Market & Sales Intelligence: don’t use technicalities!

Psychologist and philosopher and communication expert Paul Watzlawick said,“You can’t not communicate!”

We all, after all, communicate constantly. Not only with words but also with gestures, expressions, and behaviors. But are we sure we are doing it effectively?

If you are a business owner or salesperson struggling with customers, to whom you want to sell your products/services, you certainly know: to sell, it is not “just” enough to communicate, you have to be persuasive!

You cannot, in fact, leave this to chance and rely on the kind of communication Watzlawick refers to, the unconscious, spontaneous, almost irrational kind. Far from it! You must have a strategy!

First of all you need to understand what the awareness level of your target audience is, accordingly tailor your message and choose the most suitable channel through Market Intelligence and Sales Intelligence. This means that it is not always useful to use technicalities or technical jargon. We better understand why!

To sell it’s not enough to communicate, you need Market & Sales Intelligence

If you want to sell you necessarily have to communicate strategically.

This involves first of all doing an target audience analysis , developing an effective message, choosing the most appropriate communication channel, and preparing sales scripts that will enable you to close deals.

In short, you must come prepared! To accomplish this, as you have seen, there are a myriad of aspects to work on.

One, however, is of primary importance (without this you go nowhere). We are talking about the language you use when talking to your customers!

Here, then, is the first rule of successful selling that you must pay attention to:

If you want to broaden your market, you need to eliminate the “jargon,” that is, technical jargon, that you normally use with your colleagues.

What does it mean? Read on to find out!

What does “eliminate technical jargon” mean?

Let’s face it: making your potential customers feel a little stupid is never a good strategy!

For this reason, using technicalities when talking to your customers certainly doesn’t help you sell!

To understand it better, imagine your potential market as if it were an iceberg, where the emerged part represents only the people who understand you, that is, that very small part of the insiders and experts.

All the people potentially interested in your product or service, i.e., the submerged part of the Iceberg, on the other hand, actually understand little or nothing of all the technical “big words” you use.

Guess what, though? That’s exactly who you turn to when you need to sell!

It is essential, therefore, to speak simply and comprehensibly or, as we say in CMI,“talk bread and salami“! Do you want to know the motivation? Continue reading!

Why you need to know the technicalities of Market & Sales Intelligence but not use them with customers

The reason is found in one of the first marketing communication models in history: the mathematical theory of communication by Shannon and Weaver in 1949.

Shannon and Weaver said, in fact, that communication comes down to a process in which a message is issued by a subject, the sender. Through one channel it reaches another subject, the receiver, who decoded the message in order to understand it.

As you can see, then, for communication to be effective and successful (in essence, enabling you to close deals with your prospects), the necessary condition is that the receiver understands what you are telling him or her.

Therefore, it is essential to get to know your target customer to such an extent that you understand how they communicate and what language they use (if you want to find out how, click here !).

In short, in order to sell you must, first of all, get your point across. To do that you have to speak its language, and as we said before, for most people (remember the iceberg) that doesn’t mean using technicalities. The motivation is simple.

In fact, if your client does not understand what you are saying, they will not act!

Be careful, though: not using technicalities doesn’t mean you don’t have to know them!

The real reason you can’t use the technicalities of Market & Sales Intelligence.

Today more than 90% of marketing campaigns fail because of “customer ignorance”!

What does it mean?

We are talking about the level of awareness of your target customer , that is, how much customers know about a certain product/service and at what point in their buying journey they are.

In fact, the mistake many entrepreneurs make is to leverage the specific functions and strengths of the promoted products/services in all their messages.

And as you can imagine, they just use complex technicalities to do it, almost impossible to understand!

In doing so, they assume that the potential customer is highly knowledgeable about the topic and, indeed, is already ready to buy.

The hard truth is that the few who understand you if you use technical jargon are, in all likelihood, extremely knowledgeable people (picking up on the concept from earlier, we are talking about those at the top of the iceberg!).

The worst part?

This type of customer has already evaluated all available alternatives, is very familiar with the product/service, knows that it is the solution they are looking for, and is simply comparing different brands. By addressing this kind of target audience, you will always be competing on price and your marketing and sales campaigns will get less and less results!

But so what do you have to do?

Here, then, is what you need to do:

1. First of all, you have to do an target audience analysis ;
2. then you need to understand your client’s level of awareness and specifically identify whether your client:
   • Is completely unaware;
   • Is aware that he has at least one problem;
   • is considering among various alternatives and therefore knows several solutions;
   • even knows the specific products/services;
   • Whether he is knowledgeable enough to know the different specific offerings on the market.
3. at this point you have to consider what kind of communication to have with him.

In all this, remember that in order to sell it is absolutely necessary that your consumer understands your message, and for this reason, using technicalities and jargon is not always effective!

So as you can see, to create effective communication and succeed in selling your product/service, it is essential to study your target audience and understand their level of awareness.

But how to do it?

The solution comes to us from data and Market & Sales Intelligence!

In fact, thanks to the in-depth study of data, you can identify the volumes of potential customers that are for each level of the pyramid.

One method to do this is to collect and study searches on Google, Youtube and even Amazon, in case you sell physical products.

In this way, by identifying the different search intents and segmenting by the topics searched, it is possible to understand how many are looking for the starting problem, such as having back pain; how many are inquiring about possible solutions, such as posture exercises or postural cushions; and how many are looking for specific brands and opinions on the best ones to buy.

Once you understand this, you can adjust, accordingly your communication and choose the most appropriate channel to reach the right people at the right time and effectively.

Conclusions

If you have come this far, congratulations!

This article was long and contained a lot of important notions. So first of all, if you have any doubts or want to ask us some more information, please comment below the article, the experts from our Central Marketing Intelligence team, will answer you!

But back to us, here are the basic concepts you need to take home from this reading:

1. to succeed in closing even the most difficult negotiations, the necessary condition is that your client understands your message
2. to do this you must first do athorough analysis of your target audience and thus identify their level of awareness;
3. once you understand this, you need to adjust your communication to make sure you are giving the right message on the right channel and thus close all your sales.

Therefore, all this means is that using technicalities or technical language when talking to your client is not always helpful. Especially if his level of awareness is low!

So, as you may have guessed, it all starts with studying your target customer and defining their level of awareness. You basically have to answer this question, “How ‘ignorant’ is my client?”

To do this accurately and thus have a clear view of who your buyer persona is you need reliable and certain data, Market Intelligence and Sales Intelligence , and Big Data experts to help you analyze the data.

In this we can help you! If you also need, therefore, support in studying your target customer to develop effective communication and close, thus, all negotiations, contact us now !