Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

How often do you get a call from a prospect you’ve never spoken to before who says, “I love your service and it’s the perfect fit for my business. Where do I sign?”

Probably not that often.
That’s where persuasion comes in. Some deals are easier to close than others, but all sales conversations will involve some degree of persuasion -- even if both salesperson and buyer know your offering is the best choice.

It’s not easy -- if persuasion were simple, far more than one-third of all salespeople would make quota. But adopting the techniques below can make you more convincing, and influence prospects to buy....

I’ve been selling for 30 years, and it’s been a blast. I’ve seen some incredible changes, and I can say without a doubt that right now is the best time to invest in a sales career. Sales is fun, critically important to scaling businesses, financially lucrative, and intellectually stimulating.

But being a salesperson in 2016 is very different than being a salesperson in 1986. Buyers have changed, and so top salespeople have to change with them. Things that worked 30 years ago don’t fly anymore, but it’s for the best. Although it’s arguably more difficult to sell effectively in 2016, it’s easier for top performers to differentiate themselves.

And the first thing you need to do is drop the eight tactics below. These are all things that worked when I started out in sales, but smart salespeople should never try these tactics today....

One of the most important tools in any salesperson’s tool kit consist of success stories that demonstrate capabilities, build credibility, and move the prospect closer to signing on the bottom line. Here’s a template used to describe the three parts of the commonly told success story:

You know what tips buyers off that the email they're reading is a sales pitch?

"Hi, My name is John Smith, and I'm a sales rep at Company."

Yup. That'll do it.

While you should never actively hide the fact that you're a salesperson from buyers, there are far more creative and engaging ways of opening sales emails than the standard name-and-company introduction. "Hi, I'm a salesperson" encourages readers to hit "delete" immediately, which is a shame because you probably have something valuable to offer. Changing up your opening lines to position yourself as a consultant, business expert, or interested party will do you justice and keep the prospect reading.

If you're struggling to think of alternatives to the standard opening line, take one of these for a spin and see how they perform for you. ...

What will the future bring for sales professionals? Sales expert Tom Searcy looks into his crystal ball to share his predictions for what trends will dominate the market in 2018.

One of the responsibilities of leaders is to help their teams not only plan for the future, but anticipate it. I spend a great deal of my time helping business leaders see that future in the larger market context beyond just their own industry. Here's a small glimpse into what I believe the next five years will look like in the world of selling....

Inbound marketing — it’s definitely grown in popularity as a marketing buzz word in the last 5 years. But inbound, content marketing is more than just a buzz word. It’s more than blog posts, checklists, eBooks, and landing pages. Maybe it should be called Inbound Smarketing. Because when “add value first” is your strategy from marketing to sales, you can take the principles of a traditional content marketing strategy and apply it to a 1-on-1 situation between a member of your sales team and a prospect.

When both marketing AND sales go “value first” the results can be hard to argue with.

Prospects Don’t Want To Hear About What Your Product Does

If you’re selling an SaaS product, or are in charge of SaaS marketing, your prospects actually, probably don’t care about your product. They probably don’t care about your company. (Read Ben Horowitz’s blog, or The Hard Thing About Hard Things for a better explanation on why nobody cares about your company).

Prospects and would-be customers are all busy trying to solve various problems of their own. Your focus should be on providing a solution to their problem. More specifically, a set of solutions for the problems specific to your unique customer personas. Prospects are only interested in your product because they perceive it can solve one of their problems.

This is why starting a conversation with a prospect about your product will have you fighting an uphill battle, too often, too early in the sales process. Your prospect did not wake up hoping to hear about your scheduling and payment product feature. But they probably woke up thinking about how to reduce client cancellations and get paid up front when clients book a spot in their Saturday morning boot camp....

In a previous article, I shared the 5 Core Steps to Consultative Selling. The steps were:

• building rapport,
• conducting a needs analysis,
• crafting a solution,
• proposing / selling the solution,
• and then servicing the account.

Today, let's look at each of those steps from a social selling perspective.

According to Forrester research, 74% of your sales process happens before a buyer calls you. These invisible sales stages, in which buyers initiate the selling process without calling on sales, gives them tremendous freedom to browse, learn, and compare without your influence. This customer-controlled, pre-selling environment has given rise to "social selling."

So how do we apply social selling to each of the 5 core steps?...

It’s incredibly rare that a prospect responds to a salesperson’s first outreach attempt. This necessitates following up … and following up on your follow ups.

But how many prospecting touchpoints should salespeople make before they call it quits? When should they send these messages? And should they email, call, or reach out in another way? The “how,” “when,” and “what” of following up is important to get right if a rep hopes to snag the buyer’s attention and make a sale.

Here’s a guide that can help you optimize your prospecting process and significantly improve your response and connect rates, even with no changes to the content of your messaging.