If just got off the phone from our Asian reseller, we onboarded him the other week and he's just got his first piece of inbound. This is a big thing for him, we get three pieces of inbound everyday, but let's get onto this blog.
While this article is "interesting" as this means that 30% of buyers don't deal with a sales representative, they self serve, which is an important fact. But let's look at the 70%. The B2B products and services where you have to deal with a salesperson to buy.
In the world of B2B Enterprise that I work, the sales person is very much relevant. While there are some products that can be sold through self-service, I think that most of us know we need to talk to a sales person. But talking to a salesperson is a bit like putting our heads in a Lion's mouth. We don't want to do it.
Nobody likes salespeople, the pushy, manipulative sales person persona is still held up in books and on LinkedIn. While people may still get off on this macho image, as buyers we have the choice and the choice to go round, ignore salespeople. And we do.
This is why we teach sales people to be "experts" on LinkedIn. Sales people write their own profiles to appeal to buyers. Can you imagine? Appealing to buyers? So rather than the "number crunching, target killers" of the past, that we as buyers avoid. We become the people that our buyers want to meet. And then the magic happens, buyers reach out to us and we get inbound. Bingo!
Salespeople today have LinkedIn profiles of a a real human person. A profile that makes you as a buyer to want to approach them. Salespeople today are sharing relevant, interesting and educational content that is relevant to my business and my vertical market. They are also writing content, which as I buyer I am interested in reading, which again appeals to me. We have always wanted to nurture clients to the point they want to buy and to buy from us and now we have the way to do this. But this isn't all about content.
By looking like an expert (rather than a spammer) when you reach out to people, you are more likely to get buyers to accept your connections. They are more likely to engage. They are more likely to agree to a meeting.
One of our CEO clients tells the story to his salespeople that I reached out to him on the Thursday, I had a meeting with him, his head of Marketing and head of PR on the Tuesday. That is why social selling allows you to get inbound and allows you to get higher, quicker than cold calling.
The role of the sales rep is not dead. In fact, nearly 70% of B2B buyers said they still want to interact with a sales representative and 38% believe interacting with a sales rep is more productive than conducting research on their own, according to a new report from Showpad.
unknownx500
