Keep Selling After You Leave the Room

How effective are your reps at activating the social networks within organizations and using stories  to carry their messaging after they leave the meeting? These are the techniques that leverage bio-chemistry to promote message sharing among groups.

Social selling is well accepted, but mostly being used in the virtual world, when the fact is that face-to-face social networks exist in every organization. After every sales call and meeting people get together and discuss what happened and recount the most interesting and memorable information. And, that doesn't stop that day. Executives and other decision makers are asking for "What happened in that meeting I couldn't make. The question is how to make sure that your messages are the ones that are remembered and passed along and not those of your competitors?

The answer is to leverage two simple approaches Viral Selling and Goal-driven Storytelling.

GOING VIRAL
"Going Viral" relies on two things, a piece of content that is interesting and compelling enough to want to share, and a mechanism that makes sharing simple. In the online worlds of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook sharing is easy, but in the real world it is more difficult. That's because to share one person has to remember and be able to recreate the message. You need that one person to be repeating your message.

RECALL and REPLAY
People remember stories 14 times better than they remember statistics or facts, so the key is to be able to effectively tell targeted stories that will influence the buyer. This requires storytelling skills that can be used both by BDRs sending emails, or cold-calling, and with Account Executives meeting face-to-face. They need to be able to construct compelling visuals and focused stories that will change the minds of prospects. And, they have to do that in a way that the messages can be carried out of the meeting and shared with colleagues and decision makers.

This is the classic example of simple, but not easy. To do it right requires a change in mindset from sellers and the development of a new set of skills. However, doing it well can multiply the penetration and reach into all of your accounts.

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