Troy Harrison, a sales navigator with 20 years experience, says younger buyers want you to solve their business problem first, then build rapport. They prefer text and instant messaging over calls and email, and expect salespeople to know Zoom, CRM tools, and social media.
Hi, my name is Gerald Schwartner, and welcome to Selling Power tv. Today we have our a very special guest. Troy, why don't you introduce yourself?
Thank you, Gerhard. I'm a sales navigator, and they call me that because I help my clients navigate the elements of selling on their journey to sales success. I've been doing this now for 20 years. I've trained salespeople from 23 different countries who live on three different continents, and I got a lot yet to do.
Let's talk about a topic that I'm really interested in, which is understanding younger bias.
People with buying authority are getting younger. Or maybe I should say that younger people are gaining buying authority. That's probably more accurate. And they are bringing with them different habits, different wants, different requirements from salespeople. Younger buyers consume information differently. Younger buyers communicate differently on different platforms. And here's the biggie. Younger buyers form relationships differently. Let's look at the old model of how salespeople like to build relationships. You would attempt to connect on personal issues. You know, you find out what sports do your kids perform in. Do you like to fish? You know, do you like to golf? And then you would transition that into a business relationship. Here's what we're seeing right now. The millennial generation and Gen Z, the ones right behind it, build relationships, the reverse of that. They build relationships based on business needs first. And if you can solve their business needs, make their lives better on a business perspective, then later down the road, you have the opportunity to transition that into a personal relationship. You know, I spoke at a conference in Florida earlier this year in the heavy equipment industry, and they did something really cool. They had a panel of three buyers on stage who bought millions of dollars of heavy equipment every year. One of them was 62, one was 36, one was 40. The guy who bought the most equipment was 40. He said his biggest complaint about salespeople is that they approach him and they immediately want to see if he'll go to lunch. They want to get him out for a beer. They want to talk football for 30 minutes. He says, I don't have time for that crap. When you approach me, show me how you can help me do business better, then come in, understand my needs, and do it. And he said, if you can help me do my job better, if you can make my business life better, then you become somebody I want to have a beer with you become somebody I want to get to know. And the guy who was 35 next to him said, yeah, I'm the same way. This is exactly what I do. That is a big mind shift in the way that salespeople have to approach prospecting and early stage relationship building. And a lot of salespeople are really struggling with that right now. As a sales leader, you need to be prepared to train your salespeople to do business based relationship building, business based prospecting, and then understand how to leverage that into that personal relationship down the road. And for those sales leaders who have salespeople that are trained and comfortable in the old ways, you need to keep an eye on them because probably they're going to see what a lot of people are seeing, which is to say that they're not getting the same results that they used to. And that's when you have the opportunity to step in, retrain them, re acclimate them to the new world of sale. That's component one of this. The second component is communication platforms. Younger buyers are more accustomed to using platforms like text and instant message for communication rather than the phone or rather by email. Now, I was speaking at difference conference about a year ago and one of the managers said, troy, all these younger buyers want to do is text. How can we train them to do it right? And I just kind of laughed. I said, if all your younger buyers want to do is text, get good at texting. Figure out how to send a persuasive, impactful message in 240 characters or less. And then finally, the expectations of a salesperson. Younger buyers expect salespeople to be technologically proficient. You have to understand how to use technologies like zoom, like CRM, instant messaging, like social media. So even if you are a salesperson who came of age before all these things, you need to learn those things now. And if you're a sales leader, part of your onboarding process needs to be dealing with that technological proficiency. And sometimes you need to re onboard your more senior salespeople into into those technologies. If that more senior salesperson can deal with that younger buyer on their level, technologically and in terms of communication, they can almost have a little bit more gravitas and have a little bit more of a leadership role there.
Do you recommend to sales leaders that role play that in the comfort of their office and not playing with reality?
Oh, absolutely. Think of role playing as maybe running with weights on your legs. If you can be successful at running with weights on your legs, that is role playing. Then when you get in a real life situation, the weights are taken off of your legs are even that much better. I would do role plays matching up intergenerational styles so what can people find.
You and how will you help sales leaders get to the next level?
They can find me@troy harrison.com and I can help sales leaders get to the next level through training their salespeople, through training and coaching them, taking an under the hood look at their salespeople and processes through my process called a sales audit, and by embarking on long term coaching programs that encompass all of these up to and including hiring coaching. So pretty much anything a sales leader needs to help get to that next level, I'm the guy to help them with.
