When asked by OpenView Labs to share my favorite sales tool headed into 2015, without hesitation and with a big smile, I boldly declared The Telephone!
When asked by several organizations that were curating top sales influencers’ sales predictions for 2015, without hesitation and with no smile at all, I boldly declared that the air will finally and thankfully leak out of the Social Selling balloon. It’s been quite amusing watching that happen as experts from the Social Selling camp have been walking back some of their bold rhetoric as more and more companies realize Social Selling hasn’t produced the promised results.
My friend Anthony Iannarino and I are big fans of the telephone as a sales tool. In fact, we’ve joked recently about the reality that the telephone may be the most “social” sales tool of them all 🙂 He’s written a few killer posts in defense of traditional selling, including this beauty from yesterday comparing New School and Old School sales approaches. I couldn’t agree more, and frankly, it’s getting old having to correct the Social Selling Kool-Aid drinkers that everything has not changed.
The truth is that the telephone, while often ignored, maligned, or abused, when put in the hands of proficient sales hunters, is still an incredibly effective way to deliver your message, secure a desired meeting or move an opportunity along. In fact, I’d argue that there may not be a more powerful or more social weapon in your entire arsenal of sales weapons.
Back in January, several of my Go-To Sales Gurus and I put on a live Virtual Sales Kickoff Meeting to help salespeople and sales teams get the new year off to a fast start. 2000 registered for the powerful event and almost 4000 people have since watched the video between Jeb Blount’s and Anthony’s YouTube channels. I batted leadoff for the event and shared four keys to power-up your prospecting. That’s right: prospecting. That supposedly antiquated, no longer effective method of proactively pursuing prospects. Two of those four keys directly relate to this post. Key one was about believing that prospecting still works, and let’s just say that I didn’t mince words when taking on those dangerous loud voices proclaiming that it doesn’t. Key four was about reconciling our relationship with the telephone. If those topics interest you, or if you’re feeling stuck because your company and your social selling efforts haven’t produced enough leads to fill your pipeline (imagine that!), please take some time to watch this video. I promise it will help you. And if you can carve out even more time, there’s a ton of valuable advice from all of these true sales experts.
http://youtu.be/jS1gqyUJwRQ
