No matter how great the discounts at your dealership may be, if you come across to customers as the Severus Snape of salespeople, you’ll have a difficult time making any sales. How we present ourselves has a larger impact on those we meet than we’d like to believe. A first impression can make or break a deal, but so can any impression after that.
Some of the most important skills you can learn in sales is the art of face-to-face communication. In a world dominated by interactions online rather than in person, this type of communication still reigns as the most effective for making sales. It allows for more customer trust as they make a human connection with the salesperson. It’s that trust that is the key for more sales and more referrals.
If you’re wanting to be more effective when selling, you’ll have to be creative in how to make that human connection and build that trust with your customers. It starts by first becoming an expert in face-to-face communication. Become a master of face-to-face sales with these tips.
Making a Killer First Impression
Each customer is going to be different, so your job is to quickly pick up on their personality and style. You don’t want to pretend to be someone you’re not, but it does help to tone down on the energy if your customer is more of a low-key person. Slightly adjust your style of selling with each customer so that they feel more comfortable with you and start tearing down the walls between you.
It also helps to strike up a small, friendly conversation with the customer before turning to the sale as the main topic of discussion. Again, don’t pretend to share a similar interest just so the customer likes you more. They will appreciate your honesty and trust you more for it.
Making a good first impression is built on that trust. Listen to what the customer says and use that towards your sale. If you know the customer’s interests, then you can better tailor their search to the a car that fits their lifestyle and tastes.
Voice Lessons
Don’t underestimate the power of your voice when it comes to face-to-face communication. A customer may unconsciously start becoming disinterested just by a salesperson’s voice alone. It’s sad, but unfortunately true.
One helpful trick is to record yourself giving a sales pitch and playback the audio a few times, looking to see if your voice comes across as unappealing. Some bad habits to look for are talking too fast/too slow, mumbling, having no inflections in your speech, or trailing off at the end of sentences.
Should you find yourself doing one of these habits, record another sales pitch, this time focusing on resolving that habit. Start with one at a time. You can also do this approach in front of another person. Often we can’t pick up on our own bad habits, but someone else can.
A key element of speech is your tone. Research shows that almost 40% of someone’s first impression of you is formed by your tone of voice. This makes it crucial to match your tone with how you hope to come across to people.
For instance, if you want to appear as a reliable and authoritative salesperson, you shouldn’t be ending every sentence with a question. People often find that condescending or weak communication on your part.
Also be cautious of having a fast or high-pitched voice. That tone can sound naive and is much less likely to make a sale compared to a lower-pitched voice that clearly articulates and speaks slowly enough to understand.
Watch Yourself
If you’re still having a difficult time controlling the tone of your voice, look in the mirror when giving your mock sales pitch. Darlene Price, author of Well Said!, has noted that “The facial expressions come first and the voice often follows what the face does…So if you have a pensive scowl on your face, your voice will follow that with a tense sound. On the contrary, if you’re smiling, you’ll likely have a more positive tone.”
Even before you speak, people get an impression of you from those nonverbal cues. How you’re standing, if your arms are folded, your smile, your posture, and more are all signs to the customer of the kind of person you are. They aren’t going to want to open up to a salesperson who slouches around with a scowl, you could lose their trust that way.
How to Be Creative With Face-to-Face Sales
Making that human connection with your customers gives you a personality that they begin to trust and feel comfortable with. There is a real power that comes from solid face-to-face communication between the customer and the salesperson. New technology has allowed us to expand the boundaries of face-to-face communication with our customers, even when they’re not at our dealership.
One way is through Quickpage, the mobile sales app that can help create that human connection even from a distance. With Quickpage, you can easily upload videos of yourself and attach them to a sales page tailored for a specific customer. You can also download YouTube videos and other images for the perfect follow-up. Imagine a webpage created just for that one customer and their search for the perfect vehicle!
Quickpage also includes a live chat feature so that when your customer is on their Quickpage, you can talk with them right there and then to answer any questions. They can see your videos, chat instantly with you and know exactly who they are talking to. The barriers too often built up between a salesperson and their customers are quickly broken down as you provide a platform for customers to see your personality.
There’s more than one way to do face-to-face sales now, and Quickpage is one of the best. Try out Quickpage with a free trial! You can see for yourself how easy it is to build trust with your customers through face-to-face communication, even after they leave the lot.
