SJN Sales teams have been on the road a lot lately. We’ve been to annual meetings for a broad range of industries: RSA, the big security meeting at Moscone in San Francisco; HIMMS, the Healthcare Information Management annual get-together, the various medical,dental, and veterinary specialty meetings and a few large technology specific partner gatherings, IBM World and a wonderful group of SAP innovators, come to mind. All of these groups and the manufacturing logistics folks and the social media marketing summit, and the publishers and the equine vets are all talking about multi-media channel marketing and how “old-style sales is dead.”
The buzz on the show and meeting floor is that we must all Tweet, Pin, Blog, Instagram, Link, and constantly engage with every human we might ever do business with. Attendees, no matter what their interests or skills, are told to join a large number of LinkedIn groups and start discussions. One speaker at a very serious scientific conference suggested that in between developing treatments and cures for diseases, the members attending should work cute pictures of kittens and funny quotes onto their blog and Facebook pages, because “kittens engage people who don’t have a bloody clue what you’re doing in your lab.”
I love social media. To a point. I’m involved, as most SJN Sales staff members are, in many online communities. But this may be getting out of hand. It may even be costing your company sales. My teenage daughter tells me that she is, “so over Facebook.” but she is Instagram’s latest fan. My clients tell me that they want to link with me on LinkedIn, a tool I really like, but we have few new Facebook fans, lately, and the whole Pinterest thing fell pretty flat with the SJN team. Why and what besides trade show program news would we pin? Social networking provides a diverse and growing number of tools. Social networking will, in my opinion, never take the place of a true sales call.
This morning, I signed in to my LinkedIn, browsed my groups for discussions that I could benefit from. I also commented on a couple that I felt I could make a useful contribution to, in the form of experience or resource networking. Then I got to the Girl Scouts group.
Kurt, how long were you a Girl Scout? Thought so.
Your ad for your web design service would have come off as a bit self absorbed on any of my groups, but on the group for grown up Girl Scouts, it just made you and your offering look desperately out of touch with the media, your own message, and especially how to make connections with a large number of adult women who share having had the same first job: selling cookies.
Don’t be a Kurt. If you are selling web design, software, consulting, etc. don’t confuse advertising with sales and go get some sales help. Outsource it (Hey, SJN Sales is a fully staffed sales outsourcing company you might want to talk with), hire your brother-in-law, or make your own introductory calls. You’ll feel some rejection. You’ll get some doors slammed in your face. You’ll get to give your presentation to some people who aren’t qualified to buy, but have time on their hands to listen. You’ll find out what flavors of your service or product interest the market. Take good notes.
Do all those things. Then do them all again. And again.
Ask any Girl Scout. That’s what we did to sell all those thin mints.
And many of us got very good at telling the difference between a listener and a customer. We became resilient when the door slammed with a quick,”No thanks.” We got more practice at asking for the sale than many salespeople get in their first three sales jobs. Probably best not to run an ad on our LinkedIn networking page…Unless you’re advertising for cookies.
SJN Sales 