sales prospecting is not dead, and cold calling is not the boogeyman everyone has made it out to be.
Don’t get me wrong. I think picking up the phone and calling people you don’t know so you can sell them something that they don’t want is a colossal waste of time. And it generates a lot of bad blood to boot. But that doesn’t mean you should simply forego picking up the phone and communicating with people.
Same with sales prospecting. With all of the customer relationship management platforms and marketing automation platforms out there, you’d think salespeople can simply skip the act of prospecting and immediately start selling. But the simple fact is that prospecting still requires a personal touch. It still needs that creative spark that only a real, live salesperson can bring to the table.
Social media and inbound marketing techniques have reinvented cold calling and sales prospecting in this age of digital marketing. And a big part of prospecting now is how you present yourself online. Here are 10 creative ways to use the online platforms to improve your credibility and boost your prospecting effort.
10 Tips for Creative Sales Prospecting
Establish yourself as a local or online resource. Offer monthly webinars and Q&A sessions via Google Hangouts or Meet.
Release video training sessions on your particular expertise through a dedicated YouTube channel.
Start a podcast and share your views or interview your current clients.
Start a weekly Twitter chat or get involved in some of the current well known ones.
Identify a list of #Hashtags related to the industry you are targeting and monitor them regularly to uncover relevant conversations.
Look for questions on Twitter that you can answer and point to relevant content on your website.
Connect with current clients on LinkedIn and analyze their profiles. Look for shared contacts, groups they belong to, companies and people they follow.
Listen to the activity in LinkedIn groups, participate in conversations, make connections, be helpful, and offer your wisdom.
Create a weekly or bi-weekly blog post on LinkedIn. These posts are shared with ALL your connections.
Make a daily habit of reviewing your news feed. Be sure to like, share and comment on the content posted by your connections.
Oh, and One More Prospecting Nugget
This one is really obvious. Make sure your social media profiles are relevant and up to date. Your prospects do look for you online to make sure you’re real and credible. So there you go. 10 (and a bonus) creative sales prospecting techniques you can try right now with little or no monetary investment. Test them out, you’ve got nothing to lose! They’ve worked for others. They just might work for you. And if you are looking for additional prospecting ideas for your sales team, check out Lance Tyson’s book, Selling Is An Away Game available on Amazon. Get your copy today!
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