Why the Best Sales Techniques Won’t Win You Clients (Here’s What Will)

Without strong relationships, your sales career is DOA.

Salespeople are asking the wrong questions: What are the best sales techniques? What tech tools will help me generate hot leads and land new clients?

It’s not what will help you win clients; it’s who. 

The answer is you. Yes, you are the very best tool in your sales toolkit. You know how to have conversations and build relationships—the most important ingredients for sales success. You nurture professional and personal networks that keep your sales pipeline full of referral leads. Technology can aid the sales process, but it can’t make real human connections. That’s the job of salespeople.

Don’t Let Technology Do Your Talking

Art Sobczak took the words out of my mouth in his enticing post, “What Technology Can Never Replace.” As he writes:

Technology is an amazingly powerful tool to enable us to more efficiently, effectively and persuasively speak with people. Some individuals and organizations miss that last part. Excuse my yelling, but I repeat, it enables us to more efficiently and effectively …

SPEAK WITH PEOPLE.

… What is a bit mind-boggling to me are the [sales organizations] that invest heavily in technology, yet don’t pay equal attention to the most important interaction their business will ever have: what happens when their people actually talk to prospects and customers.

Ultimately, attaching the word “professional” after the title of “Sales” needs to be earned. It’s earned through hours of study, practice, review, and ongoing commitment to improvement.

Too many people are in sales positions, but are not sales professionals.

(Read the rest of Art’s article for more.)

Why Robots Won’t Replace Salespeople Anytime Soon

Buyers don’t care how your technology works until they know what it can do for their businesses. All the best sales techniques you’ve ever learned won’t work until you personalize your pitch and make a personal connection.

Don’t be duped into thinking technology can do your job. While technology is great for storing, aggregating, and—to some degree—interpreting information, it can’t have conversations, ask insightful questions, or draw wisdom from experience. There are hundreds of sales techniques and technology tools that help us work more efficiently—including CRM, marketing automation, and social selling. But closing deals is still our job. We will never replace real human engagement with tweets and status updates.

What’s one of your best sales techniques? Check out my favorite: referral selling.

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