What Do Your Communications Say About You?
by Paul McCord

What are you doing with those prospects that are in your database that aren’t ready to purchase yet?  Are you in the process of establishing trust and good will—or are you demonstrating that you aren’t trustworthy or that you really don’t have anything of value to offer?

Or what about your existing clients?  Are you teaching them to pay attention to you because your communications bring value, or are you teaching them to ignore you because you simply waste their time with worthless, self-serving junk?

Whether you’ve considered it or not, everything you send to a prospect communicates your value—or non-value and your trustworthiness.  Everything you send.  No matter how small.

Most salespeople, professionals, and companies will put their long-term prospects into a database and keep in touch with them on a semi-regular basis.  They’ll send a monthly or quarterly newsletter, a “how ya doin, ya ready to buy yet?” email or letter on occasion, and make a phone call once in a blue moon.  Some will inundate the prospect with so much junk mail and junk email that the prospect wonders how to get rid of them.

Either way, the prospect is learning about the salesperson or company.  The question is what are they learning?

Let’s look at the three most common negative messages prospects get from salesperson and company communications:

You Aren’t Reliable:
Reliability is a major trust factor and what you send and when you send materials to your prospects will communicate to some extent whether or not you are reliable.  If you promise to send information, do you send exactly what you promised, when you promised?  If not, why should a prospect trust you?

Do you send a monthly or quarterly newsletter?  Is it on time, every time?  If the date on your newsletter is May and it arrives in June because you were too busy to get it out, what message does that send?  Think people won’t notice?  I received the Jan/Feb newsletter from an interior decorator—in April.  Is that how she handles all of her commitments?

You Don’t Value My Time
Are the items you send of real value to the prospect?  If it isn’t of value, why do you send it?

What people will send is amazing.  I get newsletters with recipes, gardening tips, and other information that might be appropriate for some salespeople, but not from the people who are sending it.  Recipes, gardening tips, household tips, etc. might be appropriate in a REALTOR’S newsletter, but not an accountant’s, or financial planner’s, or insurance agent’s, or from an auto repair shop.  If I get something from an accountant, I expect it to have some relevance to my financial needs.  If I get something from an auto repair shop, I expect it have something to do with automobiles.  I don’t expect an attorney to send me an article on how to give a massage (yep, got one). 

What can you send of value?  There is a ton of stuff.  Articles relating to the area you address; special offers; new services and/or products; major company news; and other pertinent information.  All of these items are likely to be of interest to a majority of your prospects.

The key is not to waste your prospect’s time.  Of course, not everything you send is going to be of interest to every one of your prospects.  But if your information is good, all of your prospects will find value in your communications—just not every prospect for every communication.  I get a number of emails after each edition of my newsletter.  Many praise a particular issue; others are indifferent.  But some of those who were indifferent to one issue may email me an issue or two later raving about the latest issue, while the one who was enthused about the first issue emails me to let me know I missed the mark with them on the last issue.  I, like you, have to aim to bring lots of great material to the table, knowing that each reader is at a different place in their careers.  What appeals to one, may not appeal to another.  However, if I bring enough diversity to the newsletter, I can hit everyone’s needs, just not in every issue.  You must aim for the same goal—bring substance to the table, and overtime, you’ll feed the lot.

Every time you communicate with a prospect or client, even with your mass communications, you are teaching them to pay attention to you because you value their time and give them value—or you are teaching them to ignore you because you are nothing but a time waster.

You Don’t Know Your Business
Sending out-dated or erroneous information also will be noticed by many prospects.  If you fail to review and carefully examine your information to make sure that it is up-to-date and accurate, you run a serious risk of convincing your prospect that you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

The articles and other materials you send, whether written by you or others, must contain current, accurate and trustworthy information.  Never assume that yours is the only information the prospect is receiving about your subject.  Your object is to inform, not confuse.  Your goal is to impress, not show your ignorance or laziness.  Errors are especially easy to miss when dealing with statistics and factual matters of record.

This isn’t to say that you can’t send items that may challenge conventional wisdom.  You certainly can—and if you can back your information up, these may be your most potent communications.  For instance, I work obviously in the areas of sales and sales management.  Most salespeople and managers know there are a great variety of training methods and theories.  Controversy and going against convention isn’t an issue in this industry.  As a matter of fact, many are well aware that many conventional ways of doing things simply don’t work that well.  Consequently, going against convention and finding better ways is welcomed. 

But in other industries, for example, many sectors of the financial services industry, bucking convention many not only raise many eyebrows, but your very competence may be questioned if your ideas are not well documented by independent sources.  Does this mean that you can’t present non-traditional ideas in these industries?  No.  It simply means that you must go out of your way to document their validity because you know upfront that you’re dealing with a subject where innovation is going to be questioned—not just by peers, but by many prospects also.

In addition to sloppy work, overstatements and exaggerations are another red flag for prospects.  It is perfectly permissible to make strong statements about your products and services as long as you are not the author of those statements and you can identify for your prospects exactly who made the claims about your product or service. 

If you use superlatives about yourself, your product/service, or your company, they cannot be from you and you must fully identify the person who made them—meaning they can be checked out.  If you make the claim yourself, you lose credibility.  If you attribute the superlative to someone who is not fully identified, you lose credibility.  If you use an authority in your particular field and give full identification, you gain credibility.  If you use an everyday customer with full disclosure, you gain credibility.

Examine your prospect communications in light of these three most common mistakes.  Don’t allow yourself to lose credibility while trying to build credibility.  Every communication you have with a prospect or client is just as important as your initial communication with them.  You’ve worked hard to gain their trust and respect.  Don’t blow it by teaching them that you’re nothing but a time waster.

Paul McCord, a leading Business Development Strategist and president of McCord Training, works with companies and sales leaders to help them increase sales and profits by finding and connecting with high quality prospects in ways prospects respect and respond to.  An internationally recognized author, speaker, trainer and consultant, Paul’s clients range from giants such as Chase, New York Life, Siemens, and GE, to small and mid-size firms, as well as individual sales leaders.  He is the author of the popular Sales and Sales Management Blog (http://salesandmanagementblog.com). 

Trust Two Point Ooh
by Clayton Shold

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

If you are old enough to remember the Popeye cartoons you’ll remember this quote. Popeye’s friend Wimpy used it often. You see Wimpy loved to eat hamburgers but was too cheap to pay for them. He was looking for credit, usually from a patron of the diner. If he approached you would you trust him to pay you back on Tuesday – or any day?

I suspect if you knew Wimpy and his reputation you would most certainly decline to buy him a burger.

If you were from the era when this comic strip first ran in the mid 1930’s you probably sealed business deals with a handshake and little if any legal paperwork. Why, because people trusted other people.  Here lies our conundrum, what has changed and why are we less trusting of some people than others?

