Getting access to the decision maker is an age-old sales challenge.  It hasn’t gone away.  It won’t go away.  In fact, the access challenge has gotten – and will continue to get – substantially more formidable.  In the old days we only needed access to the decision-maker.

Today we have to gain access to everyone in the decision network.

And it’s NOT simply a matter of more contacts to make.  It’s also:

• More repetitions of the value proposition.  …and of your solution’s details.  …and of answers to common objections.  …and of…
• More value propositions (and solution details, and common objections, and…)  each slanted to emphasize the particular perspective of the individual
• More complex solutions and proposals because they must reflect the interests and biases of each node in the decision network.
• Vastly more complex political considerations.  While it’s not politically correct to acknowledge, you must work within and coordinate the political considerations of each individual in the decision network; they are there; they are real and they all have deal-complicating effects – sometimes deal-killing power.
• More people from your own company involved due to the above.  …all of whom contribute even more ingredients to the political soup.
• More people from more business partners involved due to the above.  …all of whom contribute even more ingredients to the political soup.

And you’ll find the time to deal with all this where???

If you’ve followed this blog in even the most cursory manner, you already know that a big piece of the answer is e-Rep.  You simply MUST have a digital extension of yourself – endowed with all your amazing knowledge, experience and skills – to help out with all the communicating you need to get done.

…or you could just get your boss to hire 3 or 4 sales assistants and assign them to you.

Think about it.

“No Todd,” said the sales guy I was talking to. “I just don’t do content marketing. The people I sell to don’t respond to it.”

Todd leaned back, furrowed his brow, thought for a moment, and then leaned back forward. “Can I see the latest full-size, six-page brochure you are passing out?”

“Oh! Yes,” exclaimed the sales guy. “Would be glad too!” He reached into his briefcase to pull out a shrink-wrapped package which contained 100 fresh brochures. He pulled out a pen to tear open the shrink-wrap, when I stopped him.

“Wait, don’t open that on my account,” I said.

“No. It is ok,” he responded, smiling. “I don’t get to give this beauty out very often.” By now, he had pushed through the point of his pen into the wrap, but accidentally left a two-inch ink streak along the front of the glossy masterpiece. He glanced up at me, and uttered, “Sorry.”

But instead of handing me the brochure, he turned it over and started to hand write something on the back of it.

“Um, what’s that,” I asked?

“Well, I need to write my cell phone on here,” he explained. “When we printed these, we thought the prospects would just need the main company switchboard.”

“Yeah,” I sheepishly said, “turns out they like to call on you direct, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “They always have questions about things, so it is easier to just jot down my personal number on the brochure.”

“No doubt,” I nodded. “I…uh, um…” Turns out I didn’t know how to respond. But then I queried “So, actually you do content marketing, but you are just putting content into this print brochure, right?”

He looked back at me and thought for a moment, “Well, yeah. Wait. No. This is a print brochure. This is how we’ve always done it.”

I went on, “Well, you could take that content and put it on your blog. I mean, really, with that six-page, full-size brochure, you’ve got a dozen blog posts at least just with the content you got there! Think about it! Your first dozen blog posts are already written,” I explained. “How many other brochures have you got stacked over there on your book shelf? All that content could be turned into digital content…”

We both stared for a minute at the eleven unopened shrink-wrapped stacks on the floor next to the bookcase. A stress ball from their 2006 trade show was resting on top of the stack.

But then I noticed he was writing again, scribbling a website URL onto the same brochure.

“Forgot to put the website on the brochure too,” I asked?

“No no, this is our YouTube channel,” he explained. “For some reason, more and more of my prospects prefer to watch videos of the systems we sell, rather than read this thing,” he explained waving dry the fresh ink on the brochure.

I leaned back in my chair, then pretended to carefully file away the brochure that he finally handed to me, paying careful attention not to smudge the YouTube address, which I was actually curious to view.

Then, scratching my head, I said “Sorry that you think your customers won’t respond to a content marketing program.”

