The basis of a strategy is to communicate something to achieve a specific objective. Whether it is a company speaking to its audience or a supplier speaking to its client. Good communication allows us to achieve our objective: to get the client, to advance in the process or to solve a specific problem.
But the reality is quite different: our clients do not understand us .
This happens less frequently when selling products or services to the end client. The communication and marketing journey is long enough for this issue to be controlled or at least taken into account when implementing strategies.
But what happens in sales strategies between companies ?
I have written barely 10 lines and I am having a hard time not to include terminology that I would have put directly in another article: B2B, buyer persona , direct conversion, B2C,…
As marketing professionals (and in any profession) we have a tendency to use industry terminology to summarize concepts, facilitate communication between indonesia number professionals and, why not, sometimes to show that we know what we are talking about.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that we are gradually incorporating jargon into our vocabulary. This can facilitate communication or position us within the sector in which we work, but what happens when we speak to our clients or potential clients?
If our goal is to understand each other, why don't we start by trying to speak the same language?
Watching a video by Mark Schaefer about his experience in this regard with graduate students in the United States, I decided to start a conversation on Linkedin to ask the opinion of other professionals (both companies and suppliers) and write this article. The experience has been extremely enriching.
Tips for effective communication with your clients
Hear
To improve our communication, there is nothing better than to start by listening more and better. To do this, we must begin by being able to have good conversations , and one of its principles is listening.
It does not matter if we are talking about marketing strategies from business to business or business to end customer. In any case, if we listen and know how to interpret what our clients tell us (in the form of conversations or data), the solution will be presented before our eyes.
We usually say that one thing is what the client asks for and another is what they really need. Under this premise, after the first few minutes they are clear about what the solution is going to be proposed to them and they simply stop listening actively. They are waiting for it to finish to offer the solution they had in mind from the beginning.
If we listen, we will gather more information and we will have a better idea of the context. This will not only make our work easier, but it will allow us to better understand our clients.
Let's apply the old teaching: "we have two ears and only one mouth, precisely to hear more and talk less" or, put another way, "to listen twice as much as we talk . "
Putting ourselves in our clients' shoes
In addition to listening, we have to learn to be empathetic.
To begin with, if they have called us it is because they need help to solve a specific problem. In other words, it is most likely that they are not experts in that area and that we (as it should be) are. So let's start by trying to understand them and by using terminology that they understand without problems (I will return to this topic later).
In addition, we have to take into account their context :