In last week’s video I talked about the frustration I experience – as do many sales leaders – with the time and effort that it takes to write text-based blogs. I recommended that sales leaders shoot videos instead; scale your charisma, use platforms that are best suited for your customers.
But what’s the point? Why is this important?
The big idea here is that you want to scale your prospecting process. How do you do that? Your goal is to take those initial steps to build trust and credibility. You want your prospects to know, like and trust you. As Brian Clark (Brian Clark of Copyblogger) says, “teaching sells.”
If you document and codify your knowledge, if you present yourself as a problem-solver, put that out there on YouTube where they can see a series of content pieces (videos) which are very easy to shoot. It only takes 2 seconds to turn your iPhone on and hit record. That’s the best way forward to fast-track your trust and credibility.
Your customers and your prospects will really get a sense of what it’s like to work with you. They will be able to connect with you on a deeper level because oftentimes we engage with prospects with phone calls and emails, which are very cold and impersonal. Phone calls and emails are often annoying to the prospect, so this is an additional way to connect with the prospect and establish your trust and credibility. Send the link to your prospects.
I am not suggesting you build this massive channel and become a YouTube creator. I am suggesting that 2 or 3 videos attached to your profile that showcase your credibility are a wonderful opportunity.
Now, for the marketing people watching this video, for the sales-minded marketing leaders, blogging is really critical. Don’t get Jeff wrong, documenting your knowledge, your thought-leadership strategy through blogging is really critical. As his friend Marcus Sheridan says, we want to present ourselves as providing answers to questions because that big machine called Google is the machine that provides answers to customer’s questions.
Companies that are documenting and codifying their knowledge and presenting solutions to problems are providing answers to prospect’s questions. So that’s really important. Documenting and writing is of course the primary focus of the marketing team.
I recommends to sales leaders that they upload their content on social media and leave it there, that’s fine. For the marketing team, we want to pull those audiences of off of social media and onto our own platforms. We don’t want to be subject to the whims of the social platforms because they can take subscribers away at any time or charge you an arm and a leg for your profile or suppress your organic reach.
Here’s a tip: Anything you can do, take that content (videos) from the sales professional, embed it in a blog post, effectively transcribe what they said (just like this blog post), and add it to your editorial calendar and get it up into your feed.
So that’s the way to get marketing and sales into alignment, to scale the knowledge of the sales leader and their ability to solve problems and build trust and credibility with their prospects. Gives you great content for your editorial calendar – it’s a win-win for all concerned.
Hope you find this post helpful.
Let’s be passionate and make art!