News flash: Your customers don’t always use the same verbiage and lingo as you.
In fact, they may not even use the same communication methods as you.
That means what you say may not be getting through to the customer at all, let alone getting through in a way they understand.
This issue was driven home in my mind while I was watching an NFL game involving the Dallas Cowboys. During the game, the camera caught the owner of the Cowboys, Jerry Jones, talking on a cell phone.
Nothing overly strange about this, right?
It was strange, though, because the cell phone was a flip-phone. Excuse me, but I haven’t seen a flip-phone in years, and all of a sudden millions of television viewers are seeing a very wealthy individual use one.
I couldn’t help but do a double-take and then laugh at seeing it.
Here’s the deal. I have no idea if that was Jerry’s phone, but I will bet it was and I will bet that is the phone he uses. Reason I say this is because he most likely always has somebody with him who is taking care of his every need. I’m sure the people with him all have smart phones and/or the latest mobile devices.
For Jerry, using a flip-phone is just fine. What can we learn from this? Besides a lot of jokes regarding Jerry’s use of technology, we can learn that not everybody has the same mobile device.
Not a shock, but let’s go further with this. What it confirms to me is not everyone communicates in the same manner as me. I’m used to having technology with me 24/7, and that means being accessible.
Just because we are available 24/7, we can’t expect the customer or prospect we’re trying to reach to be available 24/7. Same thing goes for email, fax, text, and every other form of communication.
It’s for this reason I say we in sales have to be comfortable using every form of communication. The only way we can be effective communicators is if we communicate using the preferred method our customers want.
Do you know what the preferred method is for each of your contacts? I’d suggest adding a line in your CRM system to allow you to record what if the customer most prefers phone, email, in person, text, etc.
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