I believe most people start out trusting other people, taking them at face value … especially when the degree of risk involved is low. Say someone introduces you to an individual and the person tells you what they do for a living. It is probably safe to assume you believe them; you have no reason to doubt their honesty. You are not suspicious of their statement, unless other overriding factors kick in. Did any non-verbal cautions flags go up? Did the person smile funny while telling you their vocation, did they shift uneasily, or did they avoid eye contact? Did your spider senses tingle?

In today’s society we tend to be more skeptical than in Popeye’s day, which is another way of saying we are less trusting. Why is that? Watch young children and you don’t see evidence of this.  Can we surmise then that life experiences cause us over time, to take stalk in other people’s actions which become the basis on which we begin to measure trust?

Trust relationships evolve over time. As people experience other’s actions they begin to build a ‘trust vault’ of memories. The vault continues to accept deposits as long as the person continues to interact in an honest, ethical and open way. Strong relationships rely on familiarity, a sense of fairness, open communication and mutual respect that continue over time.

It is easy to bankrupt the trust vault and it usually happens quickly. Once the vault is empty it is very difficult to rebuild and regain the lost trust. Take marriage where we pledge to “love honour and cherish until death to us part”. The vows exchanged are a commitment of trust between two people. An extramarital affair, once exposed destroys most if not all of the trust accumulated in that relationship.

The past decade provided too many examples of top business leaders who didn’t just erode our trust, they nuked it totally.

Wimpy lived on hamburgers and broken promises, what about those who require high levels of trust to be successful in their chosen vocation. We hold some professions to a higher standard than others with regard to trust. If you are in court, we have an expectation of fairness and trust the judge to be impartial. Think of your financial advisor providing guidance on your money matters, do you trust them to manage and safeguard your savings as if it were their own. Think about your hair stylist (someone Wimpy might have called a barber or hairdresser), you keep going back because of the trust established over repeated visits, confident you will leave happy. Some professions hold themselves accountable to a high level of trust, our armed forces, police and fire personnel trust their peers with their life.

So what changed from Popeye and Wimpy’s day?  Has our competitive spirit of winning at all costs eroded our decency, integrity and sense of fair play? Did it deteriorate because of shareholder’s greed in expecting quarter over quarter growth and profitability? Have we found it easier to initiate litigation with an expectation of a windfall decision that has bred legal beagles in sufficient quantity to sniff every pant leg? Have we become so selfish we will not extend credit to others to allow them to make deposits into our trust vault?

I believe the pendulum is beginning to swing back. Society is desperate for leaders we believe will do what is right, someone we can count on to fix what is broken, to take us on a path we can be proud to walk, to restore our confidence, to gain our trust.

We can all act as catalysts to accelerate this change. Reconstitute the principle you word is your honour, then ensure your actions support your words. Rejuvenate the notion your handshake is a binding gesture signalling your values, beliefs, and commitment to the other party. Treat others with respect and make regular deposits to their trust vaults.

This is much more than bumming a hamburger, it is about how we live our lives, the relationships we establish and the trust vaults we encourage and protect.

“I yam what I yam and tha’s all what I yam.” – Popeye

Clayton Shold is president and co-founder of Salesopedia. He is a business therapist to small and medium sized organizations in Canada and the US helping them leverage sales and marketing opportunities.

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8 Essential Criteria for Winning a Big Contract from Me
by Mike Schultz

Smoking a cigar in the Adirondack chair as the red sun goes down over the lake on a warm summer evening. Between this and me is a major remodel of the fixer-upper lake house my wife and I just bought.

Since I inherited from my father special skills like hammering a nail into a wall such that I ruin the wall, I realize I’m about to spend a lot of time with architects and contractors. All I’ve heard from friends and colleagues is, “Be careful!”

The cliché digs on architects are that they are artists with no attention to detail and no grounding in reality. The digs on contractors are that they’ll take any opening you give them to cut corners, pad their fees, and drop you and your project at the first sign they have to work more than they thought or something better comes along.

I don’t believe any of it. I can dis doctors (quacks), consultants (here to fire people, read their watch, and tell me what time it is), lawyers (ambulance chasing naysayers), and accountants (boring bean counters).  It’s simply the reality that the great service providers in these (and all other) areas are mixed in with the rest of the average to rotten bunch.

The reality is I want to trust right away, but I’ve been burned in the past. We all have. And I’ve got my future hopes and dreams for my family and me wrapped up in turning this 70s wood-paneled, purple-shag-carpeted, water-damaged dwelling into our home. Thus I’ve got fear, uncertainty, and doubt about my ‘partners’ in this major renovation.

That’s a good dose of emotion, and I’m not a very emotional guy. Even the very special episodes of Blossom didn’t get to me (much). But I bought this house to raise a family and while away the next several decades, and so a lot of feelings are tied up in getting this renovation right.

Now I’ve got to find service providers to help me. For both the architect and the contractor, here are my buying criteria:

Be very good at your craft. Do I need you to be the best? I wouldn’t even know how to define that. I’ll probably look at your past work to get a sense of whether or not you’ve got the chops to do what I need done.

Deal with us fairly. We’ll both make sure the contract is clear and fair so we know our roles and responsibilities, but you can’t contract for every eventuality. I’ll probably get a sense of your client focus by speaking with you and listening for cues, by speaking to your references, and by asking around.

Meet mutually set commitments. Whether it’s in the contract, or whether it’s something we discussed, do what you say you’re going to do.

Understand our needs. I’ll give you overviews, answer your questions, and show you examples, but it’s got to register with you.

Anticipate our needs. Let’s say we lay out a room a particular way. Did we forget something? Let’s say you’re just about to put hammer to nail and you see that we might not have left enough room for the chairs to go back from the table. Call us.

Add to the conversation. Don’t just take our ideas and implement them. Take them and make them better.

Be responsive to us. Don’t return calls or disappear and we’ll have big problems.

Stick to the budget.

What I don’t care about is what your tagline is, whether or not you’re a “different kind of design/build firm,” or that you’ve got a unique methodology for designing and building houses. I don’t care about how good the schools, hospitals, or hotels are that you’ve built.

What can I say, buyers buy parochially, and that includes me. I’m trying to figure out if you’ll be good at serving people like us in a situation like ours. As much as you think the other examples might be good proxies for how much you can help us, they simply won’t be as good for us as ones that look just like us.

If everything comes together as we hope, the remodel and our relationship will go swimmingly. But will it all come together like this? Let’s hope contractors read marketing blogs.

Mike Schultz, President of Wellesley Hills Group, is world-renowned as a consultant and expert in services marketing, branding, and rainmaking. Co-author of the book Professional Services Marketing (Wiley, 2009), Mike is an engaging and thought-provoking speaker, delivering dozens of keynotes each year in-house for clients and at leading industry conferences. Mike is also Publisher of RainToday.com, the world’s foremost publication and membership site for insight, advice, and tools for growing a service business.

