Death of a Salesman

The salesman is dead. Long live the relationship-builder.

If you're like most entrepreneurs, you love what you do. You have a passion for your ideas, your products and your services. But you hate selling those ideas, products and services with a passion, too. And you know what? Your customers hate being sold just as much as you hate selling them. So what's the solution? Forget everything you thought you knew about sales. In today’s marketplace, growing your business is as simple as building relationships – something you’ve been doing your entire life. There’s no magic formula for success. You don’t need to be a fast-walking, smooth-talking salesman to get people’s attention. You don’t need to put on a dog-and-pony show to convince them you are the best at what you do. Flash isn’t what’s going to get the job done. Just be yourself and do what comes naturally. Focus on serving others. Have conversations. Talk plainly but with authority. Be authentically helpful. Let your expertise do the heavy lifting. Lead the way to success for your prospects. Say goodbye to your days of being a salesman once and for all. Here are the dos and don’ts that will guide you in building relationships that lead to business growth.

Find your niche. Don’t try to be everything to everyone.

The salesman will eagerly talk the ear off of anyone and everyone that will give him the time of day, regardless of whether they have any real use for his products or services now or in the future. The relationship-builder can say with confidence that he is the best man for the job because he knows his strengths and his customers’ needs well enough to know that it is true. When you’re trying to grow your business, it’s tempting to cast your net far and wide to reel in any and every prospect that crosses your path. But grasping at straws is no foundation for long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. The key to convincing prospects that you are their best choice is truly believing that you are, in fact, the best choice for them. This type of self-assuredness starts with knowing where your depth of expertise lies and identifying those who can benefit most from it. This requires you to be resolute in defining your service niche, clear in identifying your target audience and focused on finding ways to connect the dots between the two. When you find the people that you are meant to serve, convincing them to let you help them reach their goals is a much less difficult proposition.

Pull, don’t push.

The salesman cold calls. His is the Russian roulette approach to business growth. He spins the wheel and hopes for the best. The relationship-builder endeavors to establish a foundation of trust before ever asking a prospect to entrust him with their time, attention or hard-earned dollars. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: you must be identify the tribes of people who represent your target market, find the places where they live online and earn your right to walk among them as a leader. To be accepted by their community, you must first contribute. This will likely require being an active participant in social media channels, where you can interact directly with current and prospective customers in ways that are helpful, insightful or even entertaining. This almost always requires ensuring that your own online home base – your website – provides value beyond compare in its free content offering, whether that takes the form of blog articles, videos or other types of resources. After all, as a relationship-builder, you must be willing to give away some of your time and expertise in order to plant the seeds of trust and open the lines of communication. But the benefit of your efforts is that when someone is ready to pull the trigger on a buying decision, your name will be the first – and maybe only – one on their call list.

Do your homework. Don’t make assumptions.

The salesman has a one-size-fits all pitch for every customer. His product doesn’t change, so neither does his approach. The relationship-builder does the legwork necessary to ensure that the relationship starts off on the right foot. He recognizes that no two customers are alike, and if he doesn’t have a fundamental understanding of the problems they face, how can he propose to address them? If you are given the opportunity to meet with a prospect, gather as much intelligence as possible beforehand. After all, when you have the entirety of the Internet and its infinite font of information at your disposal, why not use it? What can you learn about the person you’re meeting with? What is their professional background? What experiences or interests do you have in common with them that can help you break the ice? What’s the story of the company they represent? What does their competitive landscape look like? What opportunities can you see that they might not be taking full advantage of? You’ll be amazed at what spending a few minutes with Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter will reveal. Ultimately what you’re really looking for are the questions, concerns, issues and insecurities that keep them up at night. If you walk in and show them that you understand their challenges from their perspective, they’ll be more easily convinced that you also know how to overcome them.

Have a conversation. Don’t make a pitch.

