The first principle in the sales process is prospecting.
Finding new customers on a continual basis is even more important today as attrition percentages skyrocket, due to our challenging economic cycle.
How we find and develop new customers has changed as fast as technology and how we network. Used to be you went “cold calling”! Door to door in a neighborhood, business area, office building. We know that just doesn’t work anymore. Companies and people just don’t want to be “cold called anymore”. We just don’t want to be intruded on by someone we don’t know or trust! I for one couldn’t be happier about this!
The days of canvasing businesses unannounced are fading as fast as daily newspapers still trying to publish daily news that most of us have already seen in real time many times already.
So, how do you prospect today?
Prospecting is about ONLINE AND OFFLINE relationships and trust building. It should be about giving people “reasons to buy” as opposed to selling them something.
How do you do that?
- Chambers
- Networking Group
- Professional Organizations
- Websites
- Blogs
- Social Media
- Article Marketing
- Internet Radio
- Volunteering
- Pro-Bono
- Referrals
- Sponsorships
- Events
- Email Marketing
- Keynote Speaking
- Webinars
- Teleseminars
- Workshops
- Traditional Media
- Neighborhood Community
- Faith Community
- Business Community
Today the relationship comes first the selling comes later.
There has been a very big paradigm shift from sales centric to serve centric. Pushing products on people who don’t know you, like you or trust you yet is not going to work and is actually quite annoying.
If you really look at the social persona of companies, social leaders and experts you can learn a lot about the “new prospecting” process they are using, which is the new norm and where we need to be.
We should be involved in relationship building and expanding our network of human capital.
Some of the ways we can do this is through:
- engagement
- content
- surveys
- discussion
- commenting
Prospecting today is much more focused on building community: friends, fans and followers who naturally connect because you are the center point (Agent Zero/Brogan), that they have in common. The community naturally leads to connections, which naturally leads to conversations, which will eventually lead to sales or referrals.
Look at “how” these people and companies do what they do.
We can learn a lot about the “new prospecting” process from these successful examples. They all give, share, connect, help and care about what their people think. They are building “like” and “respect” and that is the prerequisite for “moving goods and services” today.
How are you adopting this new approach into your current sales strategy?
Are you serve centric rather than sales centric?
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }