After the first e-mails, just leave name and number in your signature
Not that many weeks ago I wrote about trust and its importance, such that I considered sales as a sum of moments of trust.
Today I’d like to relate to this topic and write something about proximity with prospect or clients, giving an easy tip too.
Let’s start with the time we’re living because I think there’s no better background: the recent pandemic created distance and raised social barriers among us.
The advantages of the face-to-face conversation are disappearing: we’re in a hybrid sales world characterised by long and stretched times, extremely rational decisions and scarce emotional involvement.
The trust we gained thanks to the proximity – the one which played a great role in a sale – doesn’t exist anymore and the majority of us was forced to readjust his commercial method.
According to this it’s clear why SDRs, BDRs, Inside Sales or salespeople coming from these jobs prospered during the pandemic: they are used to manage a fully remote sales/prospecting cycle and Covid-19 just slowed down their jobs but didn’t change them.
For all the otherss the shift has been dramatic and some of us have not been able to develop a working method which created the same proximity they had with prospects/clients before the pandemic.
Today I’d like to start with a simple suggestion which, in combination with others, will help you to establish more proximity with your spokesperson and to be perceived as a person he can have a conversation with.
Let’s start with this: job titles are great and we worked hard for them.
Most of us have high-sounding ones (Senior Enterprise Account Executive, General Sales Manager, Territory Manager, Account Executive) which mean quotas achieved, hours and hours of work done, exhausting travels and tons of calls, demos and meetings.
The truth is that your prospect doesn’t care at all: those interacting with you are not interested in your working history and the sales you closed before your conversation.
Those who talk to you just want someone they can discuss informally, someone who will help them solve their problems, accomplish their projects and reach their objectives: in other words, someone to create a close and trusted business relationship with.
According to the above, just start with this: after the first e-mails, just leave name and number in your signature.
Create an alternative ‘lean’ signature you can use after the first exchanges, something which will help you be recognised as a person, not as a title.
In a world in which status matters a lot, just put aside yours and train yourself to be perceived as a person someone can ask for advice.
