The Sales Archaeologist

My friends at Strange PR in the United Kingdom ran this Great Post on How to Choose an Inbound Marketing Agency last week. I really enjoyed the bullets and as I thought about it further it occurred to me that from a sales perspective our prospects might be running through a similar checklist when considering our services. These following 6 points are connected with inbound marketing on their article but I wanted to recycle them and apply them to selling.

Do they have reach, connection, responsiveness?

• This assessment might happen before you ever meet the prospect – they look at you from afar and ask questions about you. Many clients begin any engagement only after looking at you on linked in or running a Google search on your company. What do they see when they do?

Do they understand where your customers are and what their needs are?

• They will be asking themselves this for the entire engagement and if they feel that you don’t – even for a second then all will be lost.

Are they hands-on? But do they see the big picture?

• This is the delicate balance that we try to teach in our class on positioning statements and you need to connect as a sales person on both levels.

Are they living in social media?

• Does what you say and how you look really line up?

Are they persuasive?

• Prospects have an expectation and a right to expect that you will do some selling. Nobody wants to be a lay down or a cake walk. What have you done to provide some sizzle and some convincing for your prospects

Do they love results?

• This is probably my favorite point – I am constantly telling sales people to stay focused on outcomes and results. You want the prospect to leave thinking that you seemed to be the only person that kept using words like growth, goals, objectives and other phrases associated with their business getting where they want it to go.

So Each of us would do well to ask ourselves this - What conclusion would my prospects come to if they asked these questions about me and about our company? How would I score if I tallied up the answers?

Of Course I thank Stephen and Richard for the inspiration behind this post.