“Yeah,” he responded, sadly shaking his head. “It’s a real shame…”

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[sign-up for our content marketing course here]

[drawing by hugh macleod]

There’s a lot of great stuff in The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.  I keep going back to sections of it and consistently come away with new, better, deeper insights.  I found their discussion of “Loyalty Drivers,” for example, to be particularly intriguing.  It’s all summarized in the innocuous-looking, yet value-laden chart below.  Stare at it for a while and think about it before reading what your humble blogger thinks are key the points.

Here are three things that strike me as most significant:

• Two traditional icons of great selling are in the Weak/Weak quadrant.  In other words, they are minimum requirements expected of all – not differentiators.
  • “Excels in diagnosing needs”
  • “Adjusts to our unique needs”
• “Has widespread support across the organization” is extremely important to both decision makers and decision influencers, i.e., the entire decision network.  The sales rep must earn the respect of everyone throughout the customer organization; not only with the CEO, but also with Finance, Operations, Manufacturing, Engineering, Marketing, etc., etc., etc.
• “Easy to buy from” is extremely important to both decision makers and decision influencers.  So the sales rep also needs to have credibility with and earn the respect of everyone within his/her own company.

It’s a brave new world out there boys and girls.  Change or die!

How to get and stay in that upper right quadrant?  How to earn bullet-proof customer loyalty?  Learn quickly; share everything you know and learn; share it far and wide.

• Become adept at Content Marketing
• Build and maintain a superior e-Rep

…or you could just continue to burn customer time unproductively by asking a gazillion questions.

Todd and I did a Community Service Radio interview with Laura Capps the other day.  She’s a board member for Grow Kids, Inc. here in Atlanta.  Wow!

You owe it to yourself to check out this organization.

Start by watching two of their Public Service Announcements…

Lots of people ask me why I don’t spend more time networking.

By this, they mean going to networking events – coffees, chamber after hours events, association lunches, etc.

Yeah, I am not dissing those kinds of events, but they just take up a lot of my time. And in the end, I end up talking to only one or two people at those events anyway.

So why wouldn’t I make that conversation everlasting? More meaningful? More valuable?

Give your networking everlasting impact!

I do my networking in the podcast studio.

I haven’t attended a networking event in over six months. And yet, our business is growing faster than ever. Why?

Because I am still networking. But doing it in a meaningful, constructive way.

I know who I want to network with. I know the people with which I want to make a meaningful connection – to assist, to serve, to learn from, and yes, to do business with.

[If you don't know and cannot identify these people, you have other issues we need to talk about.]

So instead of hoping I will run into them at some random networking event, I reach out and invite that person to my studio. Then, one of two things happens:

1. They decline the interview for whatever reason. But that doesn’t matter, because the mere act of inviting them to my studio gave me a meaningful excuse to contact them. Now, I’ve got their attention anyway, and can ask them to take some other action.

2. They agree to the interview, and come to my studio. Here, we meet, get to know each other, learn about each other, and determine ways to either help each other, or maybe even do business together.

Sure, that’s no different than if I met them at some coffee and accomplished the same thing. Sure. But here’s the difference:

A. They came to me, which frankly, is very convenient for me.

B. I recorded a cool interview which is great content for me. [learn how to use this content here]

C. They now have an mp3 of their interview which they can use in their own sales and marketing program.

D. They had a cool experience in my studio which they may tell others about — extending the story of me and my guest, and exposing others to my work.

E. And oh, this becomes indexed content on the search engines that will serve both myself and my guest for a long, long time…

[Editor's note: You can achieve the same strategic benefit of networking with podcasts without needing a studio. Plenty of online tools to use. Remember, the goal is to provide a forum for meaningful conversation. Email me to learn more]

I have no doubt I will attend a future networking meeting. But I am not in a hurry to do so.

“But Todd, how will you ever meet NEW people,” I am often asked. To which I respond by asking if they’ve ever heard of Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn…

My new form of business networking is doing me and my business just fine. How can podcasting connect you to the important people in your business life?

