Nowadays millennials are the bigger half of tech buyers, and they represent the largest number of decision-makers when it goes about corporate buying. It’s time to learn how to sell to millennial buyers, just in case you haven’t yet. The habits of millennials are shaped according to the fact they are the first generation to grow up with computers and internet access. These buyers spend more time researching online, are socially conscious and detest phone calls. In order to effectively reach and persuade these potential buyers, salespeople must adapt their tactics. This means that as a sales enablement leader, you will need to change your approach to support your sales reps in delivering a positive buying experience and closing deals with this new cohort of buyers.
Values and priorities of millennial buyers
If you want to close deals, understanding your buyer is essential. What do you need to know about millennials?
Millennials are savvy shoppers: More than 70% go online to research as their first step after they’ve identified a need.
Authenticity, transparency and social responsibility are important to Millennials. They’ll want to know about a business’s commitment to ethical and sustainable practices. Having plenty of information at their fingertips, they can easily pick out companies that seem insincere and ignore them.
Millennials are smart. They are busy but don’t want to work hard, thus requiring convenience. If they fail to find product or service information quickly, they will go to someone else. This generation also abhors phone calls. Almost two out of three named cold calling as the #1 reason they are less likely to buy from a business.
Millennial Decision-Makers expect you to understand their unique needs and prefer to get personalized. Salesforce shows that almost 90% of customers say the buying experience is just as important as the product or service. At the same time, millennials are self-determining. Survey found nearly all buyers want to be self-serve throughout the entire buying journey, and 81% want to be able to access pricing information themselves. These traits have significantly influenced the B2B sales process. The customer journey is no longer linear or standardized thanks to digital functions that empower buyers. Traditional sales strategies fall short of meeting the requirements. Let’s look at some adaptability tips.
How to satisfy millennial buyers' requirements
For millennials to be interested, virtual and personalized experiences are crucial. Here are some tactics that aid in developing these customer experiences.
Deliver outstanding virtual experiences. You must have a strong online presence and offer virtual sales tools and resources because millennials start their purchase experience online.
Having to contact salespeople for preliminary information scares away many potential customers. Therefore, it is best to provide maximum value as quickly as you can. Prospects are more prepared to proceed shortly as they have gathered the information they require.
Five strategies for excellent virtual sales to millennial customers.
- Throughout the sale, information must be easily accessible to those on both sides of the process. Customers can get this from you through a digital solution or a digital experience space. These online collaboration spaces gather all data in one place, including meeting notes, case studies, requested content, and contracts. The busy millennial merely needs to click one link to find all the information rather than browsing through a jam-packed email inbox. Instead of attempting to plan a conversation or exchanging back-and-forth emails, this asynchronous communication enables customers to work on their own time.
- Building a central repository for sales materials also satisfies the access requirements of your sales staff. Sales representatives can respond to conversations, identify pertinent documents, and obtain needed information promptly.
- You must make the most of the time you have because there aren't many face-to-face (virtual or in-person) touchpoints in the current sales process. Create a brief, engaging presentation using a variety of multimedia to attract potential customers. In order to concentrate on the conversation rather than taking notes, you can also record the meeting (with permission) to review afterwards.
- Sellers should have sales tools that support video creation, content sharing, virtual meetings, call records, and communication in order to enhance the virtual process.
Your staff will require ongoing training as part of the constant evolution of technology, market conditions, and customer expectations. Learning is included into the workflow to prevent the staleness of procedures and abilities.
Make unique purchasing experiences
It's fine and nice to offer a virtual experience, but everyone is doing it right now. You must tailor your buyer's experience if you want to stand out from the competition, especially with millennials. When you do, according to data from McKinsey & Company, your revenue may rise by 10-15%.
For the beginning, establish relationships first. Personalization is impossible without a relationship.
The prospecting email serves as the initial piece of the foundation. The sales representative should share content that is pertinent to the buyer's industry, role, or trouble. Remember to avoid making cold calls to millennials!
Three ways for personalizing for millennial buyers
- Engage stakeholders to find out about their concerns and roadblocks before the first meeting. This might be as easy as an email, text message, or message in the online chat room.
- Send the prospect information in advance so they can review it anytime and be ready with extra discussion topics.
- Use the channel that your customers prefer. Video is a medium that many millennials favor, which will distinguish you from other suppliers that only give paperwork and links.
Here are ways to use video throughout the selling process:
- In a prospecting email, include a recording where the salesperson introduces themselves, discusses the challenge and explains any material shared.
- A pre-meeting video can add value to the upcoming discussion by asking specific thought-provoking questions or explaining the sales content accompanying the recording.
- Record a post-meeting video recapping the conversation and action items, answering questions and covering any missing points.
- When drip selling, include a video explanation of the content’s relevance to increase value and open rates. And remember, building a relationship extends past closing a deal. Encourage your sellers and success teams to conduct regular check-ins to discuss industry trends and share relevant articles and research, deepening the relationship and connection.
Evaluate, modify, and repeat
Keep track of the content that millennial consumers are engaging with—and what they aren't—as your teams sell to them. You can determine a buyer's interest and purpose by keeping track of how frequently they viewed videos or browsed articles. Additionally, you gain knowledge on the content types that resonate.
Millennial buyers can be pitched by your team via sales enablement.
A new sales environment has emerged as millennials become more prevalent as lead purchasers. As sales teams traverse the new, more complicated buying process of the millennial buyer, well-executed sales enablement is crucial. Make sales content simple to access and utilise so that your salespeople can take full advantage of it.
A high-performing sales representative's content delivered as a role-play or demonstration is 110% more likely to be used by sellers. Today's consumers have much more control over their path through the buying cycle than do vendors over the selling cycle. To make sure that purchasers' needs are met, top sellers coordinate the entire process. Never be scared to use innovative approaches; millennials will value it.