Communicate to Solve, Not to Sell – Business Communication Skills

Communication is one of the most significant skills that entrepreneurs should develop. It can help you make and break your relationship with customers, ultimately affecting your success. But how do you communicate effectively? Do you communicate to solve problems or to sell? 

Let’s understand the difference between communication to solve and selling with two different scenarios. With this, you will also understand what business communication skills are all about.

Scenario 1: Communicate to sell

Hi, I’m Shrey Sharma, from Cyntexa. I’m here to tell you about the world’s #1 customer relationship management software, Salesforce. This CRM is powerful and is the best thing you’ll ever use. It has many features that will help your business to unlock growth. You should purchase this software at the earliest to see how it can change your way of doing business. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Scenario 2: Communicate to solve

Hi Chloe,

The financial industry today is witnessing fierce competition, and customers are expecting seamless and personalized experiences from their financial service providers. But, you’re facing challenges with personalization, aren’t you? You are struggling to collect customer data from multiple sources. You have difficulty tailoring your services to each customer on an extremely granular level. Are you losing customers to competitors who are offering more innovative and personalized services?

That’s where Salesforce with its hyper-personalization capabilities can help you. It can assist you in accumulating customer data from a variety of sources, and AI can assist you in deriving useful understandings from it.

Are you inquisitive about knowing more about Salesforce and how it can alleviate your problems? Let’s connect with me to schedule a demo for you.

Thanks for listening. Do you have any queries?

As you can notice, the disparity between these two scenarios is obvious. The first one solely focuses on the product and its features. The second one talks about the client and its problems.

The first sales pitch is trying to sell, while the second one is trying to solve the problem. Which sales pitch do you think is successful in making sales?

Here in this blog, I’m going to talk about how communication to solve problems is more effective than communication to sell. Also, I’ll share some tips on business communication skills that will help you to communicate more effectively with customers and solve their problems.

So, let’s get started.

Why You Should Stop Selling and Start Solving Problems with Communication?

1. Building Authentic Relationships

Building authentic relationships with customers is the next competitive battleground. Businesses are vying to provide a consistent, and personalized experience that meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Problem-solving communication helps businesses engage with the prospect on a deeper level.

2. Enhancing Customer Loyalty and Retention

When a customer faces challenges, they often feel struggling. Identifying customer needs and communicating with them to solve them will not only solve their problems but also create a positive emotional experience.

According to Forbes, companies that establish emotional connections with customers achieve 85% greater sales growth than their competitors.

When customers feel an emotional connection with your business they are most likely to stay loyal and make frequent purchases.

3. Brand Advocacy

Brand advocacy often involves storytelling. It’s highly likely that when a customer engages with you and resolves their problem, they will tell their friends, family, or on social media about their experience.

4. Positioning as a Trusted Advisor

A trusted advisor is someone who has the customer’s best interest in mind. Positioning yourself as the trusted advisor can help a business reap several long-term benefits such as:

• Increased customer loyalty and retention
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Generating more profit
• Building brand recognition and trust

When customers feel that you understand their problems and walk the extra mile to solve their problems, they are most likely to trust you to do business.

Tips to Master the Art of Problem-Solving Communication

1. Understand Customer Problems and Needs

Do you know 66% of customers want businesses to meet their expectations and understand their needs? (Source: Forbes)

Understanding the customer’s problems and needs enables a business to offer more tailored solutions to businesses that meet their expectations. This outcome enhanced customer experience, loyalty, and retention.

A happy customer is 15 times more inclined to recommend a business, 8 times more likely to build trust, and 7 times more likely to purchase from it. (Source: Salesforce)

Having an understanding of customer needs is important for businesses, but how can they do so?

Here are some proven strategies a business can adopt to understand their customer’s needs:

(a) Creating Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are also understood as customer personas, audience personas, marketing personas, etc.

It is a fictitious illustration of your ideal customers established on market research gathering information such as demographics, challenges, preferences, objectives, etc. It assists businesses in comprehending who their consumers are, what they desire, how they communicate, and so on.

For example, the buyer persona for a SaaS company could be a business owner scrutinizing a cloud-based marketing solution to handle their marketing campaigns.

(ii) Valuing Customer Feedback

The best practice to understand your customers is directly getting engaged with them. You can motivate your customers to share their opinions about your product and services, and what they would desire you to enhance. There are several strategies to gather customer feedback such as organizing surveys, sending emails, tracking customer interactions on social media, etc.

(iii) Analyzing Customer Data

Analysis of customer data such as buying patterns and trends helps businesses to gain valuable insights about their customers. This information can assist you in customizing products and services according to customer needs. Customer relationship management software like Salesforce can greatly assist you in visualizing customer data.

2. Offering Customized Solutions

Every business has its unique challenges, therefore offering customized solutions can help a business to attract customers.

For example, one enterprise might be stumbling to gather data from different sources, while another might face problems in tracking the efficacy of their marketing campaigns. You should evaluate the needs of your customers and emphasize the advantages and features of your product that satisfy those needs.

3. Offer Proof that Your Product or Service Can Solve Their Problem

Solving customer problems is a two-step process. First, you have to specify their requirements and challenges, then you have to persuade them that your solution can solve their problems.

There are considerable ways to help your product or service capabilities to solve challenges such as:

• Show testimonials or case studies from satisfied customers who use your product or service and experience success.
• Offer a free trial with no strings attached to help businesses try your solution and test its capability to solve their problems.
• Use statistics or data that power your claims and your benefits.

3. Be Known for Your Expertise

I believe that expertise is the most prominent asset of any enterprise that establishes itself separated from its competitors. Expertise is what entitles you to build confidence and reputation among your customers.

When your customers know that you’re a professional in your field, they are most assumably to purchase from you.

Approximately, 70% of customers say that they’re more likely to pay more to a business that they believe is an industry expert. (Source: Forbes)

Here are some tips that you can follow to become an industry expert:

• Get involved in the industry. Share your expertise and unique perspective on solving the problems.
• Engage with your audience, and answer their questions.
• Join industry events, and speak with other experts.
• Use social media to share articles in support of your product or services.

Final Take

Effectual communication can be the distinction between the success and collapse of a business. It can assist you to build long-lasting relationships with your customers and prove yourself as an industry leader. Rather than focusing on selling, focusing on delivering value and solving customer problems can assist you in accomplishing sales success.