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Non sequitur.  It’s one of those familiar phrases whose meaning eludes many of us.  For the record, it’s Latin for “it does not follow.”  “Light travels faster than sound, so therefore this blog post is valuable to executives,” is an example of the flawed logic characteristic of non sequiturs.

So what does this have to do with selling more of your stuff?

Plenty!  How often do you run across yet another self-proclaimed internet marketing guru?  Personally, I can’t get through a single working day without at least one bouncing off me.  Everybody it seems, wants to fill me in on their amazing insight and expertise.  Well let’s get real.

Friend and client Carol Flammer of the Atlanta Real Estate Forum (who truly DOES know TONS about internet marketing) recently told me about a business contact of hers astute enough to question his own know-how.  Here’s what he had to say…

“I thought we had a pretty good internet presence.  When I Googled my company though, it turns out we’re on page 5.  We’re listed behind competitors who’ve gone out of business!”

So next time you hear:

• I have a blog, so therefore I know internet and social media marketing
• I have a Twitter handle, so therefore I know internet and social media marketing
• I have a FaceBook page, so therefore I know internet and social media marketing
• I have a LinkedIn profile, so therefore I know internet and social media marketing
• I understand SEO, so therefore I know internet and social media marketing
• I understand content strategy, so therefore I know internet and social media marketing

…or any of 50 other simple-minded claims, be prepared to counter the non sequitur.  The world of internet and social media marketing is not only vital to closing more business faster, it’s incredibly complex and evolving at a remarkably rapid rate.

What we all need is a robust, continuously improving e-Rep.  To build and maintain one, we all need a team of folks focused on internet and social media marketing.  Folks who not only already know a lot, but also are learning at a similar remarkably rapid rate.

OK CEO guy. I don’t want to hear “social media” doesn’t affect sales” in my industry anymore. It is bunk. You know it, and I know it.

Here are SEVEN reasons why I am right:

DISTRIBUTION
Yes, the social web is an important way to distribute your content and knowledge. People aren’t going to learn about what you can do if you don’t tell them. Sharing and promoting, or more importantly, having your social graph promote or share your content, is one way to get better known to an audience. But distribution, as evidenced by too many people, is NOT the sole purpose of the social web.

EDUCATION
What is marketing and sales, after all? To put it simply, it is educating your market. There are probably a BILLION (or more) people active on the social web around the world. If you don’t think your market is here (somewhere) than you are missing the boat. Likely, you aren’t looking hard enough, or unwilling to roll up your sleeves.

ENGAGEMENT/RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
Sorry, but social media isn’t an if you build it, they will come scenario. You have to participate. You have to connect. You have to engage. It is modern networking, but you have to actually talk to people. You won’t sell million-dollar pieces of business on Twitter, no. But you will meet people who might ultimately spend a lot of money with you, or who will connect you to someone else who will. The game is being played. Shame on you if you are sitting on the sidelines…

LIST BUILDING
The money is in the list, so everyone says. Yes. This is true. But you have to build the list. And the better approach is the slow, methodical, one-at-a-time approach…verses the spam the heck out of people and hope a few pay attention approach. But you get connected to people via the social web, and if you are engaged, many will follow and join for more.

LISTENING
Social media is a great way to observe the marketplace. Business people-watching, if you will. You can see what your potential customers are doing, saying, and thinking. You can see what the competition is doing. You can see what needs are being fulfilled, and what needs are left unmet. But you have to have your eyes open. If potential customers express pain publicly, and you aren’t listening, is that prospect really there?

CUSTOMER SERVICE
Consumers are becoming more and more vocal about their business experiences on the social web, and are publicly communicating their happiness or displeasure. You had better be listening to respond. Oftentimes, the bigger crime is NOT paying attention. The public will forgive a bad experience if they see you actively doing something about it. And more and more, customers are seeking “tech support” online, verses calling on the phone. You had better be listening…

POLLING/RESEARCH
Most organizations cannot afford to do complex industrial and market research. But yet, the social web offers all kinds of ways to do polling, and to get feedback from your social graph. Pose questions on Twitter or Facebook. Ask people to vote by giving a statement a +1 on Google+. Or drop surveys into LinkedIn group discussions. Easy. When I explain to clients that they need to better understand their market, their competition, or their customers, I am often asked, “Well, how in the heck do I do that?” The social web is a great way to study, research, and observe. And learn.

