you and keepconnectingwith more people. Soon enough you will develop interest into conversations into leads into sales. Usekid gloveswhen dealing with customers – handle them with the utmost care and respect. That is what will pay off in the long run and now how good your product or service is. There may be other companies that offer what you do but only one you!

”The hearts of people are like wild beasts and attach themselves to whoever loves and trains them.” - Proverb

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Article Tags: business, customers, sales and marketing



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