Sales people should be seen or heard however possible

We have to wonder these days about the effectiveness of sales interactions that take place in person vs. over e-mail, and social networking’s role. Do we do a better job face-to-face in making a sale or can we do better by using other means? Maybe not even face-to-face— maybe just voice-to-voice could work better, like using the old-fashioned telephone.

New electronic devices keep coming up that try to do the work for sales people by making contact with prospects for business. How much difference is there between personal contact and electronic contact for effective selling? Albert Mehrabion, a researcher of mid-20th-century communication, has found that in any face-to-face communication, the components of the communicated message are:

• 7 percent words
• 38 percent tone of voice
• 55 percent body language

In the e-mail-driven society of today, tone and body language are entirely stripped from communication. Using video gives back the ability to use intonation, expressions and gestures to communicate.

Professor Frank Bernieri, while at the University of Toledo studied first impressions and how they can affect a candidate applying for a job. His study reflected that watching a 15-second video was nearly identical to a 20-minute, in-person interview. This tells us something about the value, in sales, of getting a prospect to see and hear a sales person rather than reading an e-mail or website message.

Several years ago, a Stanford University graduate developed Vipe, a video program to help recruiters do a better job interviewing. From a sales standpoint, Vipe allows a sales person to interact with prospects as if the person was in the room. It works in an e-mail to a prospect; once the e-mail is opened, the prospect sees the sales person delivering a short message, and asks for some interaction. For more on Vipe, visit www.vipepower.com.

We need to remember the key to sales during this economic downturn is just more personal interaction, by any means, with all prospects. That’s what works; we used to call it “knocking on doors.”