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A Matter of Trust
Randy G. Pennington

“Nothing ever happens until someone buys something from someone else.”

I have heard variations on that quote for many years. And it still rings true. Our economy is based on the exchange of value known as sales.

Here is my corollary to that truth: No one every buys anything that is important to them or about which they have a choice until they trust you.

Let’s examine the qualifiers in that statement. I once purchased an auto repair from someone I didn’t really trust because I was stranded on the side of the road. It was a one-time situation in a town where I did not live. Likewise, I am sure that I have made a few minor purchases that did not rise to the level of importance that my trust was actively required. The little glow stick that I purchased at a concert comes to mind, but there are very few of those.

So … unless your business is built on one-time sales to customers with no choice or you are selling something that exists below the threshold where trust is even a consideration, the need to build a reputation for trust is critical to your success.

Building Trust One Person At A Time

Carl Sewell owns car dealerships—ten of them in fact. His Lexus and Cadillac dealerships traditionally rank at or near the top for sales and service in North America. Sewell knows a purchase will be made when I walk in the door of his dealership. There is a solid track record on which to rely – nine automobiles purchased and all the service work that goes along with them. I am loyal to Sewell Motors because I trust them. I trust them—and your customers will trust you—because they have mastered the following five principles.

• Character: Every discussion of trust begins here. Character defines an individual’s approach for dealing with themselves and others. It is the demonstration of the values adopted for basic living. Individuals who embody basic principles such as honesty, trustworthiness, loyalty, justice, patience, and duty find that their ideas and recommendations are readily accepted. The nagging question of motive lingers when character is in question.
• Competence: How good are you at your job? How much do you know about your product? Can you answer my questions with confidence and authority? Professionals who earn my trust are competent. They recognize their individual strengths and weaknesses and commit to continuous growth in all areas of individual performance. An excellent reputation for honesty will be rendered useless if it is matched with incompetence.
• Communication: Outstanding presentation skills contribute to effective communication. Unfortunately, too much emphasis has been placed on the importance of the pitch. Communication that builds trust is about listening. The ability to understand others creates a bond that encourages interdependence and enhances commitment. We tend to trust those who appreciate our goals, struggles, joys and situation.
• Consistency: The sales professional that sold me my first car from Sewell impressed me with his competence and communication. That, combined with the company’s reputation for character, led to the initial buy decision. Purchases two through nine have been made because of consistency. Every person at every level has continued to perform in a manner that re-earns and maintains my trust. Confidence that your performance will be in line with past experience frees others from worry about protecting themselves from an unpredictable response.
• Courage: Earning and maintaining trust in an increasingly competitive and demanding world requires courage. Challenges must be confronted head-on in a manner that respects diversity; demonstrates professional business practices; and maintains personal integrity. True courage requires commitment and the willingness to accept personal risk. It fosters admiration and sets in motion a series of events that influence long-term success.

A Special Message to Sales Managers

The five factors for building trust were originally developed in a study we conducted in 2004 about what causes mistrust on the job. Our work since that time has reinforced the fact that character, competence, consistency, communication, and courage are considerations in all decisions to trust another person or company or institution. And that leads us to you—the person responsible for creating the environment that promotes trust.

Sewell Motors has built its brand based on integrity in its products, services, and relationships. That commitment is on display every day through the promises made and delivered. It is about performance not marketing. I asked Joe Calloway, author of the book Becoming a Category of One, to explain why building a brand that customers can trust is important. He said, “The experience of doing business is critical as today’s brutally competitive environment meets a soft economy. A unique brand that others can trust is the only way to set you apart from the competition.”

That is where you come in. The same five factors that cause your customers to trust your sales professionals will cause your sales professionals to trust you. Carl Sewell understands that and devotes countless energy and effort toward that end. In return, he gets comments like this one from Linda, one of his sales team: “I owe this company a lot. They stood behind me during my mother’s illness. I have a huge sense of loyalty and desire to help them succeed.”

Does your sales team say that about your company?

Do This Now

• Be very clear about the values for which you stand. What are the principles that are so important that you would never compromise them … even if it meant losing the sale?
• Be consistent with the messages you send. Communication is everything and everything communicates when building trust. A great sales pitch that focuses on benefits rather than features is nice. A reputation for listening and caring that is communicated through action over time is the stuff of legends.
• Get better at your job. Customers have always had a choice. It didn’t matter as much when there were more than enough buyers to go around. Today, you have to be better tomorrow than you are today. Learn more, grow more, and invest more in education.
• Never sacrifice trust for short-term gain. Consistency and courage build relationships that last a life time. Yes, you have to make your numbers today. There is no “long-term” without delivering results right now. I contend that companies like Sewell Motors are still delivering results today for the precise reason that they are unwilling to sacrifice trust for short-term gain. Customers are smarter and more vocal than ever. They will find out and let others know if you took advantage of them.

Looking ahead from 2009, you can count on the following:

• The economy will eventually turn around and more people will start buying again. It may not be this year, and it will probably be many months before activity returns to the levels we remember from 2006 and 2007.
• Customer behavior has been altered for the short-term and perhaps longer. Those who experienced the Great Depression saw their purchasing habits altered for many years and often their entire lives.
• Trust will be critical for your success today and tomorrow.

The question that remains is what you will do about it. A matter of trust is a matter of survival.

Randy Pennington is author of Results Rule! Build a Culture that Blows the Competition Away. He helps leaders build cultures committed to results, relationships, and accountability. For additional information or to schedule Randy for your organization: contact via telephone at 972.980.9857; e-mail at Mary@penningtongroup.com; or on the Internet at http://www.penningtongroup.com or http://www.resultsrule.com. Your comments are encouraged. Please send your ideas to Randy@penningtongroup.com.

©2009 by Pennington Performance Group; Addison, TX. All rights reserved. This article may be downloaded for personal and professional development. Copies may be shared within an individual organization. All other uses of this material are strictly prohibited without written permission from the author.

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If you like what you see on the Sales and Sales Management Blog, I encourage you to either:

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or

Subscribe to my POWER SELLING newsletter where twice each month you’ll get a full length article designed to help you increase your and/or your sales team’s sales.  Just shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com with “subscribe” in the subject line and your name and email address in the body and I’ll get you subcribed, and since I hate SPAM as much as you do, I’ll never sell, lease, rent or give your information to anyone—EVER.

Building Trust in Sales: the Win Win Solution
by Charles H. Green

 “Trust and sales” sounds to many people like an oxymoron—they don’t belong in the same sentence.  To other people, trust is something you develop slowly over time, in order to successfully sell later.

