In today’s solo episode of CEO Sales Strategies, Doug C. Brown talks about why humanized communication is so important and how it can help you improve your sales. He also talks about staying ahead of the curve when it comes to communication and sales for an ever-changing world and how personalized communication can skyrocket your sales. Whether you sell to others digitally or face-to-face, today’s episode is one you won’t want to miss.
CEO of Business Success Factors and creator of Sales Revenue Growth University, where he teaches the best sales revenue growth strategies for companies who are serious about their sales growth. These are the same strategies and methodologies that he used to increase a company’s close rate by 862% and their revenue growth by 116% – all within four months.
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This show is helping companies and people get into the top 1% of sales globally. That is our focus for 2022 for you. We’ve got feedback in 2021, and I want to let you know that we’ve taken it very seriously. Some of the feedback that came back was surprising. Some of the companies that are doing $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $5 million or below $5 million were thinking, “Doug doesn’t necessarily work with companies like that.” The reality is I do if it’s the right type of company. Thank you to those who have reached out, to my clients that were growing their revenues and profits, and helping your sales team get into the top 1% globally.
I’m doing a solo episode because something came to the attention that I have been preaching for many years now. It was the internet, the dial-up, and then finally went to what we call DSL. Some of you are not old enough to even remember that. When that DSL came in, that was a subscriber line, high-speed internet access without having dial-up, I was telling people in the world, “This is going to change how we do sales forever.” Quite frankly, some people laughed at me. They’re like, “You’re crazy.” Guess what? We were in 2020, and it has happened.
I have been saying this thing for many years. The reason I’m saying this to you is for all of those nonbelievers back then, we’re here. The reality is that the internet has changed how sales are going. It’s for two major reasons. Number one is that people now can access information. Many years ago, sellers had the information. Buyers didn’t have the information. Sellers could hide things from buyers. They could hide all different things, not to pick on the car industry, because I love car dealers and people who are selling ethically in a win-win fashion. There are certainly car dealers who do that.
Car dealing nowadays has companies who have come in. You don’t even need to talk to somebody to buy a brand new car or a used car. They have companies like Carvana, but even the dealerships themselves are going directly through the internet. One time, the dealers were telling me that over 70% of their sales were coming in from online leads. Think about online coming incoming stuff.
Humanized, relevant, meaningful, and continuous conversation or communication will be the new spoken language in the future of sales. Click To Tweet
People know with a click of a mouse, depending on the service you use, what the deal it pays for that car. Has it been in an accident if it’s a used vehicle? What is the history of that car? The last time I bought a car, I went in and said, “I’m looking for this model.” They said, “Great.” I said, “Does it have X, Y, Z features?” They were like, “What are you talking about?” I knew from the online search that it did.
Here’s the point. Buyers have the information now and don’t need sellers like they used to rely on that information. They have the information. It has changed the conversations and the dialogue from, “Let me show you all about this,” to, “Let me show what you value most.” The second thing that has changed is the way we’ve got to communicate.
Before, you could go to an online party if you would, but they were not like they are nowadays. Video conferencing then is referred to now as Zooming or some type of Google. It’s no longer called video conferencing. The reality is back then, you had the ability to go to face-to-face interaction. You could go to a live event and talk to somebody, sit down with them, have lunch, dinner, or go out to a show together. If you were not at a live event and you wanted to do that, you still do that.
I remember we used to schedule lunch meetings where I would go and talk to the owners of the company and all the decision-makers and the influences of the company, but we were there having lunch together. I could bring a team of people if it was a complex sale. If you’re selling complex sales, most of the time, it’s got to be peer-to-peer. If they have their chief financial officer, you better have somebody in finance and chief financial officer at your table when you’re selling to them. If they’re bringing in their IT people, you better bring somebody from your team that has IT.