Notice that “SALES” wasn’t one of the seven. You want to know why? Because selling – at least in B2B world – still is a human conversation and transaction. But you have to connect with, educate, and engage with human beings.

And social media is an important tactical way to do that in the modern world. You had better jump on. Your competition is already on the bus…

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[content marketing is an important element of your social media strategy. sign-up for our course here]

[drawing by hugh macleod]

“Not many companies in our industry even have a blog.  Let me show you ours.”

With that statement, a weirdly old school/new school journey began.   “Here’s how our sales people use it,” continued the VP Sales proudly brandishing his iPad.  “They sit with the customer and show them our blog which is loaded with great information.”

Weirdness #1:  An iPad used like a tri-fold brochure?

The first post (from the day before) was all about a bar code reader.  It consisted of the headline “DataMan 300 Bar Code Reader,” a concise, one sentence product description and a link to a product page deep within the bowels of their supplier’s web site.

The second post (…as I continued to feign interest in watching the adept iPad navigation…) was a “Best Of 2011,” a compilation of last year’s most popular posts.  Here’s the text:  “What were the most popular articles and video in our newsletters in 2011?   Check it out…”  (Note the word “newsletters” and yes, the typo “video” should have been videos.) There was also a link to a pdf containing a holiday greeting and, count ‘em, six one liner descriptions with images and links to product pages deep within the bowels of their suppliers’ web sites.

Weirdness #2: Newsletter, brochure, catalog or blog?  Company- or customer-centric?  Which is it?  Doesn’t really feel like any of ‘em.  Maybe it’s some sort of evolutionary missing link???

We next looked at the preceding 20 posts.  6 product announcements, 8 press-release-like-things about an (apparently very successful) open house, 4 product descriptions and 2 really interesting application articles.  Stated differently: boring, boring, boring, interesting & valuable, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, interesting & valuable, boring, boring and  boring.

Weirdness #3:  It was like witnessing a train wreck.  I couldn’t bear to see any more, but I couldn’t stop looking. 

A series of ho-hum electric brochures (blogchures???) then a post of exactly the sort of practical, thoughtful, informative, application-oriented, valuable stuff you’d expect from a blog, then another series of blogchures…

As the sales VP looked to me, the vaunted-all-knowing-guruish-outside-expert, for feedback, I didn’t know whether to %&#! or go blind.

Here’s my Top 5 list of reactions:

• Excessively inwardly-focused (vs. customer-centric)
• Numbingly dull for the most part
• Wasting my time (with an online version of “show up and throw up”)
• Flashes of real value
• Reflecting a genuine commitment to using sophisticated e-Rep tools

My conclusion:  A hideous, yet noble step in the right direction.  What do you think?

…and in the interest of full disclosure, I credit the “blogchure” terminology to my long-time friend, colleague and client, Rick Howe, CEO of The Knotts Company, who’s blog is way better than the one described above.

[courtesy of jonathan fields, a recent guest on the dreamland radio network]

Executives, and ALL salespeople, have long clamored for access to the decision-makers to make the buying decisions. They claim that if they can just get an audience with the right person, they can close the sale.

Maybe so. And what if I told you that we have a secret to help you achieve that access? You have to listen to the audio to learn the secret.

But…

1. I can make your approach to the prospect, and the initial cold call, much easier.
2. I can help you get through evil gatekeepers.
3. I can expedite the relationship-building process.
4. I can help you build trust with your prospect. And how important is that?

Tune in and let me know what you think…

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[to hear more sales strategies, join us here]

[drawing by hugh macleod]