The truth is simpler, and much more exciting. You develop trust in sales by selling in a trustworthy manner.  Let me say that again: you don’t develop trust in order to sell—you develop trust in the act of selling. 

This is exciting because it means trust and sales are not an either-or proposition: they actually can go together.  It means the best trust-building is also the best selling; and the best selling, I would argue, builds trust.

To explain how to build trust in sales (and thereby sell more) let me set some context in terms of how people buy, and how salespeople frequently obstruct the natural buying process.

How Customers Buy

Suppose a teenage acquaintance of yours comes to you for advice about dating and relationships.  “What should I say?” they might ask, or “What should I be doing?  What are the big no-no’s?  How do I know if (s)he likes me?  When should I call them back, or not?  Basically, what are the rules of dating and relationships?”

Perfectly reasonable questions, of course.  And if you have some experience yourself, and sincerely want to help this young person, and have a bit of time, my guess is that you will do two things. 

First, you’ll give them a few tips.  But mainly, you will say something like, “You know, the best thing you can do is relax and be yourself. People like people who are genuine, and comfortable with themselves. Don’t memorize things to say, or to do; just be who you are, and ask what (s)he likes to do, or thinks about, and then talk about that.  Enjoy yourself, and assume this will be the first of many conversations.

That would be very good advice.  It so happens that the very same advice applies to another kind of relationship—the commercial buyer/seller relationship.  Because commercial relationships are about money—but they are also, profoundly, about people.  The rules of people engagement don’t change because money is involved—in fact, they become more critical because money is involved.  The more money, the more risk, and the more we fall back on our instincts about who to trust. 

Buying—including modern, B2B, complex-sales situations—is about as emotionally driven as it always was.  There isn’t space enough in this article to cite all the evidence, so I’ll just offer three quotes.

Jeffrey Gitomer is fond of saying, “People buy with their heart, then justify it with their brains.”

Bill Brooks and Tom Travesano wrote, “People vastly prefer to buy what they need anyway from those who understand what it is that they want.”

Finally, some readers may recall the old phrase, “No one got fired for buying IBM.” 

Many more studies suggest buying behavior is heavily driven by emotions like fear and trust, but the best proof probably lies in your own gut instincts.  Most of us recognize that cognitive processes are NOT what drive buyers; they are what allow buyers to claim the real process was justified, rational, objective.  Most buyers won’t admit, even to themselves, that they buy emotionally—but in fact, they do.

How Sellers Sell

If customers buy emotionally, then it would seem obvious that sellers should sell emotionally.  Interestingly, they usually don’t.  Which raises the question—why not?

Of course, some sellers do sell emotionally, but in the B2B space, it is not the norm.  The much more common approach views selling as a linear transactional process—suitable for breaking down into tasks and data, and complete at the transaction level.

By this view, the selling and buying process consists of a series of questions and answers, constantly defining and narrowing down customer needs, features and benefits.  The focus is on efficiency—hence the emphasis on things like Salesforce.com, screening, and closing success at each stage.

And deep below most sellers’ assumption about rational process-based decision-making lies one last assumption: the belief that buyers and sellers are locked in a zero-sum competition.  That what the buyer gets comes at the expense of the seller.  That the seller can never be completely honest with the buyer because their interests are opposed.

But what if a seller can free himself of these assumptions?  What if a seller did not feel bound by a linear, cognitive process, but could engage the emotions? And what if the seller did not feel she was in competition with the buyer?

It turns out those are some of the characteristics of trust-based selling.  It is more in tune with how buyers prefer to buy; and it provides better results to sellers.

Building Trust in Sales

As I said at the outset, the best sales don’t draw down on trust—they actually create it.  So—how does one do that? 

Creating trust isn’t a simple set of actions or magic words; would you trust someone who simply did the actions or said the magic words?  Creating trust works at several levels: beliefs, principles, actions.

Selling from trust rests on four principles and one belief:

Principle 1.  Focus on the needs of the customer first.  Seller’s needs are important too, but lead with the customer’s.

Principle 2.  Focus not on short-term transactions, but on longer-term relationships.

Principle 3. Behave collaboratively with the customer, not in opposition.

Principle 4. Behave transparently in all matters, unless to do so is illegal or harmful.

Belief: The principle of reciprocity is very much at work in people, and in buying situations.  People strongly tend to respond in kind.  If they are treated in a trustworthy manner, they will trust.  If they are trusted, they will respond in a trustworthy manner. 

If you conduct yourself in all situations according to the four principles, you will be perceived as trustworthy.  If you are perceived as trustworthy, people will buy from you: more quickly, more often, more easily.  The result of that is higher profitability—for both buyer and seller.

That may sound vague, but let me draw out some sharp implications of those four principles.

•           If you wish to create trust in selling, you must be willing in principle to let go the desire to win every transaction.  If your aim in every transaction is to win the sale, then you cannot be trusted—because your aim is always about you, not your customer.

•           You must be focused on doing the right thing for the customer, even if that means you don’t propose on everything—conceivably you even recommend a competitor, if that’s the right thing to do for the customer.

•           You don’t focus on closing, but on helping the customer make the decision in the right time-frame for the customer.

•           You must believe that if you consistently behave in this way, your economics will be better than if your sole objective is to get the sale. 

At a more tactical level, here are some specific things you can do to improve trust during the sales process itself.

1.         Go find a course in listening 101, and take it.  Then the 201 course.  Then the 301.

2.         Practice doing your thinking out loud, with the client.

3.         If you don’t know something—say so.

4.         Answer questions directly.

5.         Don’t just listen to get the answer; listen for the sake of listening, for the relationship itself—let the customer’s line of thought set the agenda, not just your line of thought.

6.         Don’t consistently exceed expectations—instead, meet them.  Then occasionally throw in a surprise.

7.         Notice and comment on emotions—yours and others.  If you’re upset, say so; if you notice they are upset, say so.

8.         Write your next proposal together with the client, in the same room, on the same side of the table.

9.         Nearly always, tell the truth; and never, never tell a lie.

10.       Don’t say things you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the newspaper.

11.       If you notice you’re afraid of confronting an issue with someone, figure out quickly how to do so—avoidance of confrontation violates both of the principles of transparency and collaboration.

12.       Mention pricing early—bound if it you must, but get over the awkward hump of not mentioning price.

Let’s go back to the teenager seeking your advice about things romantic.  I guessed that you would advise them to be themselves.  That would mean advising them to be:

- focused on the other

- finding and pursuing joint interests

- focused on the relationship, not on mechanical transactions

- open and honest about themselves.

If that sounds a lot like the four trust principles for selling from trust, it’s no accident.  All relationships succeed by focusing on the same things: other-focus, collaboration, relationship-not-transaction, and transparency.  What works in life works in business. 

