The mistake organisations are making today is that they hire a sales team to sell their product or service. 

Sound strange?

Bear with me a moment. Hiring a sales team or team of inside sales (sales or business development reps) sounds like the logical solution. 

And you will see a return on this investment if you have a well defined approach (and deep pockets) for sales enablement and ongoing coaching of your people. 

Whether you have a sales team or not, its irrelevant as times have changed, businesses struggle to create pipeline, whether a rockstar sales team is in place or not. The question is, what are you doing to turn your existing team into micro-influencers that amplify themselves to build relationships with your prospective customers, which subsequently convert to commercial conversations and pipeline. 

If you don’t have a ‘relationship first’ approach as part of your sales go-to-market strategy, don’t be disappointed when you struggle to achieve the pipeline multiple you need, to achieve your commercial objectives. 

• It’s common knowledge that between 70-90% of the buying process has concluded before a buyer speaks with a seller, why? There’s so much insight online and from peers, buyers don’t feel they need to speak with sellers to inform their decision making process anymore. 
• Buyers don’t like sellers. The moment sales-speak is heard the buyer retreats into the zone of resistance. It's vital to build rapport first, initiate a degree of friendship before you 'sell'.
• Publish and post interesting content that is interesting for your audience, encourage them to walk towards you...
• The people influencing the buying decision are getting younger, they don’t tend to like speaking impromptu on the phone (if they answer it) or read long emails (emails get lost in inboxes). 
• It's reported by Forrester that only 17% of the buying process includes sellers. So with such little exposure to the buying process if you haven’t already built a relationship, how likely are you to win the deal following your sales path.

Somewhere between 90-95% of your territory is not in-market for your product nor are they considering a problem that you might be able to solve. 

‘Selling’ to this group is a waste of time and money. Relationship building on the other hand is your ticket to being in the right place and knowing the right person at the right time. This can be done at scale on social media platforms and digital networking platforms. However, confidently walking social media corridors requires a completely different set of skills, skills that most sellers today, simply don't have. 

It also requires a new strategy, one that is not traditional. 

Social media is your enabler to scaling commercial relationships and growing your business - bringing you closer to your customers, partners, prospects, employees and investors or potential acquirers.

Just like you would in a live networking environment, you might walk up to an individual and introduce yourself on social media. ‘How’ you do this has a significant impact on the outcome. 

What if there were a room full of individuals, all from companies within your territory, would you stand in the middle of the room and throw brochures (sales messages) at everyone, no, of course you wouldn’t. You will have done your homework, learnt a little about each individual you want to chat to, you may have organised an introduction from a mutual connection. 

It’s exactly the same on social media. And you do this with your target audience at scale, without leaving your home office or holiday home. Imagine that, creating as many new conversations as you like and all you need is time. Nothing else. No marketing team, copywriters or content production team. Just you!

Now, the most common objection at this point is, I don’t have the time, I’m too busy. If you’re too busy to take ownership of your business growth or empower your team to, then carry on doing what you’re doing, we can chat when pipeline is a priority. 

If you’re willing to learn how you can solve the following problems, I would be more than happy spending as much (or little) time as you need to understand how to:

• solve your pipeline growth problem - by creating many new meetings with your target audience.
• solve your revenue growth problem - by enabling one new proposal per month and one incremental deal per quarter, per head (sales/CSM). 
• solve your talent growth problem - by ensuring you are seen as the employer of choice by the talent you want to attract and retain.
• identify potential investors or potential acquirers aligned to your exit strategy.

You actually have the resources to solve the above yourself, all you need as a little support. 

You can reach me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Guild or WhatsApp: +44 7951 220113

#MarTech#MarTechGrowth #DigitalSelling #SocialSelling #WalkingDigitalCorridors

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