A friend of mine has a new job, nothing new in that.
It's at a startup. They have a new way of doing an old process. This friend's job is to get into enterprise accounts and convince them that they need to throw away what they have had for years. Or put it another way, throw away something they know and love.
It means getting high in an organisation, building trust and then creating a convincing business case.
(There is a business case, like a lot of things in the digital world, it enables you to do twice the work at half the price).
This "new thing" will mean that companies will need to change a "corporate policy".
None of this is "new", us new business sales people have been doing this for years. Sales has always been about change.
Now here's a thing. This person has been told to do this with ....... cold calling.
It still amazes that sales leadership still don't there are faster and quicker (more efficient and effective) ways to get to senior people than calling them. But let's put that to one side.
Since I started in new business sales, I need to build trust and I needed to build it fast. I remember asking Chris Watson one of my mentors, what do you do when you go for a meeting and he said "Just go in the room, look at the photos on the wall and create a discussion about them".
For example if they have pictures of fly fishing on the wall, then you create a discussion about fly fishing. Build rapport!
Of course, today, we look the person up on social. If you find them posting pictures on Instagram they are taking labradors for a walk in Bushy Park. You talk about Labradors.
The "elephant" in the room that nobody talks about is that as a seller, we have to understand the power that the modern buyer has. Which is that they can, and will look you up on social if you try and call high in any organization. You as a sales person are totally exposed. That's why buyers love social. You cannot hide behind your phone anymore.
It does not matter if you are cold calling or whatever method of prospecting you use. Buyers will check you out.
Your social profiles (both passive and active) need to show who you are, what you stand for. More importantly they need to show you are an expert. Why?
Think about how you would run the first call. As a new business salesperson you need to demonstrate trust and that you know what you are talking about. You understand the clients business issues, you have a solution. You also need to demonstrate you are not a fly by night sales guy. This is a long term relationship, yes?
In the past you probably have done that in the first 10 minutes of the meetings. Of course, that all now has to be done online.
So how are you going to do that?
A Linkedin profile as a CV won't cut it! A Linkedin profile that tells people what a quota killing salesperson you are, won't cut it?
If you want to sell high and sell fast at a senior level. If you want to build trust fast so you get more meetings. Give us a shout!
Eight out of 10 executives cite trust as a major driver of customer business, and lack of trust as a reason why customers defect to a trusted competitor. Our experience shows that the absence of trust has significant negative impacts on sales and growth, causing reduced win rates, longer sales cycles, and lower referral and renewal rates. If trust is so critical to sales, why aren’t more companies making it the foundation of their sales process? Because they don’t see it as a quantifiable capability. But it is. CSOs that leverage analytics and human-centered design can teach their salesforces trust behaviors, instilling it as a core value and capability. It’s worth the effort. Salesforces perceived as "Trusted Partners" reach higher quota attainment by a factor of 25 percent.
