How to Keep Your Sales Team from Losing the Human Element

 

You find a product online, decide it’s a good deal, and proceed with the purchase. You think the transaction is complete, but 30 days later, you get the same product again. You realize you’ve somehow agreed to a monthly shipment that will continue to arrive until you go back and cancel your subscription. Very frustrating!

 

Domain providers use a somewhat similar tactic. Additional products are pre-selected by default, and if they remain unchecked, they’ll make their way into your shopping cart. This forces you to backtrack through the shopping experience to remove the unwanted items before you can finally purchase the service you wanted. 

 

While your business is (hopefully) not trying to trick customers, it’s easy to fool yourself into believing that sales automation is the answer to everything. It’s an efficient, customizable, and cost-effective way to communicate with consumers, but when it comes to actually selling a product, that task is often best left in the hands of your human sales force. 

 

 

The pharmaceutical industry knows just how powerful face-to-face human interactions can be. With seven-figure ad budgets and innovative customer relationship management systems, pharmaceutical companies still send hundreds of thousands of sales reps into the field to sell their wares, and for good reason: They understand it’s the relationship between the rep and the customer that ultimately sells a product. 

 

They also recognize that their sales force could be missing out on valuable feedback by completely automating the sales process. Sales reps hear firsthand how a medication works and how market conditions are changing. This crucial information helps a pharmaceutical company respond to its competitors and continue to market its products.

 

 

There’s no shortage of methods to help maintain the human element that’s so often lacking in an automated world.    

 

• Make the first touch a human touch. This can be a phone call, a live chat, or a face-to-face meeting. Human interaction with a prospective client affords you a certain degree of trust. Without it, you have no real foundation for a long-standing relationship.
• Don’t rely on your CRM system for everything. The key is striking a balance that utilizes technology to communicate low-level updates with prospects while simultaneously forcing human interaction when a prospect reaches a certain level in the sales process.
• Require regular check-ins with prospects and clients. At the start of each quarter, a personal phone call from a sales team member—even one that goes to voicemail—can provide the human touch necessary to improve customer service and make people feel special.
• Set up staff as prospective clients in your CRM system. Your sales force will see firsthand what customers experience, and those lessons will help you refine the tone and timing of your messaging. 

 

 

As a social networking company, we sometimes struggle with implementing human interaction. Our business model is predicated on virtual interaction, so the technology that makes this possible can become our worst enemy. 

 

If we didn’t remind ourselves to engage with our users on a human level, we’d lose touch with their wants and needs. And much like a pharmaceutical company, we need the feedback provided by human interaction. A lack of feedback leads to a lack of innovation, which leads to declining sales.

 

To prevent this from happening, we’ve implemented a quarterly high-touch approach to customer service. Our customer support team makes thousands of calls to every person in our network. 

 

While this takes a lot of manpower, the benefits are worth the commitment. We see key metrics improve after each campaign, including our percentage of new referrals, new membership sales, and existing member retention. 

 

With more companies moving entirely online, it’s getting substantially more difficult to differentiate your company in a sea of automated emails, and your competitors are only a click away. A personal interaction with a real human can do wonders for customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

 

How do you plan to bring the human element back to your automated sales process?