The salesman loves the 30-second elevator pitch. He comes out swinging right off the bat with a perfectly polished speech about how wonderful his products or services are. The relationship-builder asks questions first. After all, this meeting is about serving the prospect’s needs, not his own. While it is important to do your homework before a prospect meeting, don't make the mistake of assuming that you already have all the answers you need. And certainly don't script out the interaction. Ask a lot of questions. Confirm the conclusions you drew from your research. Be prepared to improvise. You know your business, and if you’ve done your due diligence, you know their business pretty well, too, so there’s no need to be apprehensive if the conversation takes an unexpected turn. Don’t become so wrapped up in your own presentation that you steamroll over your prospect. You should listen at least as much as you talk. Make sure you truly hear what the prospect has to say. Pay close attention to their body language and facial expressions for cues that can help you steer the discussion in ways that reinforce their trust in you. Remember: a pitch is a push; a conversation is a two-way street.

Tell a story, don’t tout features.

The salesman has a laundry list of features that he wants to make sure he conveys to a prospect so they know just how special his product or service is. The relationship-builder doesn’t talk in bullet points. He paints a picture of the end result. Tell your prospect the story of their future success and how you're going to help them achieve it. Give them a reason to believe why will it work, what will it be worth when it does and why are you the one that can make it happen.

Be authoritative, not arrogant.

The salesman is unshakably confident – to such an unnatural degree that he comes across as phony and affected, as if he’s merely putting on a well-rehearsed show. The relationship-builder demonstrates a different brand of confidence – one rooted in the foundation of authentic expertise and experience. When you talk to a prospect, speak with authority, not arrogance. Demonstrate that you are a master of your field, but interact with them as an equal. Relate to them as one person who understands the challenges of growing a business to another. And never stoop to tearing down the competition. Unless your prospect broaches the subject, there’s no reason even to acknowledge their existence. This is your time to shine; make the most of it.

Be patient, not pushy.

The salesman wants a commitment today because that’s what serves his interests. The relationship-builder lets the customer decide when they’re ready to take the relationship to the next level because that’s what serves the client’s interests. That’s not to say that you should meet with a client and then ignore them until they decide to pick up the phone and call you again. You should touch base periodically, but do so in a way that demonstrates your continued mindfulness of and investment in their needs. Reassure them that you’re ready to hit the ground running if and when they choose to move forward. Remember that every touchpoint – whether it occurs in person, over the phone or via email – represents another chance to strengthen the bonds of trust that exist between you.

Be a nurturer, not a closer.

The salesman is a great closer. Once he has a signature on a contract and money in hand, his job is done, and he has already long since turned his attention to his next target. The relationship-builder never closes. He pays attention, he nurtures, he earns the right to continue serving the customer’s needs. "Closing" is a dangerously misleading term – one that is symptomatic of the old school of sales. When a customer makes the choice to do business with you, you’re not closing anything. You’re only beginning the process of cultivating a relationship with someone whom you hope will be a lifelong client. Remember that this person and this company have decided to take a chance on you. To them, it’s still a roll of the dice at this point. This is your opportunity to prove to them that their gamble will pay dividends in the realization of the future success you promised. Think of every interaction you have as an opportunity to cement their continued loyalty. Don’t just meet their expectations; exceed them at every turn.

R.I.P., Mr. Salesman. Hello, Mr. Relationship-Builder.

Follow the guidelines we’ve outlined here, and you’ll inevitably find that your prospective customers respond positively to seeing that their needs come first and that you have a genuine interest in helping them advance their own goals. If you approach the task of growing your business as a mission of earning trust and building relationships with people rather than just closing one sale after another, you’ll find not only that it’s not a dreadful task but that it’s actually enjoyable and even rewarding. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start building!

