Sales has changed so much over the years, and really dramatically over the past five years.
Having been in sales all my life and now presenting in 65
countries on sales and technology, I love the advances and opportunities.
Sadly, so many companies are still using outdated training
or even worse, no training at all. How can you expect to be at the cutting edge
of sales if you have not been trained in things like personal branding and
marketing, advanced Google searches, Advanced LinkedIn strategies and moving
from left to right brain selling…
When I started selling in the eighties, companies gave
fantastic sales training and businesses like IBM were at the cutting edge. I
remember my cousin who was in sales there being sent home to change his socks
because they were the wrong color.
My first training course was three weeks long where we had
numerous role plays, technical training and had to learn all kinds of scripts.
In those days you could still cold call and I remember being
told that activity was everything. I had to make at least 20 calls a day, see
four people face to face and close one sale.
I did not question the training and did exactly as I was
told and within a year was one of the top salespeople.
When you were in front of a client you had a great chance of
building rapport, asking questions and closing the sales. It is still the same
today, except the route to getting in front of the client is very different.
Sales people now have to be versed in so many skills
including:
- Sales skills
- Advanced prospecting skills
- Psychological skills
- Technology skills
- Marketing skills
- Content creation skills
For me the biggest change has been to identify your target
prospect, connect with then in a non-threatening manner and educate them on
your products and services through great content.
You also need to know about personal marketing and content
creation as now the buyer is in control and will do their research and if they
find your company or you, they will make a decision based on what they find and
see in your website, LinkedIn profile, videos or articles.
Everyone one of us is a buyer and we know the process starts
when we do a Google or LinkedIn search. If what we are looking for comes up on
the first page, we will research the website and other social channels and then
make a decision on what to do next.
How much content are you putting out there for potential
buyers and how well is your website optimized.
There is now a huge focus as well to
using landing pages as many potential buyer get confused when going into a busy
website and leave without taking any action.
For many salespeople the new way of optimizing and
increasing sales is:
1 - Identify very clearly your ideal prospect. Are they the
VP of sales in the medical industry in Florida, are they HR manager of in
financial services companies in Australia…
Identify the industry, area and position of the person you
want to sell to.
2 – Understand and learn about Advanced Google or Boolean
searches. If you understand how this works, you can get unlimited data on the
ideal prospects you would like to contact.
3 – If you are not using the paid version of LinkedIn and
don’t have the advanced search capability, try using www.recruitin.net which has great
search capabilities.
To really understand Boolean Searches, please watch the video below.
4 - Take a look at the potential clients and if their
profile fits, connect with them via LinkedIn.
5 – When connecting, customize your greeting.
In my LinkedIn
course, I show at least 5 different templates to connect, ask for a connection
and reply when someone takes a look at your profile.
These have been developed
by some of the smartest LinkedIn specialists - www.linkedinmarketingforbusiness.com
6 – Consider using a video squeeze landing page
to reply to anyone viewing your profile.
Take a look at how I have set this up, click on the image below to play the video:
7 – Create valuable content and share this on
all the platforms. This way you become the authority in your area of expertise.
By sharing the correct hashtags and keywords, you also make it easier to be
found.
8 – Take a look at your Social Selling Index to
see how well your profile has been optimized - https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi
Part
2 of the new world of sales will be out in January.
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great resources:
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