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Being an Elite Seller in the Eyes of Your Customer

By Brittany Jones posted 09-02-2020 12:33

  
As the sales workforce continues to navigate this era of social distance and digital communication during COVID-19, the power and clarity of the seller’s message has never felt more important.

Sales and leadership coach Casey Jacox led the discussion on the importance of internal and external sales messaging during TechServe Alliance’s recent webinar, titled “Being an Elite Seller in the Eyes of Your Customer.”

The 20-year staffing and services veteran from KForce spoke from seasoned experience, having gone through the .com crash at the turn of the century, the Y2K scare and the global financial crisis of 2008.

Jacox – who also authored the book “WIN the RELATIONSHIP, not the DEAL” – drove the conversation on messaging with a series of interactive questions and responses fielded from the webinar audience.

The first question he posed was: What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Participants answered the ice breaker question with statements like, “Be authentic” and “Be transparent and interested in others.” The responses brought Jacox to his first point, which is to make customers feel great and to have that feeling be memorable for them.

“I think that people in business, we get so far ahead of ourselves that we forget to kind of slow down and remember that each interaction we have from a messaging and interaction perspective can really influence everything that goes forward,” Jacox said.

An example of this, he added, is to make interactions less transactional and more consultative and solution-based.

One of the next questions he presented to the group was: Do we really know our customer and what are they saying about us?

The inquiry prompted a larger conversation on how customers can have a solid understanding of what a company does by having that messaging be clear on their website, social media presence, print materials and even their email signatures.

Participants chimed in with their own experiences on executing this feat by creating a unified message and a cohesive brand amongst their team members.

The dialogue segued the webinar into Jacox’s next big question regarding messaging, which was: Who is responsible for selling a company’s services?

The answer, Jacox said, is everyone.

To exemplify the point, he set up a visualization for the webinar audience.

He described a random person walking through the front door of a company’s office location. The person’s first impression comes from the employee sitting at the front desk. But the employee is not prepared to represent the company’s brand or knowledgeable about what they do for clients and customers.

“If that front desk individual is not ready to describe what the company does for it’s customers, then they put the company at risk for not being consistent with who we are and what we do for our customers,” Jacox said. “Everybody should understand what we do, why we do it and what their role in the company is.”

His final remarks on messaging honed in on the importance of practice. This can include the exercise of commanding a message with clarity and asking the right questions to customers.

He explained: A good seller does the minimum and avoids practicing their craft. A great seller seeks to learn. An elite seller has a growth mindset as well as the motivation to drive value and solve problems.

Referring to a chapter of his book, he shared the importance of letting go of the ego while learning.

“We can create an environment where we want to be better and it requires self-awareness,” Jacox said. “It requires us to look at ourselves and say ‘Have I done everything I’m supposed to be doing to make sure I have commanded the clarity of the message for my customers.’”
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