Sales 2.0

Help humans meet humans

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“Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”—Bob Burg, The Go Giver

Mass outreach continues to get worse. I frequently hear from people that “email does not work” or “how can you cold call people when everyone works at home?”

There are still many people out there who think the answer to this declining effectiveness is to send more outreach. If cold email only gives you a 0.1% reply rate, versus the 1% it used to give, then just send ten times more!

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Buyers are people

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People are people, so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully–Depeche Mode

During a conversation with a friend who is the CEO of a small professional services firm the question came up “how well do you know this person?” and “do you know them like a real person?”

Looking at these questions on the page, they seem a bit odd. But I’ve found in practice they are not. When we are selling, we tend to project some odd traits onto buyers. We forget that buyers are just normal people.

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Mixed Messages

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It’s darn tough to get through to anyone these days. People have become really good at ignoring what we want to tell them.

I hear this all the time from all kinds of businesspeople and salespeople. Emails don’t work. Calls don’t work. Social media doesn’t work. Nothing works!

But I had an experience this week that reminded me that communication does work when it’s something people want, it’s a little different, and it’s from someone they know.

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Don’t be a Brainiac!

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I got some unsettling feedback a few weeks ago. I was told I was a “Brainiac”. I want to help you avoid the same fate.

At first, I thought it was a compliment. It sounded rather flattering. OK I think I would like to be know as that. But then the next part of the feedback came. “And the client said he had no idea what you were talking about.” Uh oh!

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Finding leads: Look in your CRM

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I am working on a new sales project and I am sharing what is happening, hoping that it may help you in your selling.

I’ve gotten to the point in this project where I need to start building a list of prospects. I need some quick wins in this project, so I’m looking for ways to leverage companies my client has spoken to before. To find these types of companies I’ve been fishing around in my client’s CRM.

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