At a recent training session, I asked my students, if you had endless resources, what would be the "ultimate sales strategy?"
While I asked them slightly "tongue in cheek"; my students agreed their "ultimate sales strategy" would be to take each of their customers out for lunch everyday.
During that time they could talk to their customers about their products and services. It would be the perfect sell. Everyday sitting in front of their customers.
I agree, we would certainly have your customers "attention" or be front of mind (FoM) people say in digital marketing.
So Why Don't We Do This?
It was quickly explained to me that this sales strategy does not scale, I was also reminded it wouldn't be good for our waistlines either.
So when I suggested that this was possible, you can be "front of mind" (FoM) with all your customers everyday, in fact 480 Million business professionals worldwide. They wanted to know how.
How do I get Front of Mind (FoM) Everyday with all my Customers and Prospects?
Of course there was other suggestions. Like phone them up everyday, we agreed this might annoy them, or send them emails everyday. Again, maybe annoying.
(One student said, he was once told by a customer, "look we will buy your product, now stop calling us". They actually said two words and one was off, but this is a professional network. He wore his "tenacity" badge with pride. We all agreed this seemed to work, but seemed risky and maybe short term thinking.)
Let's Use Advertising to Get FoM of Customers and Prospects?
Next suggestion from my students was to buy ads (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
So I asked the group:
"Who today has been into Social Media?" Everybody put their hand up.
Next I asked, "who today has been looking at adverts?" No hands went up.
Why? We are in Social Media because we want to be there. If you are buying ads, it would seem that nobody is looking to read them.
Tim, Come on Tell Me How do Get FoM with my Customers, at Scale?
So how do you get in front of your customers everyday (in a way that scales) and not put on a pound in weight?
Simple. Post something everyday on LinkedIn and Social Media.
But Who Cares What I Post?
You are probably thinking "So what, who cares what I post?"
Think about when you page through your LinkedIn feed, you know whose boring and whose interesting. Yes?
Those people that are posting "corporate twaddle". Is your network really talking about some new supplier focused, white paper? Of course they are not, we all laugh, shake our heads and think why are those poor sales and marketeers stuck in the 1980s?
So what do you think your customers are thinking?
The same.
"Why do they keep posting all that corporate rubbish?"
For your customer there is only one person that matters and it's them.
I'm really sorry, (for some people this may come as a shock) but they don't care about you, your company or your products. So what can you do to be different and for your customer to actually look out for you in their Social Media feed? Simple.
Be the Light
You are what you post - Your social media profiles are there for everybody to see 365 days a year, 52 weeks a year, 7 days a week. People judge you by what you do or do not post. They judge you if your boring, interesting, funny, helpful, honest, understands my industry, understands my business issues, seem trustworthy, will help me out if my project goes wrong.
This blog isn't about what good social media profiles look like, but by getting good posting interesting, insightful "stuff". Tell people something they don't know. You will be front of mind (FoM) to all your customers, prospects and competitors customers every day.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the only sales strategy you ever need.
OK, may not be a strategy, but a bloody good tactic to be using everyday.