The Military enters new markets first on social before they step foot on the ground (my source is Timothy Hughes). Do you think your first point of contact with an unfamiliar connection should be through social engagement? If the Special Air Service (SAS) is engaging on LinkedIn, so should you be?
Companies are now tendering through LinkedIn. If your profiles do not appear to have the experience that the potential buyer is looking for, you will not receive the tender document. Like recruiters, your buyers and customers will view your profile and judge your expertise by it.
Your name and a title are not a good enough reason to stimulate engage. What do you do when you receive a business card, you look the contact up on LinkedIn. What does your LinkedIn in profile say about you? Would your business profile win an opportunity to tender and pitch, or not?
Clearly, not having the right social collateral representing your unique brand is a problem, not only for your company but for your ideal customer. Your buyer will not find your expertise and your customers will not continue to build the trusted relationship with your expert brand.
Your customers are only interested in you if they believe you can solve their specific problem. Your customers and potentials buyers are searching online to find the match of expertise that their perceived are problem solvers.
So often customers look for a specific solution to their problem, that the expert supplier believes will not solve the customer’s specific problem, what do you do?
- Give the customer what they want
- Give the customer what they need to solve the problem
- Build the relationship so you both gain a deeper understanding of the wants, educate them on the options available and together devise the solution the meets their specific need.
The biggest, better, faster, cheaper, is no longer a reason to buy. Your product must have customer relevance. To do this you have to do the research and investigative work prior to and during the engagement process.
Scale Your Sales Attraction created the system of Engagement, Education, and Elevation, which delivers a Win-Win for your sales team, the business, and your customer.
The Scale Your Sales 8 Win-Win Attraction Strategies
- This means your sales reps go out to win the pitch giving the buyer what they want, understanding the dynamics of the buyer’s decision-making process, then use the opportunity to educate and elevate the relationships to provide the solution which will solve the specific problem. This is a Win-Win solution!
- One of my strategies is to take five named people and five companies each year that I want to get in front of by the end of the year. Every month I apply a social strategy to get on the radar of that named person or company. I have an 80% success rate and I learn more about the potential customer during the year’s engagement and other similar potential customers are exposed to my brand. Having a focused strategy allows other relevant people to see my content collateral and they connect. Win-Win!
- There is very little that is original, your only differentiator is the way your people think. Your key peoples’ unique experience and perspective inform their expertise. Your content collateral, such as the post, the blogs you curate, and the comments made, the articles you write, the models created, books published, the brand values and associations and the speaking engagements is a demonstration of expertise. Do you have a unique personality or influencer, problem-solving perspective, research, model or solution? What sets your people apart from the rest? Scale Your Sales Motivation is about understand the unique differences between your people, so they can better trade on their unique differences to Win-Win.
- Since everyone in your database does not have the same problem, your contact emails should not have the same solution? You must understand and know your customers so well that, if you sent a generic email newsletter with the personal name, you would look foolish. The buyer’s personal name alone on a generic email is not relevant to the buyer’s specific problem, wants and needs. The purpose of email newsletters is to help remain relevant at the forefront of the buyer’s mind, to educate and provide relevant insight, to move the relevant conversations forward and to build relevant relationships. Win-Win.
- We are often in a position of needing to contact customers and potential buyers to set up meetings to ultimately sell your services. But customers and buyers are rather less eager than you would like, to meet up and hear what valuable things you believe you have to say. One option is to engineer bumping into your prospects at conferences to start a conversation with the aim of getting a follow-up meeting. Isn’t it better to stop chasing your customers which is lose-lose, but allow your prospects to identify your solution as best in class and contact you? Win-Win
- You might think ‘I cannot run a business waiting for the phone to ring, with customers eager to meet our sales reps. If you are positioned as the expert in a clearly defined niche with content collateral that consistently supports what you do best for your customer. Then your experts and expertise within the company become the (rather than a) solution for your customers’ clearly defined problem. Win-Win.
- When you are established as having the expertise this creates competitive advantage and barriers for other suppliers. It is hard for another supplier to come pitch to the buyer with what the customer will perceive as an inferior product. This is one reason why market leaders can maintain position even with a standard product and a superior brand (lose-lose). Customers are much more likely to seek out experts because this reduces their perceived risk of engagement. Win-Win.
- I have many examples of speaking on stage demonstrating my expertise, even a couple of months ago I spoke at a conference about Scaling Your Sales and my ideal client approached me at the end of the event. I like many other influencers get approaches on LinkedIn based on my personality and expertise demonstrated by my content collateral. Win-Win.
The Scale your Sales Win-Win Attraction strategies do not mean you stop reaching out to customers and buyers proactively, you do. However, you are more likely to receive a positive response if the customer and potential buyers have identified your expertise as being relevant to their goals and in solving their specific problem. Use these strategies in parallel with other outreach campaigns. But devoting at least as much time to building your perceived authority and expertise through the Scale Your Sales Win-Win Attraction Strategies, Engage, Educate and Elevate.
