Lauren Winer is a typical sales rep carrying a large quota. She’s focused on driving business in the mid-market & enterprise space. Her particular clients & prospects are CPG brands… like no one else is calling on them… Wow! She has a competitive market and she’s within the market research space, and ultra-competitive market with major players.
One of Lauren’s challenges like many is striking up conversations with busy VP’s, while also having something insightful and impactful to say.
Lauren’s new sales weapon – Feedly
During our Social Selling training, Lauren was looking for a tool that could deliver exceptionally relevant content that’s written by the top influencers to her market. Feedly is a dead-simple electronic newspaper that delivers blogs, eBooks and videos from the top influencers in your space.
But it’s not the content that booked her meetings; it’s how she USES this content.
During our training, I love to use a reference from a great sales trainer Jeff Hoffman. Jeff developed a concept called “Why you, why you now” that really plays well to the Laws of Reciprocity. The concept is to utilize a decision-makers quote, article they Tweeted or trigger event in their business as the opening discussion. (This is the “Why You”).
“John, I just finished reading your article on the 7 myths of market research for CPG brands. You mentioned that in-store promotions are a false measurement because…”. John loves the fact that you’re an informed sales resource.
The “Why you now”, is how Lauren transitions these articles into relevant conversations to drive a next step. Lauren uses Social Selling (specifically social content) to leverage conversations that push & challenge a potential buyer.
How can you do the same thing?
- Get a “free” Feedly Account
- Build a list of “Influencers” that your buyers find innovative in their industry
- Subscribe to their blogs
- Share these blogs with prospects (especially to share these blogs individually to a hot prospect… showing that you were thinking of them)
- Use the content from these world-class articles to start conversations with your buyer… but push & challenge your buyer (ADD VALUE).
The Bottom Line
If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you really need to start to take action. The following blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out 42 LinkedIn Tips.
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