Yesterday I was with the CEO of an organisation talking about how we can transform his business with social.
How did I get that meeting? Did I cold call him. No! Did I send him unsolicited emails? No! Did he read an advert? No!
He admits that as he has an administrator that none of those ways of accessing him would work.
In fact, his Chairperson referred me to him. How did she find me? On Social.
She read my profile, read my content (so articles like this). I “obviously” spotted her looking at my profile and asked her to connect.
We exchanged a few pleasantries on LinkedIn and then I suggested we take the discussion off-line. In other words meet up. Now many people seem to think that social selling means that the whole sale takes place on social, bizarre I know but I’ve had comments like “social selling wouldn’t work for me as I have to talk to my clients”.
We met up and I explained what we did and she introduced me to her CEO.
Two weeks later we were presenting to the Board.
So before you think this is some sort of magic bullet and you can send a few templates and the magic happens. Sorry you are in the wrong place.
Let’s not forget that you need a personal brand, you need a strong network, not contacts and you need to create and curate content.
This will position as somebody who is on par with other CEOs, they will look at you on social, not as a spammer but as a person that can provide insight and support
Let’s not forget that people of all job titles can check you out on social. If you want to sell at C-Level you must have a social (passive and active) profile that people respect and want to meet you.
Any other change makers out there?
Yet this COO kicked my teeth in, leaving me and his ops manager twiddling our thumbs. “I’m as confused as you,” uttered the ops manager after the COO stormed out. “We teach our reps to ask the exact same questions.”