“Content marketing and social selling don’t work with our customers. In our business, the salesperson drives the deal.”
I have heard this many times from sales leaders whose key account managers run high-touch, large-account sales, often with only a dozen or two accounts each. I understand the thinking. And I don’t agree with it.
Your decision maker is online too
What does your decision maker do between meetings and in the evening? Scroll LinkedIn? Quite possibly. Check Facebook or Instagram? Many do. Watch short videos? More than you’d think.
Whatever the mix, one thing holds: if your company’s message isn’t there, the chance of being seen is zero. And what about email? Do you send your customers anything that helps them move forward in their buying process?
When the customer won’t meet you
“I’ll just get a meeting, convince them with our excellence and move the deal forward,” says many a star salesperson. But what if the customer doesn’t want to meet you?
You can still help them move through their buying process by feeding them valuable information, the same content your company shares in other channels. Used phase by phase, it looks like this:
- Awareness. Marketing has written a blog series on exactly the problem you know your customer is facing. Email it. Introduce it in two lines, say what they’ll get from it and how long it takes to read (most adults read 200 to 250 words a minute (opens in a new tab)). Use a trackable link, so you know when they’ve read it.
- The gap. Is there a calculator on your website that shows the difference between their current situation and a better one? Send it, help them work through it, and track that link too.
- Why you. When you see they have engaged with the earlier material, send your best reference stories. Nothing convinces a buyer in this phase more efficiently.
Content is a sales tool
Still think content doesn’t help you close? Then ask a different question. Does your company give you a library of great content to work with? And if it doesn’t, shouldn’t it?