Alliance Science

Each Sales Professional Must Promote Her Own Brand

Writers do it; Actors do it; Radio hosts do it -- Are you doing it?

Many thanks for the gift and inspiration of Li Evans, who interviewed a produced content for guests of Blog Potomac, Washington DC's first blogger round-up and unconference. 

Whether you're and account manager, inside sales, part of sales team, or sales support, your company will benefit from the power of your personal brand.

What are you doing to build your credibility, visibility and even celebrity using the communication tools available on the world wide web, today?

What do You do 10 minutes after a Meeting?

How long do you wait before you next contact a prospect, business partner or acquaintance and how?

Sounds like the question, "how long do you wait to call after the first date?"  In a way, it's the same question, although if you're properly controlling the process, before you leave the meeting, you agree to a specific next step and never a "think about it." 

More specifically, when is the optimal time to communicate, "thank you"?

10 minutes after you meet. 

Yep, 10 minutes.  It's especially important after you've met with prospects or clients.  The fact is, right after you meet with a service provider is when you have questions or concerns.  Doubt it?  Pay attention to what you're thinking about just after a meeting and write down the questions you're asking.  This is happening with your customers, too.

The good news is you have a few ways to communicate this.  The best way to know the best and easiest way to say thank you is to ask during your consultation, "which communication medium do you prefer; email, telephone, mail?"  Make sure you have their cell phone, text them if they prefer email; call them if they like the telephone.

Bonus practice:

During your consultation assure your prospect that, "there's no dumb questions."  Now, when you call within 10 minutes of parting, you can say, "Just a quick call to thank you for taking the time to meet with me.  I'm looking forward to working with you.  Is there any question I can answer which you may have just thought of since we left each other?  Remember, there's no dumb questions." 

This is especially important if you've met with more than one person.  There's always a conversation just after a meeting.  There's always questions.

An immediate, "thank you," impresses new networking partners, too.  And don't forget the power of the hand addressed, hand written, personal note card.  It always gets opened and read.

What's your best practice on follow-up? 

Photo credit:  Todd Hryckowian

What are You Reading?

Inspired by the picture of what Jason Womack's reading, here's a picutre of the stack of books currently on my bed-side table. 

What are you learning?

More importantly, how is it influencing your selling behaviors?

 

Blog Potomac: As a Sales Professional, are you Part of the Conversation?

Potomac Blog was the Washington DC, Metropolitan area's first collective attempt to bring Social Media experts under one roof for an unconference.

Initiator, organizer, champion and MC, Geoff Livingston, proudly announces Blog Potomac a success, as I agree. Largely an audience of marketing professionals with a healthy attendance of PR and communications professionals, the event was an excellent inside look at how the "other" communication disciplines -- PR, Advertising, Marketing, Branding -- use New Media to create dialog with the prospect and customer. As a representative from the Sales camp, I walked away with the question, "aside from having a social networking account, how much does the focused field rep need to understand and use the plethora of Web 2.0 communication and media organizational tools becoming available every day?  Here's a small sampling of the techie tools post-lunch keynote, Frank Gruber, professed to love and often uses:

Gmail - AOL Mail - Remember the Milk - AIM Instant Messenger - AwayFind - AwayFind details
Facebook - Twitter - Flickr - TubeMogul - Viddler - Blip.tv - YouTube - eyespot - Typepad - WordPress - Tumblr - Evernote - Mixx - Digg -Delicious - StumbleUpon - Shareaholic - SiteMeter - FeedBurner - Google Analytics - myAOL - FeedHub - AideRSS - Summize - Google Alerts - Filtrbox - Lijit - SocialThing - MyBlogLog - FriendFeed - TwitterFeed - Dopplr - Tripit - Basecamp -Quicken Online

If you're a committed Sales Professional, you are accountable for public relations, branding, marketing, advertising and customer service, whether or not they are another's responsibility.

Social media tools are about engaging in the conversation with your public.  They're having it with or without you. 

Yes, it can be overwhelming.  So, to get started, here's a couple of suggestions, opinions and observable options:

• Start reading about Social Media and Social Networking to understand the fundamentals -- if you're lost, use Google Reader and subscribe to Alliance Science
• At least join LinkedIn and use it (Facebook is becoming popular to the selling professional, too)
• You're responsible for your brand and building your credibility as an expert -- consider blogging if you can keep up with the responsibility of research and content creation at least once a week.
• Ask the most successful Sales Professionals you know how they're embracing Web 2.0 (there, I said it).  If they're not, find out who is and ask them what they're doing.

If you're not growing as a sales professional, you're dying.  The worse part -- you won't know it until you're dust.

Photo Credit:  Jared Goralnick

Be Careful on How you Disengage

Break-ups can be hard -- make sure you do it right.

It's OK to fire a prospect, client or a networking referral partner -- just make sure do it correctly.  You never know what the future has in store for you and the other party.  You may encounter them again so make sure you can greet with them with a confident smile.

• Nurture, nurture, nurture.  Remember, no one likes feeling rejected.  It's important to be kind and empathetic.  Don't disengage in an email.  Have more couth, courage and business-smarts than to email a "Dear John" letter. 
  
• Get the other person to disengage.  If it's not working out, you owe it to the other person and yourself to decide together.  Have the courage to bring up your objections and allow the other person the chance to fix the issues or decide to withdraw.  Whether or not your mind is made up and there's little chance to move forward, put your ego in the passenger seat and allow the other person to participate.  This approach is actually easier and less risky than the quick and easy, take-flight alternative and will diffuse potentially dangerous confusion or resentment.
  
• Always leave the door open.  People change.  Situations change.  Impressions change.  Relationships change.  Insensitive or brisk break-ups burn bridges.  So sketch a possible future with your personally delivered final words.  You never know, the future with that person may surprise you. 

Photo credit:  putitonashirt