“Not many companies in our industry even have a blog. Let me show you ours.”
With that statement, a weirdly old school/new school journey began. Didn’t and still don’t really know how to react to whole conversation. Take a listen and let me know what you think.
The Two Todds at Dreamland Radio did a Community Service Radio interview with Laura Capps the other day. She’s a board member for Grow Kids, Inc. here in Atlanta. Wow!
You owe it to yourself to check out this organization.
Start by watching two of their Public Service Announcements…
I’m not sure ANYTHING could be more obvious. Before your customer buys, he or she – 100% of the time – will search the internet for information.
If you’re NOT there, you’re NOT part of the decision process.
Every sales professional must have an e-Rep for two fundamental reasons:
To reiterate…
100% of the time, customers will search the internet at the beginning of their buying process. If your e-Rep is not there when they search, YOU are NOT part of that process.
How many times do you repeat the same value proposition, address the same objection, deliver the same product/service overview presentation? Takes time. And do your customers have time to listen precisely when you are available? No. …but your e-Rep is there 24 X 7 X 365. And your customer doesn’t have to try to accurately repeat what you said. Your e-Rep does so perfectly every time.
Every professional sales person must have an e-Rep.
As a sales pro, which team would you rather join? The one that scores 39 points or the one that can only score 7? (And does it make you a bit uncomfortable to reject relationship-building as your strategy of choice?
Let’s back up a bit and consider the old saw, “In God we trust, all others bring data.” In my experience, virtually all decision-making executives have it burned into their brains. It’s therefore also burned into my brain.
So here’s some data that has captured my attention BIG TIME. It’s a continuing analysis, including more than 6,000 sales reps across a wide array of industries. The research exceeds all standards of scientific rigor and statistical significance. It concludes there are five types of sales reps, with super-star reps spread across the five groups as follows:
Two questions leap to mind immediately:
According to Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson in The Challenger Sale, a Challenger:
Think about some of the implications… Constantly debate and challenge the all-knowing customer’s view of the world? Know as much or more about the customer’s business than the decision-makers and influencers do? Spend your life causing discomfort for your customers? Yes, yes and yes.
Is this a book you need to read and think about deeply? YES!!!
And relationship-building? Relax. It’s still vital. Just recognize that being good at it is nothing more than a baseline job requirement, NOT something that will set you apart.
Asking deep, penetrating questions, then listening intently, really hearing the customer’s perspective, have long been the core best practices of great salespeople. The context has always been “understand the customer’s requirements, issues, objectives and pain points.” Personally, I’ve long been proud of my ability to ask good questions and to listen carefully.
Then I got to thinking about progress and obsolescence. Is there a better way?
Listen to my musings and let me know what you think…
Brace yourself. The sentence in the next paragraph has been specifically designed to make you uncomfortable, trigger your gag reflex and cause you to roll your eyes uncontrollably. Ready?
We are an innovative, market leading, premier provider of high quality, customer focused solutions, reliably delivered through trusted partnerships grounded in our rich history of great service and superior people.
Are you OK? Able to continue? I know, reading that clap-trap all lumped together in the context of a blog post, exposes a whole collection of company-describing words as meaningless drivel. You’re embarrassed for the knucklehead who would try to pass that sort of trite, cliche-ridden, totally undifferentiated nonsense off as a “value proposition.”
Speaking of value propositions… Any of those words or phrases on your web site? Or in any of your proposals? Or plastered on your sales collateral? Or pop out of your mouth during sales calls?
Using any of them one at a time or in different combinations does not make them any less pathetic. Please stop. Please delete those words and phrases from your marketing materials and stop uttering them yourself.
You’re better than that. You know that deep down inside customers don’t care about you. They don’t care about your products. They don’t care about your services. They don’t care about your company. They’re in the money-making business. Your value propositions talk cash.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
We all know that nurturing business relationships is vital to sales. Everything gets a little easier when there’s a good relationship. Mistakes get forgiven faster – even ignored – when there’s a good relationship. All of your ideas – at a minimum – get a serious hearing when there’s a good relationship.
So here’s some evidence that a business talk radio show is an awesome tool for nurturing business relationships.
Take a look at the decision-making executive in the first photo. (Cindy MacPherson, a partner with The Interior Partners, an extremely successful interior design firm primarily serving the construction industry out of Atlanta.)
And that’s the key. A positive, fun experience translates into a memorable, positive experience.
Cindy will retain that memorable, positive vibe regarding her marketing services provider. That would be Carol Flammer of the Atlanta Real Estate Forum. (With me in the second photo, and my client.) There we sit; elbow to elbow; as a host/co-host team; intently focused on serving her client. (Or in my case, the client’s client.)
And that’s the key for my business.
My partner and I are not a pair of vendor guys in this scenario. We’re our client’s partners. We’re actively helping Carol deepen a business relationship with her client; our client’s client. Think that helps us solidify our business relationship with Carol???
Think about it…
NOTE: Out of deference to my readers, a photo of my Dreamland Radio partner, Todd Schnick, who has the classic face-made-for-radio, has not been included in this post.
You tell me… Is it better to be a silver-tongued devil? Or an electronic-tongued devil?
Whenever I use the either of the terms “Content Marketing” or “e-Rep,” I often get that, “Huh? What?” response. On the one hand, that delights me. Intelligent Content Marketing deployed via an e-Rep is quickly emerging as an extremely powerful sales and marketing strategy, and YPS is well-versed in helping folks apply it as part of an overall, disciplined process. This ought to turn into a heck of a profitable line of business for us!
On the other hand it dismays me.
How can such a simple concept, implementable using widely available, mostly free, “cloud” resources combined with the existing knowledge and experience of your team be so painfully ill-understood? Can I afford to wait around for demand to build up? Obviously not. So here’s a thought…
Sign up for this free course in Content Marketing. As you progress through it, keep three things clearly in mind:
Sign up here. Learn, absorb and apply on your own. And someday – maybe – buy a bunch of services from The YPS Group e-Rep.
Think About It…
