by Admin | Aug 19, 2019 | Business Development, Business Relationships, Influence, Networking, Prospecting
Hint – Like Most Things in life, it’s More about Listening than Talking My Grandma Mattie was a very wise woman. We lost her at the age of 97 several years back before social media had really arrived. I do remember wisdom she shared with me about life in general that I certainly think applies to best practices in social selling. She shared with me “God gave you two ears and one mouth to do more than twice as much listening as talking.” I think Grandma would have been a great sales trainer. The biggest lesson we teach is how to ask the right questions to help our prospect (and us) figure out if we have the solution to their problem. Today I will share with you 5 Do’s and a couple of Do Not’s to engage in social selling. Be clear about who you are talking to. The more crystal clear you can be with your prospect profile, the easier it is to align your messaging, create content and share insight. A big nugget here – the more narrow your prospect profile the better. Interview your clients that fit your perfect prospect profile, find out what their biggest goals are in the next 18 months and what obstacles they see in accomplishing those goals. Understand the challenges they face. This is another reason the narrower the vertical market segment, the easier it is to really engage in their world. Subscribe to their industry publications. Follow their thought leaders and truly become an ‘expert’ in their space. An easy example – I have never been in the manufacturing space...
by Admin | Feb 3, 2014 | Influence, Prospecting
One of my favorite Sunday School stories was of the poor woman who only had enough oil in her bottle to prepare one last meal for her and her son. As the story goes she was gathering wood for a fire to make their last meal and were visited by the prophet Elisha who requested she prepare a meal for him. She explained her circumstances and he commanded her to prepare the meal and also told her that her bottle of oil would not run dry until the famine was eased in the land. This story reminds me a lot of how influence works. Times have been pretty tough the past few years in a lot of industries. We have become a part of the statistics in our household with the closing of plants, losing jobs and contracts evaporating. But much like the widow woman we have something left – and that something is influence. Influence is one of those tricky words in the English language that pulls an extra heavy load, it is a noun and a verb. Meaning it is and it does. And the interesting thing about it is that the more it’s exercised, the greater it gets. And the less it’s used, the more it diminishes. You can ‘Be all you can be’ but if you don’t ‘Do what you can do’ it’s pointless. So how is influence used? It’s pretty simple. You help people. By demonstrating genuine interest and caring about other people, you find opportunities. I teach people how to prospect. One of their first assignments is to go meet with someone that they hold...