The game has changed. The face-to-face has gone almost silent at this point. Why? The pandemic. People are not looking to get in touch with one another, sit down and have masks on for lunch. They have now moved from that. What has made that available? The internet. Technology is changing what’s happening. Us as the selling party, people who are prospecting, we’ve got to change along with it.
One of the changes that must happen is we have to change the language we’re using and understand that humanized, relevant, meaningful and continuous conversation or communication is going to be the way of the new spoken language in the future of sales. Human, relevant, and meaningful communication is continuous. Let’s break it down for a second. What does humanized mean? Humanized means making it human to human or more human.
When people say that dogs or dolphins have human characteristics like, “My dog knows what I’m talking about. My dog is my best friend.” That’s making it more human. I’m not saying we want to make our humans dogs. What I’m saying is that when we’re having conversations, what are we doing to connect with the other human being on a level that they value? That’s humanization. What is relevancy? It’s closely connected communication on what they believe is what they want to accomplish.
I’m using staccato here. I am at pentameter. It’s a cadence. What’s relevant to them? What’s meaningful to them is a little different. Meaningful means they’re finding it useful for the quality of the purpose of what they’re looking for, but relevancy is getting them into the park on what is being done and how meaningful that is.
You’ve got to have humanized, relevant, meaningful communication. What is communication? The exchanging of information between one or more people. That has to be continuous. What’s continuous? Ongoing. Why ongoing? Back in the old days, it was like, “Go in and build rapport. Build trust, like and respect. Look at the fish on the wall. Strike up something meaningful with them.” That’s good enough.
Nowadays, it is not good enough just to go in, connect quickly and continuously avoid that connection. If you look at studies nowadays, you can see all these people leaving the job market. There are reasons why. You’ll find that people who want to be hired nowadays are interested in money, but that’s not their primary motivator. Years ago, that was more of the primary motivator. Now, the primary motivator is quality of life.
People are looking for quality of life more than they ever have in human history, but I have not studied it that far back. I’m only going back to the last couple of years. Nowadays, quality of life is important. Quality of relationships equals the quality of life. We, as human beings, have human needs. If you go to Tony Robbins’ website or listen to Tony Robbins, he’ll talk about six human needs. One of those is love, connection and significance.
When we are continuously communicating in a humanized, relevant, meaningful fashion of continuous communication, we’re building upon all these human needs. Since people want quality of life, they’re looking for it. You, as the seller, now have to embrace that process. Here’s my question to you. Are you doing this in your ongoing communications? Are you exchanging such information that people are going, “I want to hear a little more of that,” versus, “So what?”
If they’re saying, “So what?” You’re done. The game’s almost over. They’ll commoditize you, and then they’re going to look as like we were shopping for insurance. You can buy insurance anywhere. Who do you prefer to buy it from? Some people prefer the value as, “I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just want to go buy insurance.” Most people want to have that person explain insurance to them so they don’t overpay and don’t have to subscribe. More importantly, sometimes, they subscribe in the capacity needed if anything ever happens.
I remember Peter Drucker is saying years ago, “Marketing’s job is to make sales superfluous. You don’t need the sales channel.” I disagree with Peter. I disagree even more nowadays. We need salespeople. We need top performers who understand what humanizing, relevant, and meaningful communication on a continuous basis means because this is what creates relationships. Relationships are what create sales based on the need and value that they’re seeking.
Why am I bringing this up to you? I got a great email first thing in the morning from a gentleman whose name is Adam Arthur. He goes, “I was listening to some of your previous episodes on The Startup Selling Podcast. I enjoyed the episode you recorded with Scott Sambucci.” I did a show on this, and Scott was the guy I was recording with.
Is that humanized? Is he making something a little more human? Yes. In fact, the title of his email that he sent was Heard You On This Podcast. He named the podcast. Right there, he’s connecting to something I consider relevant. Why? That’s significance. He is recognizing me. He goes on and says, “It was great hearing you share the expertise about building a more profitable business. I’m going to check out where else you have appeared, and I have now got a few more loaded into my next playlist.” It’s a compliment. Is it relevant? Yes. Why? I’ll tell you in a moment.
