Why? Here are just three reasons: 

• I’m part of the biggest generation in history, we overtook the Baby Boomers in 2015 and we are now the biggest buying generation in history.
• I’m part of the first generation brought up in a technology-led world. For me, if you are not engaging online, I will struggle to take you seriously.
• I’m your customer, your supplier, your staff member, possibly even your boss and as time goes by, I’ll become even more important.

If you don’t engage with me your sales will start to stagnate, then dwindle, then fall and your business could fall into obscurity. It’s that simple.

I’m not telling you to sell to you, I’m setting out the future because the future belongs to my generation, and the generations to come.

We buy differently!

Are you ready?

With this in mind, I will be doing a series of blogs to talk about how my generation – and those that follow - will impact your sales over the coming years and how, all businesses of all sizes need to get ready.

Gone are the days of old-fashioned cold calling, push, push, pushy sales which annoy everyone and even more so now.

Now is the time to build relationships, be proactive, employ a process which doesn’t feel like a process, and provide excellent customer service. Above all, it’s about being present, being visible, and being consistent.

On LinkedIn, this is important to come to terms with because:

• 87 million members of LinkedIn are millennials, 11% being in decision-making positions
• And within the 5.8 million SMEs in the UK more than half of the workforce are millennials.

All companies need to sell and their staff need to know how to sell. To do that well they need to understand their audience – their age demographic, how and where they engage and how they buy.

In this series ‘Millennial Buying’, some of the subjects I will be writing about will include:

1. The way in which millennials buy - and what happens after they’ve made a purchase, the good and the bad.
2. The problems which might occur if your millennial sales staff are not trained to sell to Generation X or the Baby Boomers i.e. people older than them.
3. The importance of ethics and brand to a Millennial – what are they looking for when they decide to purchase goods or services?

To aid with this project I’ll be conducting some simple surveys for some basic data analysis. Here’s just one to set the scene:

• Current Statistic: So far 100% of Millennials surveyed say they read a review before purchasing a service/product… more will follow on this i.e. reviews and their influence.