Every sales professional wants to do one thing. That’s pretty darn obvious. But when the goal of the sales professional and the prospect do not meet, massive friction is created. Like it or not, the sales profession, and sales professionals in turn, have a grungy rep. I’m not going to pass judgement or ponder on how right or wrong this is (let’s save that for a future discussion).
It’s really not the fault of anyone necessarily. I chalk it up to unfortunate timing. The traditional way of selling does not allow us to know where particular buyers are along their journey. Imagine selling computers for a living and calling a CIO who just did a roll out across the board. You were 1 month too late to the dance. Sounds familiar, right? It’s not your fault. How could you have known? You were just going about your business and cold calling everyone in your territory.
It’s not the CIO’s fault, either, if he gets upset at getting 10-20 cold calls per day from random vendors he has never heard of, or never reached out to.
How do you add value to prospects?
Recently, I’ve been voraciously reading and listening to the works of James Altucher.
Do yourself a favour and focus on what Altucher talks about: ABE (Always Be Enhancing).
Not sure what that means?
- Enhance the lives of your customers.
- Enhance the lives of your colleagues.
- Enhance the lives of your managers.
- Enhance the lives of your family.
- Enhance, enhance, enhance!
In short, the more you help others, the more results you will yield over time. This seems so basic and obvious, but it is tough to find in most sales professionals daily habits.
I’m going to challenge you to try something radically different. Focus on adding upfront value to your prospects or people you are trying to work with in other spheres of your life. This will ultimately benefit you. People will do business with people they like. It’s happened in my career. I’m sure you have examples of where it’s happened in yours.
At Sales for Life we are laser focused on Social Selling because it brings the focus back to value generation in our community. My colleague and founder George Albert embodies this philosophy completely. Ask him why he started the firm and he will unabashedly declare, “To help the sales community.”
We steadfastly believe that by adding value, we will demonstrate our commitment to helping the sales community evolve. This is the way we choose to enhance the lives of those around us.
The Bottom Line
Help others first. Add massive value. Put your entire attention on them and help them succeed. Once you do this, the flood gates of opportunity will open for you. I firmly believe this is the true job of sales professionals.
If you are ready to do this and want to give Social Selling a try, don’t hesitate to reach out to me by clicking the link below.
