20 years of sales experience has taught Lisa two things. Personal relationships are the secret and trust is everything. Never selling but offering a solution and solving a problem - sounds like a success recipe!
I’ve seen a million things.
These were the words I envisioned myself saying to my grandchildren from behind a walker, someday far of into the future. Instead, they are the words I'm currently thinking, sitting at my laptop in the year 2022!
Everything has changed. And so has sales - the career I have been working in for 20+ years.
Phonebooks - remember those? Our millennials will know them as items that strongmen rip in half to prove their strength.
Google replaced these antiquated paper directories and seemed to be the next best thing since sliced bread (still wondering why sliced bread is considered the goal post).
Then social media - all kinds of platforms, eventually turning out to be a tour guide to the nearest online shop with a free virus as part of the experience. Then came The Actual Virus killing off relationship selling, and together with that slaughtering budgets and shattering trust! And now we are staging wars again. Full circle it seems.
I may not have seen a million things but it sure feels that way.
LinkedIn currently has 60 million subscribers. Try to rip that apart strongman! Online prospecting has become an art - something that most salespeople do because they have to, but an art that few have mastered.
You will agree with me that buying lists and turning yourself into a “data enrichment” drone also isn't the way to go.It's just a waste of time not to speak of the frustration it makes especially salespeople feel.
Everybody knows that your typical salesperson hates admin!
Once you have poured yourself a stiff one and have “enriched the data”, who do you call first? I need Ritalin by the second question about who is “hot” and who is “hotter”. The process just loses me completely and OH LOOK, a squirrel!
What I am trying to say is that prospecting is ineffective, wastes time and money spent on resources that yield NO results, and demotivates you and your team.
Cold calling is all digital now too. Back in the day, if you could get your butt in the comfy visitors' chair, you still had a chance.
On a cold call, they could just hang up on you.
But cold calling techniques are now a million-dollar business. Enter our old friend the virus and cold calling blossomed.
Yet with all the technological advances, it still takes time, frustration and grinding of teeth - yeah salesmen hate doing this too. A lone salesperson now has to contend with call centres often in godforsaken destinations with thousands of voices reading from scripts. Just how many customers react positively to a call centre encounter?
Cold calling is barbaric, intrusive and your clients will hate you for it!
You’d think that only a mythical creature can remedy the rant that is sales as described above. But it isn't. There actually is something in the real world that can solve many of these seemingly insurmountable challenges that we have to deal with as salespeople.
You dont need an incantation or a potion to summon the unicorn, just get in touch and I can show you the magic.
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