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Mythbusters: Website Edition

As a web designer, I routinely speak with business owners and marketing managers who are in the midst of a website redesign project for their company. During these conversations, I am always amazed by the myths about user experience and interface design that they mistakenly cling to. Many of these misconceptions are the by-product of previous website projects – leftover relics from an Internet of old. Others are more baffling, as their tenets are not now and never were true. So in the interest of championing the best practices and principles of modern website design, we’re channeling our inner myth busters and blowing the lid off five of these most persistent myths (dramatic explosions not included):

Myth #1: Visitors need/want instructions on how to use your site.

The Internet is no longer a new and unfamiliar medium, yet many companies still populate their websites with content that seems targeted to someone who has never actually navigated the Web before. When you include instructions for visitors about how to use to your website, you are adding a lot of extra words, which in most cases only serve to weigh down your pages with unnecessary visual clutter. In fact, the goal of any good design is to create an interface that is so intuitive that no instruction or explanation is necessary to help visitors move from one page to the next and complete routine processes such as making a purchase or signing up for an account. As a result, if you feel instructions are necessary, that inclination is a major red flag for serious design flaws that must be addressed in order to provide a quality experience for your user. To be fair, there are certainly instances where some level of guidance is needed. Complex interactions or applications that are truly unlike anything that has come before on the Web will require some level of training for your users, but the vast majority of websites do not fall into this category. If your site is, well, just a website (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), forego the instructions and have faith that your users are savvy enough to know and understand the well-established conventions of using the Internet.

Myth #2: These days, everyone has a high bandwidth connection.

Over the last few years, the average size of a webpage has doubled, largely due to our profuse use of images. Current design trends that call for giant, page-spanning photographs combined with the drive to deliver high-resolution images for retina displays mean that the file size of the images we are using continues to climb. Many people argue that this is acceptable because, as the size of our webpages grow, so does the bandwidth speed of our Internet connections. But is this really the case? It is true that the number of people with access to high bandwidth connections continues to increase, but the belief that all visitors have the benefit of a lightning-fast connection is nothing more than wishful thinking. There are still many areas of the country and the world that are shackled to the type of slower connections that are only a distant memory for many of us. Also, keep in mind as well that mobile visitors may be operating on a network that is either unreliable or has data download limits. In both of these instances, a website that is bloated with large content (i.e., giant videos, unoptimized images, etc.) will pose a problem. Ensuring that your website is optimized for performance is as important today as it has ever been, regardless of how fast connection speeds may be. After all, no one has ever said, “Wow, this website loaded TOO quickly for me!” Better performance and faster downloads improve the quality of experience for all users.

Myth #3: There may be some users visiting your site on a mobile device, but not that many.

Years ago – when the iPhone was still a novelty and everyone and their 12-year-old brother didn’t walk around with a smartphone in their pocket – this may have been the case. But today, visitors are accessing your website on a wide variety of devices with a range of different screen sizes. Examining the hundreds of websites that we manage reveals that an average of 30 percent of all traffic to those sites comes from mobile devices of one kind or another, and for some, it’s as high as 50 percent or more. This is consistent with the forecasts of industry analysts, who predict that by 2015 – that’s next year, folks! – the majority of all Web traffic will come from mobile devices. Additionally, not only are visitors accessing your site on mobile devices, but the same visitor is likely using multiple devices to access your content. We call this the “muti-device user”. As we covered previously in our article “Website Design for a Multi-Device World”: The multi-device world is populated by multi-device users. While a staggering variety of devices are, indeed, being used to access web content today, it’s also important to remember that the same user is often using multiple different devices to access your website – and they expect that site to work well regardless of which device they happen to be using at the time. Gone are the days of “mobile users” coming to your site only to locate your phone number or directions to your office. Today’s mobile users – and multi-device users – expect convenient, on-demand access to the same content that they can find on the desktop version of the site. Clinging to an outdated belief that “no one has a reason to visit my website on a mobile device” will quickly translate to “no one has a reason at all to visit my website at all.” Read more: Website Design for a Multi-Device World

Myth #4: You should open off-site links in a new tab/window.

