Posted by Jim Kasper on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 @ 10:26 AM
Your Most Potent Sales Tool
When you normally enumerate your company's sales tools, you include: CRM, sales methodology, pre-call planning tool, sales team, website, marketing literature, product/engineer specialists, key account planning formats, and training. How many of you include one of your most potent weapons, your CEO?
At this very moment, you may be thinking, "Our CEO? Our CEO has a technical background. Our CEO has never been on a sales call...ever. Our CEO deals with highly strategic issues such as finance and legal, not sales issues. Honestly, our CEO is great person, but I don't want our CEO on a sales call with me.
TOP to TOP Social Network Selling
It's okay to feel that way, but we're not suggesting your CEO leave behind strategic duties to make sales calls. We're recommending that you leverage your CEO's position to build a special bond with TOP of your current customers and targeted prospects.
It's called "TOP" (The Opportunity Producer) to TOP social networking selling and it works. We call it TOP, not CEO because the high level person within your customer, who can influence the decision, may be a Vice President, Director, or Manager.
The concept: Your CEO, upon prompting, socially networks via email, article forwards, phone, or other means with TOPs of your customer base and targeted prospects.
Is Your CEO Social Network Savvy?
Very few CEOs are "social network savvy." Ask yourself these questions about your CEO:
- Does your CEO understand social networking (and for that matter, Sales 2.0)?
- When is the last time your CEO communicated by email with one of your "priority" prospect's CEOs or TOPs?
- On a scale of 1 - 5 (1 meaning not willing at all and 5 meaning already very active social networker), where would your CEO rank if asked to send out a prescripted email to the CEO or TOP of a large prospect?
- Does your CEO view new business as a strategic issue?
Why Does TOP to TOP Social Networking Work?
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Your customers'/prospects' TOPs possess much of the information you want and need to close opportunities.
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Candidly, your customer's CEO/TOP is indeed the person who can "produce the opportunity" for you.
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Quite honestly, your CEO carries "influence" that you may not.
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Your CEO's emails and phone calls will draw the attention that yours will not.
5 Steps: Use Sales 2.0 to Make Your CEO A Potent Social Networking Tool
1. Clearly define your current "A" accounts and identify the prospects that you wish to target for new business opportunities.
2. Using Sales 2.0 technologies like Jigsaw, Linkedin, InsideView, Google, Hoovers, or Dow Jones Factiva identify The Opportunity Producer at each current "A" account and prospective "A" account.
3. Enter the company name and TOP targets into Google Alerts, Hoovers, and Dow Jones Factiva as trigger events, a Sales 2.0 process.
4. Build a social networking strategy for your CEO. Put together standard emails for your CEO based upon trigger event searches. To assure success and CEO comfort, build pre-call plans for your CEO before each call to TOP.
5. Sell the CEO on the advantages.
For a no obligation demonstration of how to script your CEO's calls, click here.
Photo Credit: Mike G. Foster School of Business