The old Godfather movie line “it’s not personal, it’s business” was exactly wrong.  It is personal; it is business.  And treating it personally is good for both.

Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. The author of Trust-based Selling and co-author of The Trusted Advisor, he has spoken to, consulted for or done seminars about trusted relationships in business for a wide and global range of industries and functions. Centering on the theme of trust in business relationships, Charles works with complex organizations to improve trust in sales, internal trust between organizations, and trusted advisor relationships with external clients and customers.

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Your Value is Like a Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie
by Kendra Lee

Selling is a lot like baking. I love to bake. Every Sunday I make three batches of chocolate chip cookies for my family of three growing boys. Friends who stop by know the cookie jar will be full and ask to dip in. No kid or adult is immune and they can never stop at just one

Yum! These are good. Do you use real butter?

What kind of chocolate chips do you use?

How do you get them so soft?

I shouldn’t have another, but may I? Can I please have another?

Even though my homemade chocolate chip cookies are definitely not low fat, people eat two, three and four at a time – more than they ever intended, but what the heck? Their senses take over as the cookie melts away in their mouth. And their hesitation goes out the door.

Your clients are the same way. If they love, love, love your consultative recommendations, advice, and observations they’ll buy more and more. Make their job easier. Check in on them even if you aren’t working a current opportunity. Bring them new ideas and make recommendations you believe will best fit their businesses. Always be willing to listen and brainstorm. Help them financially justify their investment while only selling solutions that will benefit their businesses.

Sell your value. Show your clients the value of working with you. No doubt you hear these phrases every day. But when clients are pressuring you for a price break, it isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

Will clients really pay more to buy your stuff? Yes! They buy Starbucks and Krispy Kreme donuts instead of generic because they value the taste. They’ll buy your value, too, if you appeal to their senses.

While your clients’ budgets may say they should shop around, or they shouldn’t buy that extra service level, they will buy – and buy from you. They’ll do it because they feel confident in decisions you help them make. They can taste the success you’re helping them achieve melting in their mouth.

The memory of that success lingers, just like the memory of a homemade chocolate chip cookie.

In my opinion, if you’re going to take the time to make homemade cookies, you shouldn’t skimp on the ingredients to save calories or money. If you skimp, they’re no better than the packages or tubes you can buy at the store – and definitely not worth the effort to make or eat. Adults don’t see any reason to eat them. Kids will pass them by; and they certainly aren’t going to recommend them to their friends.

The fact that I perfected my recipe over years, and don’t skimp on the ingredients or the time to make them, has my family not just satisfied but bragging. Friends are coming back for more. New friends are coming out of the woodwork.

Your value will linger, too.

Your client will not only pay for your value, but tell everyone they know about how pleased they are! Before you know it, you’ll have a great testimonial for proposals, an eager reference, and referrals flowing your way.

I was speaking with a client this week who actually apologized for spreading our name “all over the place!” He said he probably should have told me so I could prepare our team, but he’d been so busy he hadn’t had a moment. He’d sent some referrals to look at our website and listen in on some audio conferences we were running. He hoped that was okay with me.

Okay? That’s value as good as a homemade chocolate chip cookie!

Kendra Lee is author of “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group helps companies rapidly penetrate new markets, break into new accounts and shorten time to revenue with new products in the Small & Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit http://www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.773.1285.

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If you like what you see on the Sales and Sales Management Blog, I encourage you to either:

Save it to your RSS Reader

or

Subscribe to my POWER SELLING newsletter where twice each month you’ll get a full length article designed to help you increase your and/or your sales team’s sales.  Just shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com with “subscribe” in the subject line and your name and email address in the body and I’ll get you subcribed, and since I hate SPAM as much as you do, I’ll never sell, lease, rent or give your information to anyone—EVER.

Building Client Relationships
By Jerry Acuff

Does any aspect of selling deserve more of your attention than building client relationships?  Most of us would agree that client relationships are the backbone of our business.  They are the key to referrals and the possible insulation from competition and a down economy.  Three things to consider about client relationships are:

• How do we build them with people we do NOT naturally connect with?
• How do we maintain them?
• How do we leverage them?  

How Do We Build Relationships With Those We Do NOT Naturally Connect With?

The fun part of selling is meeting those people that you just click with right away.  Their kids are the same age as yours or you went to the same college or you are from the same home town.  Conversation flows easily and you leave your first meeting thinking about how much you enjoy your job and meeting new clients. You don’t need any advice on how to connect with these people.

But what about those with whom we do not find a natural connection?  What about the client that seems stiff, bored and totally indifferent to your attempts to find common ground?  Maybe they don’t follow your favorite sport, don’t read the same things you read and don’t seem very interested in discussing family or personal life.  Now what?

Ask the right questions. Find out what is important to this person and then let them know that you have a genuine interest in them.  Almost everyone is interested in talking about themselves and most people have something that they are passionate about.  If you can find out what they value and get them to discuss it with you, it is highly likely that you will find it interesting and you will be on the right path to having a real connection with them.  Maybe you never had an interest in Civil War reenactments and thought they were a little strange.  But after your new client explains how he was finally able to connect with his aloof teenage son after taking him to a reenactment at Gettysburg, suddenly you see this hobby in a new light.  Maybe then you ask him to tell you a little more about his son and his face lights up.  It was all a matter of asking the right questions…

Three Steps to Building a Positive Relationship

• What you think: your mindset
• What you ask: the information you gather
• What you do: the actions you take

What You Think: Your Mindset
Believing that relationship building is crucial and that, if done well and often it will increase your chances for fun and success is a must. You must also believe that the person you are trying to build a relationship with would want one with you. If you believe they wouldn’t want a relationship with you- you will be right. You also need a mindset that you have something to offer any potential relationship. If you believe otherwise, valuable business relationships will be difficult for you to build.

What You Ask: The Information You Gather
Until you know who and what the person treasures (and act on this information in a way that demonstrates that you care) you are at a relationship impasse.  One way to start the dialogue flowing is to ask someone, “So where did you grow up?”  This is a question that often brings back a flow of (hopefully) positive memories of their hometown and their answer will likely reveal something about them that will lead to your next question.  For example, the answer may be, “I grew up in Kitty Hawk, NC, where the first flight ever was flown by the Wright Brothers.”  To which you reply, “Do you have an interest in flying yourself?” And the client then tells you all about getting his pilot’s license when he was 19 and flying across country at 25 with his new bride.  Now you know what he is passionate about and this leads to building the relationship with your actions.

As a guideline to remember which questions to ask, think FORM. 

F is for family or questions about parents, children or siblings.

O is for occupation or questions about what they do, what they would like to do, what they are studying, or what they like best about their job

R is for recreation or questions about what they like to do in their spare time

M is for motivation or questions about what motivates them in life.

