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The digital world opens up many new business opportunities, but it also threatens our personal connections—which, for salespeople, are our most valuable asset. Even with whisper-light computing power and immediate, 140-character Twitter posts, people still buy from people.
Social media and technology lure many salespeople into scaling back on their efforts to make meaningful connections with clients and prospects. Instead, they opt for quick and easy (and completely impersonal) ways to communicate. Big mistake.
Email, texting, social networking—these certainly have their place in business today. But when it comes to closing deals, nothing replaces the power of the personal touch.
Technology has certainly changed how we gather information about prospects. It’s also changed how they gather information about our companies and what they expect from salespeople. And let’s face it: If you’re not active on social media, you’re about five steps behind. However, our smartest, tried-and-true business-development, lead-generation, deal-closing tool is and has always been ourselves. That’s not going to change anytime soon—if ever.
Whether your business is ultrahigh tech or low tech, the most important business decisions your customers make are still based on personal relationships. They buy from you because they like and trust you, or because people they like and trust have referred you.
With globalization and rapid technological developments making the world seem larger and more impersonal than ever, people crave meaningful connections with one another—the type of connections you build with face-to-face conversations, handshakes, shared meals, or phone calls, not with status updates.
What’s the best way to reach, communicate with, develop, and sell to your key audience? By building and nurturing relationships with your prospects, clients, and referral sources.
Pick up the phone and call people. Go down the hall, take a walk, get in your car, catch a train, get on a plane, hop on a bus, or take the metro. Just get out there and talk to the right people right now. You’ll be making real connections, getting referrals, and scheduling meetings with decision-makers who actually want to talk to you. Meanwhile your competitors will still be tapping away on their keyboards, wondering why they get can’t prospects to respond to their form emails or LinkedIn requests.
Social media offers some real advantages to salespeople who use it effectively. But in the end, closing deals is still your job. You will never replace real human engagement with apps, texts, or tweets.
So what do you do? It’s simple: You use social media to facilitate your sales process, but you don't rely on it to make a sale.
Social media is an invaluable sales tool, for these six purposes only:
Then it’s time to disconnect from the Internet—and start connecting with the customers and contacts who really matter. At the end of the day, it’s not social intelligence we need. Relationship intelligence seals the deal.
There are hundreds of great tech tools that help salespeople be more informed, organized, and efficient. But in the end, closing deals is still your job.
Yes, it’s important to have an online presence. You definitely want to leverage social media and explore the plethora of technology tools available to streamline your sales process. But don’t fool yourself into thinking any of this will give you a predictable, guaranteed edge, because your competitors are using the same tools.
What will give you an edge is a well-connected, well-nurtured network of people who are ready and willing to refer you. That’s right—it’s still people, not technology, that seal the deal.
Joanne Black is America’s leading authority on referral selling—the only business-development strategy proven to convert prospects into clients more than 50 percent of the time.
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