According to Walker McKay, a salesperson’s actions, attitude, and approach can lead to digital improvements. What should those actions look like? What characteristics do you need to embrace? What approaches are successful? Walker McKay answers these questions—and more—in this episode of Sales Reinvented.
Digital selling is important because it’s nearly impossible to get face-to-face with people anymore. People are working from home and you can’t just show up at their “office.” So you have to find other ways to connect with people and hold conversations. Organizations need to create expected behaviors around digital selling regarding:
You have to start with the actions. What is the expected behavior? How many LinkedIn posts should somebody do? How many times should you reach out per week? Companies need to get comfortable that this is the way things are being done. So it’s time to build behaviors around getting appointments via text, phone, social media, and video.
Where should you go to find business? If it’s on LinkedIn, you can download your connections onto a spreadsheet. You can match it with your client list and make sure you’re connected with people you’re already doing business with.
Secondly, Walker would take that list and look for some low-hanging fruit you hadn’t talked to yet. How will you get in touch with them? You can send LinkedIn messages, DMs, text messages, phone calls, and emails. You need to touch people 6–7 times using different channels to get their attention. The goal is to set an appointment, right? Set a meeting over Zoom or a similar channel.
Old school B2B salespeople might be in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Even so, an openness to technology is key to their success. Secondly, salespeople need to have a strong why behind their success. You have goals you want to accomplish and achieve in life. Are you disciplined enough to reach out to people, send messages, and keep track of it? It is discipline and a desire to win being put into place.
Are you posting things on different channels? Walker has found posting a video or a how-to on social channels to be effective. If you’re selling insurance, you might post “5 Ways to Make Sure You Get the Right Insurance.” You have to be able to write well and teach people with your posts. If you’re seen as a teacher, people will come to you for help and you’ll become the professional in your space.
Walker is always looking for sales experts to be guests on his podcast. He was using LinkedIn to reach out to people but wasn’t getting a great response. He was reaching out to 5 people a day. But he connected with someone named Casey Jones. She didn’t respond. 3 days later, he messaged her again and they started a conversation. Turns out, they had a great connection. She was one of his best podcast guests and they’ve since collaborated on three different business deals.
There is a network outside of you through the digital world that is much bigger and better than what you could have face-to-face. Work to build your network and ask for what you want. There’s a tremendous world of business out there.
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