“Don’t ask to get something back, just give and then you will get a lot more in return” – Jason Cahill in today’s Tip 52.
How do you go about prospecting in a way that’s authentic to you?
Join the conversation below and find out more about Jason.
Transcript
Scott Ingram: Welcome back to the Daily Sales Tips Podcast. I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jason Cahill. Jason works in commercial sales at Ceridian and is responsible for their southwestern Ontario territory in Canada.
Jason Cahill: So I like to do what I call authentic prospecting. And the way I do this is by starting off our relationship with our prospects by using reciprocity. So I’ll rewind a little bit, give you some context. So, imagine you’re walking down the street and some guy jumps out of an alley and says, “hey, you look like you like great jeans. I sell great jeans. You should come down this alley and I’ll sell you some great jeans. Come on, don’t worry about where I came from. Let’s go. Let’s go down the side of Lee. Why? Or maybe, you know what? Maybe I’ll come to your house. Can I come to your house?” That is the creepiness that a lot of salespeople are using in prospecting. “Hey, I’m blah, blah, blah. Can I come to your office for a meeting? Can we set up a call? Can we do this? Don’t worry about what I’m asking for or what I represent. Just say yes”. It’s creepy. And there’s a big alarm bell that goes off in the back of your lizard brain that says, “stranger danger”. Don’t do that. So what I’ve found that works a lot better is starting off the relationship with reciprocity, giving something to my prospects and how I do this is this: So I go on their LinkedIn profile and I see their posts in there and what kinds of things they’re interested in, obviously they’re prospect so we have something in common and I started liking and commenting on their posts. It’s kind of a mini-ABM strategy. And then I call them, I know, I still use a phone, I call them in and I say, “listen, I like really liked your last post on XYZ and we’re having a webinar at the end of the month that I thought you might be interested in, it’s about XYZ. And I thought I’d give you an invite and just need your email or you know what, I’ll send it to you in LinkedIn. On that link, you can register and maybe a few weeks after the event we’ll sync up”, and that’s it. I don’t ask for anything. I don’t ask for a commitment. It doesn’t matter if they come to the event or not. The point is that I’m breaking the whole mold of “give me something right away”. I’m giving them something that I think has value to them. And because I’ve done my homework, from their LinkedIn, their business, whatever, our CRM history, it doesn’t matter. I’m starting the relationship off by giving them something. I feel like a lot more salespeople recognize the fact that you’re not calling someone to get a commission and you’re not calling someone to get a meeting. It’ll just happen if they’re ready and they’ll tell you, “yeah, love to come to this meeting”. And then you know what, in two weeks you just follow up. You don’t ask for permission. You just said, maybe we’ll sync up. You just do it. Just call them. Or you know what they may say no. They may say, “no, we’re good because we use ABC Company, which is a competitor to you, and you know we’re happy because we’ve been using it for three years. We have them for one, two and three solutions, but we don’t have it for the fourth one and if you have something like that, maybe were interested”. Brilliant! You just got a ton of information without even asking. Basically what I’m saying is take yes or no off the table. Okay? Don’t ask for a meeting, don’t ask to get something back, just give and then you will get a lot more in return.
Scott Ingram: I love tips like this from real practitioners. If you’re listening to this and carrying a quota and managing a territory yourself, send me your own tip and I would be glad to feature it. For today’s conversation, let’s talk about how do you go about prospecting in a way that’s authentic to you? That’s happening at DailySales.Tips/52. On that page, you’ll also find links to connect directly with Jason. He also provided a video version of this tip as well. So you can find all of that at DailySales.Tips/52 then come back tomorrow for another tip from Jeff Bajorek on checking your ego.