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One of my team was part of a round table discussion about prospecting yesterday and a sales leader made the comment on the post that
Gaining access to people was hard
Really? I was amazed that people still think like this.
Now I totally understand if you are still using medieval sales methods like cold calling, spam email, if you are still buying lists or even throwing content at strangers I guess it's difficult.
All of us are bored with people cold calling, people spamming us with emails and even people spamming us with on social media. If you do that, getting access to people IS hard.
There is a way that getting access to people is easy
First you need a buyer centric profile, getting access to people means that a person wants to talk to you. Your social media profile is nothing about your company or your products, it's about you.
I want to talk to YOU, not your company or your products, so stop talking about your company and products and talk about yourself. After all, your social profile is a shop window to all of the 800 million people on social. They are walking past your profile everyday, it's up to you to decide if you want them to walk past, or to walk forward and be curious about you. We teach and coach you how to do this as part of our social selling and influence course.
The second thing you need is a network. Most people's network on social are connected to x colleagues, colleagues and recruitment consultants. You need to be connected to the people you want to influence. Not spamming them, not pitching to them, we teach and coach you how to do this in our social selling and influence course.
The third thing you need is content. Content is what proves you are an expert, that I want to talk to. You have an opinion, you have an understanding of my business, you understand my vertical. I'm often having calls with senior leaders in business, where they say "I read your article on .....". Boom!
I will go onto say that the only USP, unique selling point that you and your business have today is yourself. Your experiences, the fact you travelled to south America after university, etc, etc.
Some data to back this up
For a telco client of ours, we measured our social selling students with a control group of cold callers and we found that
Rank and file people we got a 11% uplift on new business calls booked.
Senior technical people, we got a 23% uplift on new business calls booked.
CXO people we got a 42% uplift on new business calls booked.
Commercial people we got a 18% uplift on new business called booked.
So, if you still think that getting access to people is hard, I would suggest your methods are outmoded.
Now Imagine .....
Imagine, I pick you up tomorrow in my car and drive you to a place which is full of your prospects and customers. All you have to do is go up and have a conversations with them.
Remember, social media is, social media. In the past you interrupted somebody with a cold call or an email and pitched your services. As social media is being social on media, interrupting and pitching does not work.
If I walked up to you at a social event and pitched, you would make your excuses and go and talk to somebody else.
So how about tomorrow, I pick you up in my car and we go to a place where all your prospects are hanging out. You can stay as long as you want. All you have to do is have a conversation with them. It's that simple.
Related: Marketing’s Big Short!