Mastering Direct Selling and Customer Relations

Targeting the Right Customers

• Direct Marketing: The sales force plays a leading role in the customer service process. The major challenge is keeping sales staff motivated and focused on long-term relationships and market satisfaction.
• Internal Marketing: This is known throughout the business process as the effort to create, through interactive media, a direct, personal, and individualized relationship between the company and the customer.

The key to dealing with customers effectively is the type of communication used by the organization in direct trade relations.

The Art of Direct Selling

Selling involves finding and analyzing customer needs to communicate effectively how those desires can be satisfied. The two-way communication process between the client and the salesperson, when successfully completed, transforms the sale into a genuine service.

Essential Commercial Capabilities

• Understand the implicit and explicit wishes of customers.
• Propose solutions tailored to individual needs.
• Build commitment and long-term relationships with customers.

Key Competencies for Sales Professionals

• Are experts in their specific fields of expertise.
• Develop effective communication among a group of professionals both inside and outside the company.
• Influence those around them in both the generation and transmission of knowledge.

Effective Customer Interaction

In sales, the goal is to persuade—that is, to enhance the customer's positive attitude toward the product being offered.

Communication Channels

• Body language: This is the physical presence we offer when we speak and attend to our interlocutor. A personal image transmits countless messages decoded through clothing, gait, and posture.
• The voice: This includes the way we talk—pitch, volume, and modulation. The sounds emitted during speech convey many messages, both positive and negative.
• Words: This is the literal content of our speech. The level of the transmitted message must conform to the listener's capacity for understanding to avoid mistakes and ensure clarity.

The Importance of Active Listening

For a seller, listening through all three channels of information is fundamental.

Effective Listening Requirements

• See and feel what the speaker is transmitting.
• Interpret the message accurately.
• Evaluate the information according to its importance.
• Give the partner the feeling that you are truly attentive to what they say.

Overcoming Communication Barriers

Learn about the many difficulties that complicate relationships between people. The core of these obstacles is our own prejudices, through which we filter everything we see and hear.

If you want others to listen and understand your message, you must try to ensure that first impressions are favorable and that the salesperson's presence is viewed as positively as possible. Make a strong first impression.

The Impact of Personal Image

Professionals know that while a sale might not be closed in the first few moments, it can certainly be lost then. In this sense, physical presentation is a great advantage for commercial work when dealing face-to-face with the customer.