Creative thinking in sales? Sounds outrageous, right? And what’s conversation intelligence got to do with creative thinking?
The role of creative selling is misunderstood and not appreciated by many. Too many sales organizations are still stuck with the boilerplate sales presentations, pitches, and demo routine.
However, along with several other changes, the coronavirus wave made uncertainty and adaptation an integral part of life. Also, if you are in despair due to the pandemic, so is your client. As a result, traditional methods of customer engagement and sales engagement will no longer be effective.
Caption and Alt-text: Virtual selling picking up pace during pandemic
Isn’t it time to cut down the monotony and try something new?
As per research conducted by the Aston Business School, in Europe, sales professionals with more creativity generated more sales than those without.
But before we get into how you can use creative thinking in your business, let’s talk about what you can do to reduce the non-selling and less creative activities.
You can allow the conversation intelligence tool to take charge and record sales and customer-facing meetings. Post-meeting the tool will automatically provide analytical meeting information that otherwise needs manual intervention.
CI software eliminates the need to focus on non-creative activities. Here are some examples:
- Note-taking
- Transcribing and analyzing meetings
- Train your peers
- Jot down the next steps/action items
- Review call performance
- Join live calls for learning
- Interviewing target audience for research
- Read and learn more about market insights
Without tickling your curiosity further, let’s jump on the core topic.
Table of Contents
How would you implement creative thinking in your sales activities?
We made a crisp yet comprehensive collection of 6 ways that bring the creative salesperson to the field. So, here you go:
1. Be customer-centric
There’s nothing more important than aligning to the needs of the buyer, not the product. In case you’re wondering that’s cliché, it’s not.
Sadly, many sales teams are hellbent on selling the product to meet their targets.
Creative thinking comes into play when sales teams plan on customizing the product offering, adjust the pricing model, or handling objections as per the customer’s need.
Creating a brand new personalized product deck or corporate presentation(tweaking templates) that speaks to the buyer’s industry or department is another way of thinking differently.
2. Add humor
Who said sales can’t be humorous?
Many salespeople you know are successful not because of their product knowledge, but their witty mannerisms and traits.
Customers never wish to engage in long, monotonous sales conversations. Once in a while, they, too, desire an eye-opening experience sprinkled with a bit of humor.
Content can also be tweaked to convey humorous sales messages and statistics. Thinking outside the box will make you unique and irreplaceable.
QUOTE: “To get something different, you must do something different.”— Stephen Richards
3. Work on Problem-solving
An issue is keeping your client awake at night. They are spending money to get rid of the problem.
Think of yourself as an investigator, not a salesperson. There is a problem statement you’re trying to solve, and you need to see the full picture of the issue and establish a fit between your product and the problem.
The fitment may be great but is it solving the problem entirely? Does another product or service need an attachment? Is there a need to involve another vendor? Is the root cause solved or only surface-level issues are addressed?
When you start looking at the client issues at different levels, that’s when the problem is solved entirely and you turn into a problem-solver salesperson.
4. Empathetic selling
As the pandemic set off, people rushed in all directions for help and so did businesses.
The sales front took a hit for the majority of companies, but very few companies made it through.
These companies put themselves in the shoes of their customers and analyzed what do the customers really need.
Empathizing with the customers is more important than you know. It not only aids in selling better but also builds a strong rapport and relationship.
5. Discover new target audience
The ideal buyer profile is fixed before selling starts. Yes, we agree.
But external situations, market needs, and demand changes are unpredictable. Who knew global sanitizer manufacturing would see a sudden surge in revenue from 1.9% to 16.6% in 2020( reports IBISWorld).
Hence, salespeople must keep an eye out for new markets and changing demands.
6. Celebrate your customer
Your customer expanded their operations in Boston and Seattle. These are exciting times for the client. But what did you do?
Did you drop a congratulations email? Did you phone them? Or, did you send a bouquet and congratulations card?
No, you’re not at all going overboard. It’s a way to let your customers know that you care about their success as much as you care about your business with them.
These are simple yet powerful ways to keep your customers happy and engaged.
“Creativity is one of the most undervalued sales skills: organizations that foster creativity are 3.5 times as likely to outperform their peers in terms of revenue growth.” -Forbes
So, stop wasting time on avoidable sales activities (let conversation intelligence handle that) and flex your creative muscles in creating WOW moments for your audience.
