A few bad apples spoil the bunch. Have you heard that saying before?
Here’s the problem. We’re the rotten apples that this saying is talking about! In the world of sales, we’ve taken too many liberties with our buyers. Quite frankly, we’ve treated them like dirt. Although this isn’t entirely all our fault, the sheer fact that we’ve participated and gone along with this way of doing things has put us here.
Again, I’m not blaming YOU per se… I’m blaming the ENTIRE system. We’re all part and parcel of this wonderful sales industry. But, why is it that buyers want to escape us? Could it be that we’ve been too disrespectful of their time and space? As my friends in Minnesota would say, “You betcha!”.
The Sins of the Father
The past generations in sales, from the Madmen days on, have abused every single communications medium out there. Sorry, but that’s just the truth. We’ve abused TV, radio, print, telephone and email.
If you’re in sales today and you’re wondering why prospects aren’t picking up the phones that often, there are basically two ways to think about this:
- Sales people like you and me have royally messed it up with annoying cold calls, boring voicemails, and we’ve done it over and over again.
- Buyers are able to get a ton of research on their own, such as on forums, social media and from other online resources. Why would they want to receive info from us when they know it’s going to come with sales pitches?
Watch the video here to learn more.
The Bottom Line
I’m not saying social selling is the silver bullet, but it will help you. My hope is that we, as sales professionals, don’t start abusing the one unchartered territory that buyers are in.
What are your thoughts? Do you think I’m full of it and worrying about something that’s not a big deal? I guess the better question is, what’s your cold calling rate of success?
If you want to figure out a way of standing out and make sure you’re not going to spoil your results with social media, hit the “click to schedule” button below to chat informally.
