Tom Martin — December 1, 2018 — December 1, 2018
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Every day you find another article about some new Social Selling tip, trick or tactic to improve your sales prospecting success. So you read, follow and try. But that’s a recipe for sales prospecting failure.
Everyone is asking themselves the same question – “What’s going to change in social selling or sales prospecting?”
“What’s going to change in Social Selling or sales prospecting in general?”
Everyone is looking for the next big thing, the one variable, the one skill, that if they can master it will make their sales prospecting successful.
What’s NOT Going To Change in Social Selling?
Instead of focusing on what will change or has changed in social selling and sales prospecting, flip the question on its head. Ask yourself, “What’s not going to change?” That’s where the real power lies.
“What’s not going to change?”
When you flip the question on its head you start to focus on the constant instead of the change. Because while change is constant, no one can realistically keep up with and master the new and notable forever. At some point, you’re just going to run out of steam, energy and time.
Why?
Because, while a lot of the new and notable will improve your sales prospecting efforts and transform your social selling programs, just as much of it will result in dead ends, failure and frustration. It’s the old adage of taking two steps forward only to to take one step back.
But when you strip away all that change and let yourself focus on the constant… you find the true answer to social sales prospecting success.
The Power Of Traditional Sales Prospecting Tools
While Social Selling is still relatively new in the history of sales prospecting, prospecting itself is as old as commerce. Ever since the first days of people selling their wares to other people in exchange for goods and services or monetary compensation, sellers had to find the buyers.
While the tools used to find those buyers have changed over the years, what made each tool effective hasn’t. It’s really that simple. The one constant, the one thing that hasn’t changed in the history of sale prospecting, isn’t going to change. Whether you’re looking 10 days or 10 years into the future, this one constant will be present, and still the primary driver of successful sales prospecting.
Want to know what it is?
Turning Conversations Into Customers
Conversations. At the heart of all successful sales prospecting is a conversation. At some point, a buyer has to have a conversation with a seller and that seller leverages that conversation to persuade the buyer to buy.
In the beginning, 100% of those conversations were face-to-face. Over the years, as technology has evolved, those conversations transitioned to written text, phone, email, Internet, social media, and video-conference. In the future you may even have a conversation with a hologram version of your buyer or seller. But it will STILL be a conversation.
Great salespeople are conversationalists.
And that is the secret of the most successful salespeople. They’re great conversationalists. They understand the ART and science of conversation. And more importantly, they practice these arts.
They understand that no one wants to be sold. Everyone wants to make a buying decision. So they just talk to potential buyers. They ask questions, they provide answers and most of all they give the sales prospect the information he or she needs to arrive at a buying decision — usually the one that favors the seller.
Do You Want More Social Selling Success?
Focus on conversations. Stop trying to interrupt your sales prospects. Instead of trying to force, or worse, trick them into having a conversation with you via spammy phone, email and social media techniques and tricks, give them a reason to want to say hello.
More on that in a future post.
Till next time… may all of your prospecting be painless.
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