People prefer to do business with somebody they like, trust, and respect, rather than somebody they hardly know. Click To Tweet
He said, “I asked because I help people better utilize podcast appearances in one of several ways to help our customers grow their business. I would love to chat with you about it sometime.” The line before that was, “You’re familiar with podcasting, but do you have a strategy for using them intentionally for business growth?” What is relevant about that? I had meetings on that. He has caught my attention. He has created a human-to-human connection by mentioning Scott. He has built some relevancy for me. He has created some meaningful information because the utility of purpose is now. He has exchanged information with me on how we can help, and he’s doing this in a human-to-human way saying, “I would like to talk with you if you have interest in this.”
I got another email, and it was from somebody called Ameil. His headline is Delivering Million-Dollar Online Coaching. I’ve already got that. That’s number one. Number two, what’s in it for him? “I heard you on The Startup Selling Podcast.” That’s not what’s in it for him. That’s what’s in it for me. That’s humanized. It’s making the connection.
He goes on in the email, “Your consulting clients need to replace millions of retiring employees during one of the highest labor market turnover ever.” I hate to tell you Ameil, but my clients aren’t those people. Firstly, I don’t do a lot of consulting. I do advising and coaching. Occasionally, I’ll do consulting. I used to do a lot of consulting. Secondly, my clients aren’t replacing millions of retiring employees. My clients are those people who want to have growth and add employees to their headcount, not replace it retiring ones.
You can see there’s no humanization going on. There’s nothing human-to-human, relevant, and meaningful about this conversation he is trying to have with me on his emails. He goes on the next line, “This blog post tells how my company helps the consultants at X.” This is an old communication blog post that tells about how my company. I could go on. Does your company have similar opportunities? No.
Some people could be saying, “That’s the message that doesn’t hit well because of timing.” That is true. However, it’s not like I couldn’t possibly use his services, but the reality is I’m never going to go look. Why? No humanization, relevancy, meaningful communication or exchange of information to me that makes me go, “I want to hear a little bit more about that.” Certainly, it’s not continuous. Why does this work? I sent back an email to Adam saying, “Let’s set up a meeting together.” This other gentleman, Ameil, will never, ever have that happen.
Here’s my question to you. Are you exchanging or imparting communication that is humanized, relevant, meaningful communication, or are you just putting out information like Ameil’s putting out in everything you do? I’m going to employ you to take a look at this because a lot of times, people go, “I’m getting some responses.”
Are you getting huge responses and conversion rates? I did a campaign for a client. We did two of them. The first conversion rate was 71% of all the leads that came in, we closed. The second one is 73% ongoing. Are you getting conversion rates like that? If not, you’re not using humanized, relevant and meaningful communication. That is continuous in nature. What’s continuous mean? Ongoing. Not everybody buys on the first conversation.
You’ve got to have follow-up pieces. Those have to be humanized, relevant, meaningful and communicating what this person is not only looking for but how you can bond as human beings. The old adage, “People prefer to do business with somebody that they like, trust and respect than somebody they hardly know.”
Please take to heart what I said. I’m promising you this. It works almost every single time, but it works the majority of the time. I get emails from people and conversations going on email with people. I love to talk to people. I’m going to ask a favor. Please subscribe to my channel. When you subscribe to the channel, I get higher rankings, and it allows other people to see this more readily. It does help me out. I appreciate you doing so. Email me, as you’re doing, or connect with me on LinkedIn at @DougBrown123 or just give me a call at (603) 595-0303.
If I’m not here, one of the team members will answer the call. Let us know what you want in 2022 and 2023. I’m not going to stop this. Let us know what helps you. Make 2022 one of your greatest years ever. Please humanize your communications on relevant, meaningful and continuous pathways all throughout. As always, go out, sell something, make some money, make a great profit, look at your numbers, hold your business accountable, hold you accountable and grow in 2022.
