How Sales Teams Can Use Online Reviews to Convert Prospects

[Garrett Sussman]

How Sales Teams Can Use Online Reviews to Convert Prospects

Salespeople are compulsive liars.

Thanks to the post-truth age, it seems trust is in short supply. That?s the general attitude consumers have towards sales teams as well. The view that anything and everything out of a salesperson?s mouth is a lie. That they?re looking to swindle you, to take your money.

But it?s not true.

They?re not all liars. We?ve heard the stories about companies who behave honestly. Who do what?s best for their customers, even when that means acting against their own best interests.

Take Zappos for example.

A Zappos employee physically went to a competing shoe store to get a customer the product they wanted.

Send customers to a competitor? Who does that? Zappos does, because they?re earning trust.

Sales teams are still viewed as dishonest

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When it comes to honesty and ethics, salespeople are almost universally distrusted. A Gallup poll on Honesty/Ethics in Professions found that salespeople received some of the lowest marks for honesty.

Salespeople and advertisers were near the bottom of the list.

But you already knew that, didn?t you?
What an uphill battle. You start your relationship with customers at a trust deficit, yet you?re still expected to attract, convert and close customers.

In the past, salespeople relied primarily on cold calls to hit quotas, but with inbound marketing, brands are starting to earn consumers trust before they even make contact with a sales person. In many industries, consumers would prefer to make a purchase without ever talking to a sales person. But the ones that still need to talk through the product and get clarification on the product or services capabilities, still need to trust the employee they?re touching base with.

It?s a problem many sales teams struggle to solve.

Sales teams won?t struggle when they have what they need

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For prospects that want to talk to someone, Salespeople are an early touch point with potential customers so they?re a wealth of information for customer research. You know customers are coming in with large levels of distrust. So we should be working with the all-stars of our sales team. Focus their attention on boosting their inherent trustworthiness.

Sounds great. But how?

Get them to create helpful educational content ? a blog post, video, webinar or Q&A session.

Okay.

But content about what?

Content that builds trust and confidence in the product you?re selling to the customer. This is the part where anxiety, discouragement and doubt sets in. Where sales and marketing teams fall apart. They?re not sure how to go about building trust.

How are we supposed to do that, they wonder?

View the rest of Andrew's post where he breaks down two effective strategies for 'becoming the review': HERE