Verbal Communication

Connection

Connection is the core of closing sales. Anticipate your customers’ needs and determine the best solution.
Connections make experiences 

Build Rapport

Pre-sales conversations allow the consumer to let their guard down (Schultz, 2015). Ask for their name, and use to personalize the experience. Ask how you can help and let the customer drive the interaction. Customer-driven conversations allow for emotions, challenges, and preferences. Be human and focus on relationship building, and you’ll find your sales interactions will go much smoother (Schultz, 2015).

Empathy

Understanding your customers’ needs requires reflection on their needs, challenges, and fears (Ross, n.d.). knowledge gained from the interaction increases the probability of finding the consumer’s best solution. Companies that build a culture around empathy possess engaged, efficient, and innovative employees (Ross, n.d.). Highly engaged employees go above and beyond; meeting the customer’s knowledge level and motivating them based their needs.

Be Human

Humans have an essential need for connection. Building on empathy, it is important to use everyday speech to meet the customer at their knowledge and technical level. Consumers, who purchase products using an interaction, want a personalized conversation, providing clear information where the customer understands  the buying decision. No one wants to have a conversation with a robot. Be professional, courteous, and most importantly, yourself.

Conversation

Conversations give the framework for a sale, addressing current needs and discovering future needs
Conversations steer the experience

Active Listening

Listening actively and thoroughly takes concentration, dedication, patience, and the ability to interpret others’ ideas and summarize them. Active listening redirects your focus from what is going on inside your head to your customer’s needs (Doyle, 2020). Engagement levels are also achieved through silence. Showing an understanding of the customer’s priorities is linked directly back to their words. This also ensures that the person to whom you are listening actually feels heard. To make someone feel heard, clarify what the client has said during the conversation (Rosen, 2016).

Verbal Cues

The word ‘cue’ defined in a traditional form is the ‘signal’ to direct an actor to enter a performance (Marker, 2019). In an interactive conversation, cue refers to a particular word, phrase, tone, and pitch that functions as a ‘signal’ between the speaker and listener (Marker, 2019). What these words ‘signal’ exactly depends on the purpose of the interaction. Open-ended questions discover additional external factors the customer may not have considered, such as kids, pets, and work. When used effectively, Cues show empathy by providing a direct solution to address customer priorities without prying for information.

Conversation Summary

Once the customer is finished describing their needs, advance to the next level of rapport with them. Summarize their needs and decision-making factors—recall cues used by the customer to ensure an equal understanding of the purchase’s why. Understanding the buying motivation helps generate critical elements of the purchase. Collobralitivly, prioritize their importance. Recapping the conversation is simply an easy way to solidify the customer’s voice was heard

Own the Experience

Create impactful experiences by going above and beyond the customer’s needs.
Customer service the old way

Soft Sell

Customer-driven conversations always result in sharing extraneous information. Why? People love to talk about themselves. Humanizing the conversation often leads to ‘small talk’; However, the knowledge presented allows customers to let their guard down by illustrating how this product or service will benefit in their life. Using the verbal cues constructs a solution that addresses their need now and then builds a solution that addresses their need now and a future need based on the interaction. Soft-Selling, in summary, is the strategy of positioning sales hooks into regular everyday talk.

Ask for Input

After the initial assessment of a possible solution, it is essential to retain and foster the connection. Directly ask questions founded on the crucial elements of the purchase. It is vital to use active listening as the customer summarizes their need and how the positioned solution would impact them. Verbal cues are likely to be recited from the initial conversation, explained with a more knowledgeable approach.

Purchase Reenforcement

Once a solution is constructed for the customer, the groundwork has been set for the sale. The needs have been solved using cues or knowledge bits from small talk. Both parties’ standards have approved the overall solution. This is the point of no return. Positive reinforcements and value add ons can influence the customer’s intent to proceed with the purchase. Support the customer’s decision and logic. However, this does not always result in a sale. One of the top reasons a customer did not purchase after a sales interaction is the simple fact they were not asked if they wanted to.

VERBAL COMMUNICATION RECAP

Interact with the sections below for learning highlights

CONNECTION

  • Personalize the experience 
  • Generate a customer-driven interaction
  • Ask open-ended question for understanding
  • Want to understand where others stand
  • Engaged employees with “soft skills” at core
  • Impactful experience leading to higher revenue
  • Speak using every-day language
  • Meet the customer at their knowledge level
  • Show your personality

CONVERSATIONAL CUES

  • Strengthens rapport through engagement
  • Demonstrate concerns and understanding
  • Link information directly back to customer’s priorities
  • Signal in  speech between speaker and listener
  • Provides solution tie-back to highlight empathy
  • Cues are situational, not always direct and well defined
  • Customer driven interactions provide the best insight to the customer needs
  • Engage in using cues from the customer to show empathy and understanding.

OWN THE EXPERIENCE

  • Use verbal cues to provide additional offers.
  • Use conversation examples or cues to demonstrate the need
  • Excite the consumer with a future-proof solution
  • Reuse cues provided when presenting solution
  • Ask customer to summarize the solution
  •  Listen for additional cue about the proposed solution
  • Leverage connection and rapport to rationalize the purchase
  • Address concerns using direct questions with tie-back to verbal cues