The Lost Art of Speaking to People in Business
The Lost Art of Speaking to People in Business
The internet has done countless amazing things for business. That’s particularly true for entrepreneurs, internet marketers, and anyone else that works from home predominantly. We can now reach people all the way around the world just by writing emails and updating our Facebook profiles, and with that being so simple to do, it’s no surprise that we often choose this over the alternative of speaking directly.
But this has also led to a problem. In classic “use it or lose it” fashion, we have seen our ability to mingle and persuade in person start to disintegrate. We’ve lost the basic art of speaking to people.
This is a serious problem, because it means that we don’t know how to convince people to do business with us, to buy from us, or to trust in us. And that in turn means that we have become much less effective at networking, marketing, and sales.
Because here’s the thing: simply creating a few blog posts and writing about why your product is so great, is only going to get you so far. It’s NEVER going to be as effective as actually talking to someone and telling them in person why they should buy from you.
These new methods are entirely passive, and they fail to tap into our most powerful asset – our natural persuasive abilities. And the natural urge of anyone to do what someone asks them and to be liked.
So how do you get this back?
Social Messaging
The answer is to start using another new tool: social messaging.
More and more businesses have started moving to social messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp in order to do their business. They have seen their organic reach through Facebook Pages start to plummet, and this has arisen as the new best option.
Social Messaging apps are also extremely powerful in their own right though, because they give us the ability to speak to people in person and to thereby build far more trust and far more engagement. Again: we can use our natural powers of persuasion to explain WHY our product is great, and to help with any questions a customer or client might have.
Social Messaging apps get avoided by a lot of marketers simply because they don’t want to talk to anyone, but let their loss be your gain. The fact that they aren’t here just means more fish in the sea for you!
But of course you’ll have to scrub up on your persuasion and sales technique, so here are a few pointers:
• Start with a very short message – don’t write something long that they will take ages to read
• Use their name and spend a moment looking at their profile (where possible) to understand a little about them
• Use social proof to suggest that others love the product
• Remove as many “barriers to sale as possible”
• Ask a simple question that is quick to answer
You might be rusty at first, but once you regain these basic skills, you’ll be leagues ahead of your internet marketing contemporaries!
Rooting For You!
Dave Meholovitch
