Offices are empty. Businesses are closed. Uncertainty fills every CEO, COO, CIO, and every other C-Suite you can think of. You can’t even call it a “suite” anymore. It’s more of a failing think tank for a lot of businesses barely hanging on. The global pandemic kills all modern sale tactics. Door to door… nope. Cold calling offices… nope. It even took smiling away with an ear-to-ear safety net. Unless you have a cell, no one picks up. How does a sales lion survive? Inbound… Make the food come to you.
It’s a smug statement, but the reality is that people still use their email, although a sizable increase will muddy the chances of being read. People still check social media, read blogs, conduct research, watch videos and yes, browse the internet. When they find what they are looking for or get a whiff of what they are interested in, they look for help. There you are “lion” in wait.
How do you perk the ears of the C-Suite? Valuable information. Information that will increase customer acquisition, mitigate risk, enhance the competitive advantage, create more leads from their website and word of mouth (WOML). This is where the sales lion of post Covid needs to live to excel - so dialed into being helpful and insightful to its customers, they can’t stop digging more into your site, your resources and will reach out to well, you.
If you focus on your specific customer profile and have a product or service that can positively affect their initiatives, you’ve got to help them. While being a genuine human being, you can achieve this connection in several approaches; sharing articles, blogs or videos that resemble their experiences and challenges, tagging them or commenting on social media posts that are relevant, connecting with them over common interests, and putting forth your willingness to help them along the customer experience journey path. And once you’ve done this well, suddenly, the phone rings, or your inbox notification lights up, or you receive a calendar invite from them.
That sounds too good to be true and sounds like a lot of work. It won’t have to be if you’ve developed your site in line with the Customer Experience Journey, then it will do a lot of work for you to create those long term customers that refer your business. The steps to keep in mind as you’re developing and planning your site are Awareness, Discovery, Attraction, Interaction, Purchase, Use, Cultivate and Advocacy. If you understand this is the way a customer buys from you and develop your technology to help usher these steps along to support them, customers will come to you.
One new-aged idea is video selling. With a 30-40% connection watch rate, what are you waiting for? There are several technologies out there that can achieve this, but it puts a small bubble of YOUR face, sharing your screen with pertinent information to their business. You point out pain points with solutions that you just so happen to be able to solve in a quick video. Best of all, you smile and charm, be friendly and helpful and do what we salespeople do best… sell.
So, if you take this approach of being a knowledge leader in your space and build a brand and reputation for helping businesses and other professionals achieve their goals or initiatives on the business roadmap, the leads will come to you. If you need software to manage your inbound process, or to develop your site with CXJ in mind, please reach out. But be patient, lion, this hunt takes time and is still very much a “grind” as they say, but do this right, and you’ll enjoy your lion’s share.
