Sometimes it clicks.
You just know when you share common interests with someone, whether you could spend more time with them. What if they did something you really like or love, you’d want to spend more time with them. But what if they weren’t attracted to you in anyway. No matter how hard you try you’re not going to build a rapport unless there’s very good reason to spend more time together.
Business and sales are no different. If you interact with humans as part of the service or solution you provide, it’s no different.
Doing so as individuals is one thing but doing this at scale against a set of strategic business objectives is really hard. If commercial leaders could crack this nut, I’m certain, pipeline would not be a problem. The challenge is, pressure forces teams to fall back to old habits.
It takes a new approach and time to develop sustainable results, that weather industry, regional and global storms.
Keeping it simple, there are just two strategies the modern business leader should focus on. Quite possibly the silver-bullet for growth, however using the term silver-bullet would imply they are quick solutions, they are not. The truth is, there is no quick and easy solution for building relationships and developing sustainable growth. It takes time and in a lot of cases hard work and effort.
Community
- at the risk of using an already overused term this year, it’s vital as a business leader we have a clearly defined community strategy, with a clear why, what and how! If not, we shouldn’t expect our commercial objectives to be achieved as our prospective customers have no reason to engage with us. If you’ve read some of my other blog posts, only 1-5% of a territory is in market for our solution at any one point in time. 20-30% are in the consideration phase and ‘might be’ open to chatting. Not buying I must add, but open to learning and receiving relevant information that supports their journey. But what about the 70-80% who don’t want to chat with a sales person. How do you engage with those people, build rapport for when the time is right?
How do you attract relevant people to your community, people from companies that match your ideal customer or partner profile, people open to joining a new community, another new group? …what role can in-market data play here, in addition to a relationship first approach to pipeline development.
How do you balance brand with people. Remember, ‘people’ join communities of people, not brands. Your brand might facilitate the group or community but it’s the people that generate the value. How do you recruit more of the right, like-minded people you want in your community? …again, in-market data combined with a relationship first approach across social platforms can accelerate community recruitment significantly.
Empower your peopleto build relationships and interact with your target audience - a thriving group or community relies on reciprocation. Most interaction is done digitally, yet most people don’t have the skills or confidence to engage with others in groups, or individually, in order to create shared value.
Did you know, only 1% of LinkedIn users share content on a weekly basis, and the same can be said for groups, networks and communities.
What percentage of your community or group you are in, shares content / information of value? …and what are you doing to improve this?
Whichever social platform, networking, community or group you are part of, in order to increase the likelihood of you (and your brand) deriving value from it, you must give more than you take. To ensure your team, your people derive value from your own community or another other community they are members of, social platforms to networking groups, it is vital they learn some basic skills to derive value.
- It starts with your own personal brand, help others get to know you, complete a comprehensive profile about you, including interests and hobbies.
- Invest the time in connecting and engaging with others, about things you genuinely have in common, and not ‘sales’ messaging.
- Ensure you can be found, on all platforms you and your target audience spend time on. Use those platforms to schedule face to face meetings at upcoming events or 121 if you find something you genuinely have in common.
- Build influence with your audience, be seen, help them come to the conclusions you want them to.
- Write and share your own content, if you can, if not share others insight until you do learn how to write.
Do this and you can expect greater levels of interaction from others, and receive the things important to you.
Community and enablement have been at the heart of my strategy as a sales leader. I’ve always battled to ensure that messaging and pipeline development initiatives are aligned to the sales strategy, to build relationships and value with every touchpoint - that’s stood me in good stead for the last fifteen years, with consistent success across three organisations, and three continents and multiple crisis’.
I stand-by this approach today, more so than ever, as the B2B SaaS industry explodes, buyers behaviour changes and sellers behaviour doesn’t. My team and I are committed to helping CEO’s in MarTech accelerate growth despite industry and global pressures. We provide our clients with community building services to build engagement across your target audience. We provide training to ensure our clients learn how to walk digital corridors, communities, groups and social platforms to encourage engagement and create meaningful conversations that develop into pipeline.
For a friendly chat or to swap notes DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter.com/Alex_Supero or drop me a call/WhatsApp +44 7951 220113
#B2BSales#DigitalSelling #ValueSelling #WalkingDigitalCorridors
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alex_Supero
Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Alex_Supero (more to come!)
Join our community Walking Digital Corridors on Guild: https://guild.co/groups/5769/walking-digital-corridors?uid=f2cc5fb136
unknownx500