What You Do: The Actions You Take
Your actions differentiate you from other people.  Many other sales people may have the same information as you but do nothing with it.  This is the value of Inexpensive, Unexpected, Thoughtful Actions. IUTAs fall under several categories and are likely to help you connect with your clients and differentiate yourself from all of the others.  Suppose one of your new clients is grumbling about the tedious planning of his daughter’s upcoming wedding.  You mention that you and your wife went through the same thing a couple of years ago and the next time you see him, you bring along a couple of your daughter’s wedding planning books for him to pass along to his wife.  He is surprised you remembered and thrilled to have something like that to bring home that night.  He is not likely to forget the simple gesture.

Maybe you call to arrange a meeting and your client’s administrative assistance mentions the client can’t make it that day because he is sitting as a judge at the Italian Food Festival. The next time you see him you bring along the homemade mozzarella from the Italian market down the street.   He is blown away by your attention to detail and his whole demeanor changes as he starts the meeting.

These IUTAs  can be focused on important dates, family names, important events, personal goals or milestones, favorite foods, schools attended, important places, vacations or children’s accomplishments just to name a few.

In order to maintain these relationships that you have built, remember to take a few important steps.  Understand the lifetime value of a customer by making the time to maintain relationships and keep in contact with others.  Help others succeed whenever you have the opportunity and reach out to your customers even when you are not in need of help.  If the way you connect with people sends them a message that you are willing to make the time to stay in touch, they will naturally conclude that they are important to you.  You can maintain relationships with personal notes, phone calls or letters but less time consuming (and more up to date) is with email, notes on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter or text messages on a cell phone.  With the technology available to us today, it is easier and more efficient to stay in touch with people on a more constant basis.  These small contacts are likely to pay huge dividends to your business in the long term.

These are just a few ideas on how to build and leverage the client relationships that truly are the foundation of our sales success.  By paying just a little more attention to the details and making a more concerted effort to stay in touch with people, you will differentiate yourself from others by the depth and quality of your relationships with people.  There is no downside here and any and all efforts you make to build and maintain relationships will eventually pay you dividends in one form or another.

Jerry Acuff is the CEO of DELTA POINT in Scottsdale, Arizona. DELTA POINT works with sales and marketing leaders to implement innovative ways to sell and market in today’s crowded marketplace. Jerry has been featured on MSNBC and also in Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, Wall Street Journal On-Line, Investors Business Daily, Managed Care Pharmacy Practice, Fast Company, Selling Power and, Selling Power Live. He is currently on the advisory Board for the Marketing Department at Northern Illinois University and is on the Board of Governors for the Athletic Foundation at the Virginia Military Institute, his alma mater. For over 20 years, he has spoken and consulted extensively on the issues of sales and marketing excellence in the pharmaceutical industry. Jerry is the author of 3 books: The Relationship Edge, The Relationship Edge in Business and Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer all published John Wiley and Sons.

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Like What You See Here?

If you like what you see on the Sales and Sales Management Blog, I encourage you to either:

Save it to your RSS Reader

or

Subscribe to my POWER SELLING newsletter where twice each month you’ll get a full length article designed to help you increase your and/or your sales team’s sales.  Just shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com with “subscribe” in the subject line and your name and email address in the body and I’ll get you subcribed, and since I hate SPAM as much as you do, I’ll never sell, lease, rent or give your information to anyone—EVER.

Business is Personal
by Nancy D. Solomon, MA

Today had no choice but to be great for me—it started with a conversation with one of my favorite people—Ann Tardy, CEO of Life Moxie. Ann and I have the ultimate combo—a personal and a business relationship. I’m not sure which began first, but I am certain that both parts make hefty deposits into my happiness account.

Before getting into the reason for our call—a business opportunity Ann wanted me to partner with her on—I asked her about her husband and her year old marriage. Here’s what she said, “It’s great. He’s just wonderful. He adores me… simply adores me… and he spends every day trying to make me happy. I’ve know him for seven years and for seven years his priority is still my happiness—you can’t beat that!”

While Ann was relating this, what came to mind was the diner scene in the movie,  “When Harry Met Sally”—you remember the one—and I found myself thinking, “I’ll have whatever Ann’s having.” How many of us would like to be on the top of someone’s priority list, with our happiness being his or her main motivator? I know I would!

So what do “being adored” and “happiness” have to do with building client relationships? Absolutely everything!

Admittedly, these adjectives are seldom included in the same sentence as ‘business’ and I, for one, would like to change that. Now. It occurs to me that we are ripe and ready to treat our clients and customers as we do the favorite people in our personal lives. With all the fuss we’re making about ‘relationship marketing’ that should be fairly obvious, shouldn’t it? But it isn’t because, despite the rhetoric, we continue to underscore, highlight and boldly emphasize the difference between our personal and our professional relationships. Why do we do that? Aren’t we the same person at the family BBQ that we are at corporate headquarters or at the sales meeting? And if we’re not the same person, why aren’t we?

I’m not talking about our socialization: about the difference in our outward behavior, given the disparate venues. No, we’re not going to tell off-colored jokes (if we want to retain our job) at the weekly staff meeting. But at our core, at the level of our values and our intentions, shouldn’t we be the same person regardless of our circumstances? Don’t you want to do business with people who are willing to be transparent, to be authentic and to show up fully as human beings? Wouldn’t it make you more than a bit nervous to sign a multi-million dollar deal with someone who is willing to show you only a fraction of who they are in the conference room? Would you not be wondering what they’re holding back and why? No different, really, than dating someone for six months before they reveal some major catastrophic circumstance in their life—wouldn’t you wonder what else they’re withholding?

I find it intriguing that we perversely cling to the idea that our business lives and personal lives are mutually exclusive. In this day and age, I wonder why we continue to think that these two vital components of our lives should be kept separate. I’m equally perplexed that there are some people who believe that there are benefits to be reaped by pretending that business and personal matters actually can be segregated; that it’s even possible should we decide it’s advantageous. Which it is most certainly is not.

I believe that there can be no distinction, despite what we’ve been told, how we’ve been trained, or why we deceived ourselves into thinking otherwise. To attempt, in any manner, to separate the personal from the business is arrogant at best and ignorant at worst.

My professional experience, as one of the people to whom businesses turn when the ‘soft issues’ become agonizingly hard, has repeatedly reinforced my assertion that business is personal. Very personal.

The ‘Great Divide’ as I call it, is that invisible space where emotional currency is replaced by intellectual capital. It’s the place where we ostensibly park our feelings at the door and pick up our professional personae at the same place. In truth, it is an abyss into which our most treasured values potentially fall.

Pardon me if I seem daft–I am not– but I’m on a mission to persuade you, encourage you and coerce you into rethinking the way you relate to both aspects of your life, and how both aspects correlate with one another.

