A great article from David Priemer, (who I interview on this subject in my #TimTalk podcast series in early 2021) about how young people can sell to older people.
In addition to David's article, I would offer the following advice.
1. First you need a great Linkedin profile. Think about the needs of your audience and work back from there. Your prospects and clients do not need the world's best salesperson they need somebody to help them. Your Linkedin profile is your shop window and should show case you 24 hours a day. The days that Linkedin was a CV have long gone.
Everybody has a story to tell whatever age you are, check out these examples
2. You need a network (not contacts). The average person on Linkedin has 903 contacts and they will be x colleagues and recruitment consultants. You need to be connected to the people you want to influence. Your prospects, your target accounts, your customers, the people influential in your markets. Remember that in B2B the trick is to be memorable.
3. Finally you need content. When somebody comes to your Linkedin profile, you need content to show people what you stand for. That does not mean you need humanised content all the time. You need to have content that educates that provides insight, tell me something I don't know!
How Do I Create Content As A Salesperson, To Get C-Level Meetings?
This is Eric, he's one of the team at DLA Ignite and he got 6 C-Level meetings from this post. The post took him 10 minutes too create. He does have posts that have got a better response, the one about Led Zeppelin for example.
This usually shocks people.
How can a post about Eric's 16 year old son get 18,000 views and 165 likes?
But better still, how can a post like this get 6 - C-Level meetings?
Because, all of Eric's post are strategic. He knows exactly why he is posting it and knows how to monetise it.
A Quick Look at Our Content Pyramid
Based on our research, we have created this pyramid of content. Advertising is of course at the bottom, with humanised content at the top.
This is the same for younger sales people looking to influence older buyers. Social is your key to unlock the door.
This is Scary!
For many people this means change and nobody likes change. It's comfortable doing what we have always done. We understand that and we know when we get up in the morning, what we are going to do.
Steve Jobs used to wear the same outfit every day, because it was one less thing to think about.
But not understanding social media is fine, in fact you are the same as everybody else. Also not understanding the business opportunity and not understanding what you need to do is also totally understandable and similar to everybody else in business.
The Barrier To Change
But being scared of the unknown is your barrier to change.
This venn diagram often does the rounds on social media and it is very true. Our fears are the thing that often holds us back.
How many times in life have you thought "if only I had done x".
You Are Not Alone
All companies are going through this right now, it's scary times, CEO after CEO are saying to us right now "I know that we need to change, but I don't know what to, or how we do it". I totally get that, CEOs are also saying to us "we came into this Pandemic analogue and we have to come out digital".
But how?
We Are Here To Work With You
First thing that surprises most people is that we have been doing this for 4 years. There's been no pivot, we haven't just started doing this. This helps you, not just the fact that we have "been there and done it" but we have data to back up our methodology.
Which comes to our methodology, (similar to Steve Jobs clothing) that takes the thinking out of being social. You do "this", you do "this" and you will get results. Nothing to be scared about. We also run coaching one to ones during the program, which means that everybody learns at their own pace. Learning in a safe environment, with people that have done this many times.
Think of it as us working with you.
The Payoff
Everytime we run this program, we get 30% increase in revenue and a 40% reduction in the sales cycle.
There are also some softer benefits, you and your team get a new life skill and as a leader you are providing the business with a digital legacy. Supporting the transformation to digital for the business.
Where Do We Go From Here?
For those unsure of what to do, DLA Ignite will complete a review of your current social / digital / virtual / remote selling capability. For free.
This will include: Profiles, connections, followers, inbound and outbound activity, content, engagement, follow up, results.
We will map your business against the DLA Ignite baseline and present back to you our findings. We will show you where improvements can be made and what results should be expected. No hard sell, just present back to you a road map.
Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality. Our website is here.
I call it experience asymmetry. These young salespeople find themselves pitching older decision makers who have much more experience than they do. Often, the potential buyers are wary, skeptical that the inexperienced representative can offer them ways to improve how they do their jobs or run their businesses. (With LinkedIn at our fingertips, most people can learn the experience levels and ap
https://hbr.org/2019/04/how-younger-salespeople-can-win-over-older-customers
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