What can we do differently to improve our prospecting efforts?
This question is consistently top of mind for salespeople and sales leaders. And the answer lies not in increased call activity levels, nor in search engine optimization, and certainly not in buying those emails lists offered in spam messages.
Surprisingly, the answer comes down to age-old human wisdom: serve other people before expecting them to do something for you. By providing value to a customer or prospect, sales people will shift perceptions and encourage reciprocal behavior.
What It Looks Like to Serve
Serving is not about bringing doughnuts, key chains, thumb drives or pens to your customer, and it’s not about sponsoring a pizza lunch at their office. It’s not about offering gifts or presents either. Serving is about fulfilling a specific need or priority you’ve identified in your conversations with a customer or prospect. It always involves something custom and specific to an individual—not a group of similar people—and it has to be in direct response to a need or priority. Identifying the customer or prospect’s need or priority is part of the magic, but the next is giving them something they wouldn’t expect from a salesperson.
Why does it work? And will it really lead to a sale? There are two powerful reasons why serving can be so useful in selling:
- Sparking the Value Chain
- Triggering Reciprocity
To learn more about the value of serving customers or prospects and the tactics salespeople can use to become a welcome partner, download the white paper above.
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Explore the actions and behaviors sales people can use to provide value to a customer or prospect, shift perceptions and become a welcome partner.
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"We live in a world today where almost every moment is filled with emails, tweets, news feed updates, mobile phone alerts and text messages. We’re bombarded with updates, but most have limited value to us. We’re surprised and gratified when something personalized and useful comes our way."