Kendra believes the way we sell has changed forever. Now, we have a whole new way we can work with people that we can layer onto traditional selling. You don’t have to get on a plane or drive to meet a prospective customer—you can still connect with people digitally. Digital selling allows you to meet with more people and connect with them in bite-size pieces.
Plus, if you’re going to be successful with selling, you need to try new things. Kendra points out that you should have been selling digitally before the pandemic hit. The pandemic should have just accelerated your current strategy.
They can be trained on a CRM, how to use LinkedIn, etc. but people most often get tripped up on video. Why? Because you are front and center. You can’t look down and take notes and it’s difficult to look someone in the eyes. Salespeople have to master connecting and engaging through video.
Kendra also emphasizes that writing has never been a more critical skill than it is now. You have to be able to write emails, text messages, and social media posts. Emotional intelligence is also critical. Can you sense another person’s feelings when you’re limited with body language?
Kendra believes that continued communication is important from a strategy perspective. Whether it’s recapping a conversation via email, video, or text—you need to stay in touch frequently. In the past, salespeople didn’t always do this and could get away with it. But things are more competitive now than ever before. If you’re going to differentiate yourself, frequent communication via a variety of tools is important.
Kendra’s digital selling dos and don’ts are stellar:
When Kendra first started in sales, she had too many clients to cover on her own. Kendra had 300 installed accounts. She didn’t have time for everything she had to do and still hit her quota. She couldn’t go out and meet with every single client and collect orders, which felt like the most important part of the process. You need that face-to-face interaction and connection.
But why couldn’t she get some of the information from a fax (which at the time was new technology)? She’d simply start to accept orders from clients via fax. Ever since, she consistently looks at her process and asks, “What can I do that’s different from everyone else? How can I be the leading edge and stand out?”
Kendra got an award for taking orders over a fax machine because no one had done it before. All because she took initiative and focused on being on the leading edge of technology.
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