 At it’s most fundamental:

·      Business is conducted by people

·      Business provides people with a service or product

·      Business provides people with jobs which earn them compensation

·      People impact their own businesses and the businesses of others

·      People are also impacted by their own businesses, and the businesses of others

Think reciprocity!

A few days ago, I returned from Milwaukee where I presented the opening keynote for lia sophia’s national conference. I had the supreme privilege of standing before three thousand women (and a few brave and commendable men) business owners who have a passion for people, a love of jewelry and a desire to achieve their dreams. I spoke about the urgency for them to recognize that ‘who they are impacts everything they do’. I was overwhelmed by their responsiveness to my message. Dozens of people approached me in the day or two after the keynote to let me know how profoundly they had been impacted—the majority had never realized how they figured into the equation of their own success; how they, personally, impacted their bottom line. Beautiful and amazing!

I’m prompted to inquire as to what it is about the prospect of our feelings and our fragile psyches that’s so uncomfortable for us that we are willing to perpetuate the myth that good business excludes the mother of all motivators—emotions?

In the past fifteen years science has partnered with the psychology of performance and has provided us with stacks of statistics from institutions as old as money and as reliable as taxes. They all say the same thing:  Logic does not lead. Emotions do. We make emotional choices and then back them up with logic, reason, and data. Even in business.

During this same time, the field of cognitive neuroscience has greatly expanded its understanding of how emotions impact human learning and communications.  The Gallup Organization, following suit, used these recent discoveries and integrated them with similar work in the fields of psychology, economics, and social sciences. Gallup devoted its extensive resources to an in-depth study of human behavior conducted from 1997 to 2001, interviewing almost 20 million customers on their opinions, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors.  Among the study’s conclusions:

Ÿ  Emotions drive our decision-making.

Ÿ  Emotions take place outside our rational, willful awareness.

Ÿ  Emotional engagement increases the speed of learning, increases memory retention, and evokes emotions in others.

We are emotionally based beings. What we feel is more important than what we think. Every decision we make is in pursuit of an emotional goal. Our emotions dictate our decisions, not the other way around. Our emotions translate into every choice we make in our life,

Although there has been a profusion of new information on consumer buying habits published in the past several years, one of the most conclusive studies was completed by the University of Florida in 2002.  This national study analyzed the responses of 23,168 people to 240 advertising messages in 13 categories, from cars and appliances to groceries and other small-ticket items. The results, which appeared in the August 2002 issue of Journal of Advertising Research, concluded that emotions were nearly twice as important as knowledge in consumer buying decisions—that individuals may be interested in the technical aspect of a purchase item, but this interest is driven by the desire to achieve a specific emotional response.  This evidence refutes the historical data that strongly implied that consumers made their purchases based on information, data, and logical conclusions and that if emotions were involved at all, it was purely incidental. What this means for business—the very implication of introducing emotions and relationships as tools for strategizing production and profit—is staggering in light of what we once thought to be true.

What I’ve observed an unpleasant number of times, is that people use the “it’s just business” rationale as a catchall excuse when they don’t want to take responsibility for dealing with feelings they’re uncomfortable with. So “Don’t take this personally…..” becomes the repository for the emotions the owner has yet to metabolize. I work with these folks every day.

Let’s be honest: Don’t you prefer to work with clients who adore you because you made them happy? Because they adore you? When we sell our product or service, our name and reputation accompanies said product and service, doesn’t it? So when our customers and clients are satisfied (and, therefore, happy) with what we provided them, then, ultimately, they are happy with us.

Which is personal. Very personal.

Nancy D. Solomon, author of the upcoming book, IMPACT! What Every Woman Needs to Know to Go From Invisible to Invincible (John Wiley, Fall 2009) is an internationally recognized human potential expert. She travels the country evangelically spreading the word that “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”  For the past 18 years, Nancy has inspired thousands to remove the barriers to personal and professional success and to engage in their work and in their lives. She provides training, keynotes, coaching and facilitation for executives and their organizations seeking to improve their personal and professional standards of success. Her clients include Microsoft, Target, Nordstrom, Acura, Sheraton and many potentially passionate individuals.  She can contacted at nancy@nancydsolomon.com or 253.265.3240.

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Subscribe to my POWER SELLING newsletter where twice each month you’ll get a full length article designed to help you increase your and/or your sales team’s sales.  Just shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com with “subscribe” in the subject line and your name and email address in the body and I’ll get you subcribed, and since I hate SPAM as much as you do, I’ll never sell, lease, rent or give your information to anyone—EVER.

Are you being a Caretaker?
By Dr. Gregory Stebbins

Traditionally a caretaker is the individual responsible for responsibility of looking after buildings and the smooth running of an estate making sure the heating is working; cleaning; moving furniture; doing repairs, ordering materials, etc. Often these jobs are held for life and the caretaker has a very personal relationship with the owner of the property.

So it is with sales professionals that take on the role of caretaker with their customers. To accomplish this, the professional needs to move past seeing the customer as an adversary. Listen to the language of many sales people and you’ll hear combat metaphors that might be more appropriate in a military boot camp environment.

Today, it’s very easy to accidentally slip away from being a caretaker. Technology — internet, cell phones, faxes and voice mail — have allowed us to respond instantly to our client requests, without really getting to know them as a human being. In many ways we miss the little things that tell us who the person is, their concerns, their fears, what makes them happy and more.

What are some simple ways that we can start being a customer caretaker and build deeper relationships with our clients?

1. Communicate personally. Take some time to meet personally with the customer. Leave the sales agenda in the office and just treat them as a very important person. Listen to their story. People often ask, “What’s their story.” Generally people want to share their story, sometimes just to get it off their chest. As a sales professional it’s too easy to look at everything as a sales situation. Sometimes the best way to sell is to “not sell,” at least in the classical way everyone expects.

2. Help them without asking. Listen for things that you can do to assist them, without asking them, “How can I help you?” Just the fact that you took time to be with them and did not try to sell them will change how they see you. Delivering something special that wasn’t asked for, but nevertheless was desired will cause them to feel taken care of.

3. Show them the love. This tip might be hard for some sales people to swallow. Think first of someone you love unconditionally. What would you do to help that person? What do you do to make their life better? Are they that different from most of your customers? I’ll admit that there are some people in my life that I choose to love unconditionally — from a distance. If your customer knows that you care very deeply for their welfare as a human being, the errors that show up in any business relationship are easily forgiven.

A responsible caretaker knows his or her responsibilities so well that things that might break never do. The reason is they fix it before it breaks. Relationships with customers are the same. If you’re constantly looking for the next customer and never take care of your current customers the churn might eventually bankrupt you.