This is the most common myth that I hear from clients, who insist that all links that lead to another site must open in a new tab or window. This request stems from a belief that if a visitor leaves your website to look at content somewhere else on the Web, they will never find their way back. By opening that link into a new tab, your website remains open in the user’s browser for them to return to at any time. Or at least, that’s how it works in theory. Unfortunately, I have seen this practice backfire on a number of occasions. Why would this be the case? Think of the Web as a linear experience. You move from one page to another and another. You can travel seamlessly to and from any point along  this timeline by using the browser’s back and forward buttons. But when you open a link in a new tab, you start a new timeline for the user. Having observed many website users over the years, I can tell you that the back button is a feature that they are intimately familiar with. If that user clicks a link and visits a new page, and they then want to return to your site, they will intuitively click the back button until they get there. However, if you’ve opened the off-site link in a new tab or window, then the back button eventually leads to a dead-end for that visitor. Your site, which they want to return to, is not part of their current timeline because it is open in a completely separate tab. Of course, all the user needs to do is close the current tab, and your site will be in front of them again, but I’ve seen many visitors who are unaware of or confused by this. Instead, when the linear experience of the back button doesn’t bring them to your site as they expected, they instead type your website’s URL into the browser’s address bar, thinking that something went wrong along the way. They now have two instances of your website open, so in your efforts to “help” them easily get back to your site, you’ve actually confused the user experience. Does this mean you should never open links in a new tab or window? No, it doesn’t. For example, it’s a good practice to open PDF files in a new tab because these documents feel like they are separate from the linear experience of browsing a site. Additionally, opening links in new tabs is not “wrong,” per se. It is an acceptable solution, but if you choose to use that approach, do so for a reason other than the mistaken belief that if visitors leave your site, they will never find their way back. The linear experience of web browsing – and using the back button to return to a webpage – is a well-understood convention, so don’t be afraid to let your visitors explore in the manner that is most natural to them.

Myth #5: Visitors absolutely will/absolutely will not complete a form.

The final myth we will debunk concerns web forms. Interestingly, I hear competing opinions from clients regarding forms on their websites. Some believe that visitors will not fill out a form no matter what. Others think that their users will gladly complete a lengthy questionnaire for almost no reason at all. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Gathering information from website visitors is a valuable exercise. It allows you to understand who is coming to your site so you can follow up with them, engage with them and hopefully convert them into paying customers for your business. Just asking for visitor’s information is not enough, however. Very few people will be willing to complete a form unless they have a clear understanding of what they will receive in return – and what they receive needs to be of greater value to them than receiving more marketing from you. This value can come any number of different ways, such as receiving a free whitepaper or application download or registering for an event or webinar. In each of these cases, there is a legitimate reason for your site visitors to complete a form that gives you their personal information. If, however, your form simply says, “Sign up for updates!” without any further information about what those updates entail, how frequent they will be delivered or what potential value they hold, then there is a slim chance anyone will be inclined to complete that form. Creating a valuable offer is step one. Step two is the design of the form itself. Asking for too much information will be a roadblock for many visitors, who will either perceive a form with a large number of fields as being too cumbersome or too intrusive to complete, so the best course of action is to ask for only the information you need. If you never intend to call someone, then don’t ask for their phone number because that’s one less obstacle you’ll have to overcome. The more concise and easy your form is to complete, the more likely your visitors will do so. Website visitors will fill in forms, as long as you make those forms easy to complete and provide value to them in exchange for sharing their information with you.

R.I.P. myths and misconceptions

The Web and the behavior of its users are constantly evolving. Since the last time you engaged in a website redesign project, there have undoubtedly been a number of shifts in trends and tendencies, and what you learned through that experience even just two or three years ago may not be applicable today. Because of this ever-changing landscape, the importance of working with web development firm that keeps pace with these changes and the best practices of modern website design cannot be understated. Such a partnership will ensure that the decisions driving the the design of your site are relevant to today’s Web and are not relics of a time gone by.

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