Be Someone Worth Talking To
Think about it. Nobody ever reads your email, returns your call, or accepts your connection request unless they think there is value that you can provide them. Your job when you’re prospecting, especially early on in the campaign, is not to make a sales or even book a meeting. Your job is to build credibility with your buyer.
How do you build that credibility? Present them with insights that will help them. Not just data, but intelligence around that data. You’re trying to demonstrate that you bring something powerful to the table- you.
Your prospects are not looking for new friends
For a long time, sellers have taken the approach that if they could develop a personal relationship with someone and know them a little better, then perhaps they can have a little more influence. I understand the logic, but do they need someone to buy them lunch or a drinking buddy? Probably not.
Don't try and dupe someone into being friends with you so you can turn around and sell them something. That’s disingenuous and manipulative. They're not looking for new friends and neither are you.
To take it a step further, have you ever actually done business with your friends? It’s not optimal. It’s likely that there will be some tension in a business relationship form time to time. Do you want that spilling over into the cookout the weekend?
Bring value, not donuts
Back in the day, salespeople used to bring food, treats, and trinkets to try to win the favor of the decision maker. In an effort to leverage the law of reciprocity, they’d provide something of low value in exchange for a conversation that would hopefully be of high value for them. You may have noticed that this approach doesn’t work so well anymore.
Not only are companies instituting polices forbidding their employees from receiving these kinds of things, most of your prospects can see right through them. It’s not even a veiled attempt at winning their favor. It’s also not doing much to earn the meeting either. Sure, the goodwill is worth something, but don’t you think your prospect’s time is worth a little more to them than a turkey sandwich in a paper bag?
You’ve probably heard that if you can get an executive away from the distractions of the office, then they’re more likely to let their guard down. It’s true. Lots of sales reps invite their buyers out to eat, or to a ballgame or for a round of golf, hoping the diversion might provide the arena for a conversation.
Executives value their time more than they ever have before. Lunch at a restaurant is going to cost me two productive hours during the day. I have to make it up somewhere. Dinner will cost me three at the end of my day when I’d rather be home with my kids. I know that time is going to be good for the rep, but what’s going to make it good for me?
While these environments are great for having productive business conversations (I’ve closed business on the golf course too), it’s really about the conversation, not the dinner table. Change your focus appropriately.
What do you want to speak with them about? Why should it be important to them? Why do they need to listen to you right now? Those are the questions you should be able to answer, and those are the points you should be making to them even before you have that first meeting.
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