How do you get a buyer to view you not as someone selling them something, but a trusted resource that they value and look forward to talking to? There are various communication and related techniques that will move you closer each day to holding this coveted place in a buyer’s mind.

“It is important for customers to value you and your company regardless of what you are selling.”

• Make sure the Customer Knows You Won’t Take Too Much Time. Use time to put the customer at ease. It’s an effective tactic for building customer engagement given how busy people are and the risk they perceive when you threaten to take too much of their time. This is especially true when people feel like a company or another person is trying to market or sell something to them.
  • Marketing. For marketing, this means making ads, content, and other communication tools easy to consume. Recent research into the types of content and media that customers like to consume supports this point. It shows that people are attracted to content that is easy to consume more than they value the substance of the content itself.
  • Sales. For sales, this technique can be used to put the customer at ease during phone calls and in-person meetings. At the start of a meeting or conversation, sales people should articulate how long the meeting will last, an objective for the meeting, and a clear agenda that shows the customer that you will stay within the time limit.
• Show How Accommodating You Are With Non-Verbal Tools. The basic idea here is to look non-threatening. Body posture, facial cues like smiling, and the handshake are all important non-verbal communication techniques. These non-verbal cues are obviously critical to sales people and most good sales people already know the benefits of a smile and a good handshake. More advanced non-verbal cues involve tilting your chin down slightly to look less threatening and angling your body slightly away from the customer.
• Slow Down The Rate at Which You Present Information. Speaking slowly and pausing to allow customers to catch up to what you’re saying is certainly important, but there are other forms of communication, such as the amount of information we include on a presentation slide, where this technique can pay dividends as well. This tip can help sales and marketing build engagement with customers.