Dr. Stebbins is President of PeopleSavvy and an internationally recognized authority on Sales Psychology. He is a master at improving the greatest asset of any business—its people. With more than 30 years of business experience, he applies a wealth of knowledge, street smarts, and high impact ideas to the challenges his clients have. As a trainer, Greg has designed and delivered  numerous corporate sales, management and human resource development programs. Over 20,000 sales professionals have benefited from Greg’s expertise and training. He has consulted on strategic planning, leadership development and organizational culture for dozens of organizations, large and small, profit and not-for-profit. 

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Like What You See Here?

If you like what you see on the Sales and Sales Management Blog, I encourage you to either:

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or

Subscribe to my POWER SELLING newsletter where twice each month you’ll get a full length article designed to help you increase your and/or your sales team’s sales.  Just shoot me an email at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com with “subscribe” in the subject line and your name and email address in the body and I’ll get you subcribed, and since I hate SPAM as much as you do, I’ll never sell, lease, rent or give your information to anyone—EVER.

As a Seller, Is Social Media Just Hype or Is There Real Value In It?
by Paul McCord

On Monday Nigel Edelshain discussed how important embracing social media will be for sellers of the future.  And by future, Nigel wasn’t speaking of the distant future; he was referring to the relatively immediate future.  His contention is that those sellers who don’t embrace social media and learn how to connect with their prospects via these technologies will be left in the cold.

I agree.

Sorta.

With lots of caveats and admonitions to not neglect the traditional methods of engaging prospects and clients.

Although embracing social media is the rage—if you’re not hip on Sales 2.0, you’re so 20^th century it ain’t funny–and the number of social media experts willing to guide you through the jungle of the new medium grows exponentially daily, for most of us the vast majority of our prospects are not going to be found via social media for some time to come.  Most of our existing clients and our near prospects won’t be engaging us via social media either, at least for the foreseeable future.

This is near sacrilege to many; out and out heresy to a great many more.   Just read the White Papers promoted on various companies blogs, listen to the conversations on Twitter and Facebook, read the discussions in the various sales forums and on the various sales blogs.  They’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that social media is THE force to be reckoned with.

And they have proof.  All they have to do is point to all the downloads of the White Papers, all the interactions on the forums and blogs, and all the tweets on Twitter that prove their point.  There are so many they must be reaching a huge audience. 

And I agree.  Many are reaching a huge audience.  The social media audience is large.  It’s you and me and millions upon millions of others.  And it’s growing every day.  It’s the audience reading this post on this blog—people who in one form or another use social media. 

A large audience, yes.  The majority of people?  Not even close.

For most of us it isn’t where we’re going to engage the majority of our prospects.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve taken a very informal poll of the people I’ve spoken to.  Didn’t matter where they lived or what they did for a living, nor did it matter whether I spoke to them over the phone or in person.  Virtually every person I had an opportunity to speak with I asked two questions:

1.  Do you or your company use social media to engage customers or prospects
2. As a buyer (business or individual), do you use social media to connect with or engage salespeople or companies or to research products or services.

Almost 40% of those I asked indicated that their company uses some form of social media to try to connect with customers and prospects (I suspect next year at this time this number will be closing in on 70% or more).  Less than 30% said that as buyers they have ever used any form of social media to find or engage a company or salesperson or to research a product or service. (NOTE: This does not mean they didn’t use the Internet to research or purchase, it simply means they didn’t use blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, or other forms of ‘social media.’)

So what does this mean for us sellers and our companies?  Do we simply ignore social media until it becomes a more dynamic place to find and engage prospects?

Well, we’re back to Nigel’s article.  As I said, I agree with him.  Social media will continue to expand, to develop, to mature.  And as it does more and more of our prospects and customers will use it.  The few prospects and clients we can engage through social media today will steadily increase over time.

If we want to grow, we’ll have to be prepared to engage these prospects on their terms.  Just as today we have to find ways to find and engage prospects outside the world of the internet, we’ll increasingly have to be able to find and engage them within the world of the internet in the future.  If we can’t or if we choose not to, we’ll find ourselves struggling to find business.

This isn’t to say that social media isn’t of value today, because it is.  However, for most of us it shouldn’t be the primary focus of our prospecting and business development strategy since the majority of our business is still going to come from traditional prospecting and marketing strategies. 

But just because it isn’t our primary focus doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a part of our portfolio.  The majority of our prospect contacts may not be made through social media, but that doesn’t mean that none are.  There is business to be developed through social media and as mentioned above, that business will grow over the coming months and years.

Furthermore, social media is in many ways a different animal than what we are used to dealing with.  We have to learn how to effectively use it.  More basic than how to use it, we have to experiment to learn what to use. 

• Do you invest your time in starting and developing a blog? 
• Which, if any, forums should you participate in? 
• Is Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook worth the time and effort for you?
• What are your alternatives if one of the medias you heavily invest in such as Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube doesn’t make it?  Where do you go from there?
• Based on your ideal prospect, what social media would they likely use?

Right now we all have the opportunity to learn how to use the new social media platforms.  Yes, we can find and engage some prospects, but more importantly, we can prepare for the coming transition as more and more of our prospects and clients begin to utilize these media.  We can screw up, figure out successful strategies, and experiment with the various options now while the stakes are relatively low instead of later when the consequences of making mistakes may be far more serious.

And despite some of the hype about social media, it will never fully replace your non-internet based prospecting and marketing.  Yes, there are a few who have chosen to eliminate the entire non-internet based world as potential customers by investing their entire business in a virtual world.  They are few and far between and success stories are even more difficult to find.

If you haven’t ventured into social media, do so.  Begin to figure out how you’re going to use it as a serious part of your prospecting and marketing strategy.  Don’t judge it based on traditional sales metrics today as you will probably conclude that it’s a waste of time and effort.  Instead, rejoice in any new business gained from your efforts and take heart in knowing that you’re developing a long-term strategy that will come into its own over time, and that by investing the time and effort today, you’ll have a significant competitive advantage over a good deal of your competition as social media becomes an ever increasingly more important tool to find and engage new business.  

I think Nigel is too optimistic in his timeframe of social media’s impact on sellers, but he is spot on in terms of the ultimate importance of having developed the skills and tools to use it to find and engage prospects.  Ignore social media at your own peril, but invest in it too heavily today and you’ll also be risking losing significant business by spending too much time chasing too few prospects. 

Paul McCord, a leading Business Development Strategist and president of McCord Training, works with companies and sales leaders to help them increase sales and profits by finding and connecting with high quality prospects in ways prospects respect and respond to.  An internationally recognized author, speaker, trainer and consultant, Paul’s clients range from giants such as Chase, New York Life, Siemens, and GE, to small and mid-size firms, as well as individual sales leaders.  He is the author of the popular Sales and Sales Management Blog (http://salesandmanagementblog.com

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