Welcome to Sales Kick-Off Week on Accelerate!

Joining me on Day Four of the 2017 Accelerate! Virtual Sales Kick-off Week is my guest Jill Rowley.

Jill Rowley, is a digital transformation specialist, well-known speaker, social selling evangelist, and enterprise sales expert.

On Day Four of our 2017 Virtual Sales Kick-off Meeting, we focus on how you can cut through the noise to grab the attention of busy, distracted buyers.

In this episode, Jill provides techniques to you can use to cut through the distractions competing for your buyer’s attention, how to use social to connect with people (not just to sell them), and essential strategies to elevate your digital and social skill sets.

Mastering the art of making authentic connections is essential for every sales professional. Listen to this episode to learn how!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[:53] Jill calls herself a sales professional trapped in a marketer’s body. Jill knows her buyers, and advocates for them. She started at Salesforce.com in 2000, after years of consulting, then moved to Eloqua, a Salesforce customer.

[5:00] Salespeople and buyers face the same challenge: distraction. Buyers have a nearly unlimited access to information and people, but are overwhelmed; sellers equally have access to them, but get lost in the distractions.

[6:25] The best salespeople know the customer intimately, at a human level, at a company level, at an industry level. The more you know their situation, the better you can help them.

[7:45] Know the ideal customer profile, so you are not chasing bad-fit prospects, but those where you can create value best; and find their right internal influencer to be your champion.

[11:30] Jill tagged some GE Execs in a relevant Tweet; Jim Fowler, GE CIO, Retweeted it. Through DM, email, and phone they connected in a great conversation. Social has impact.

[15:05] Invest in upping your digital and social skillset. Get training for yourself, and make the business case for your organization to do the same. Your customer is already there.

[19:05] Never send a generic LinkedIn invitation. Customize an invitation to your prospect, because every impression matters.

[22:43] Celebrate customer success. Tweet an announcement of a customer doing something great, not an announcement about your great success. Nobody Tweets your data sheet!

[24:18] Instead of thinking of prospects and customers, think of buyers. Nobody wants to be targeted, prospected, hunted, farmed, or closed. They want to have a buying experience.

[26:18] SDRs and BDRs need to know the buyer, knowing their problems that you solve, and how to connect the dots to get that person’s attention. Get on a learning path, every day.

[30:27] Take charge of your career, and if you do well, you’re going to be rewarded, even if it’s not exactly according to the prescribed structure.

[32:23] Set a pair of reading glasses on your desk, to put on whenever you have a question about what you’re doing, ‘to see it through the customer’s eyes.’

MORE ABOUT JILL ROWLEY

What’s your most powerful sales attribute?
Passion.

Who is your sales role model?
Marc Benioff.

What’s one book that every salesperson should read?
Social Selling Mastery: Scaling Up Your Sales and Marketing Machine for the Digital Buyer, by Jamie Shanks.

What music is on your playlist right now?

I don’t listen to music. I listen to Podcasts. I listen to things that would be informative to the buyers I am currently serving

CONTACT JILL ROWLEY

Twitter: @Jill_Rowley

LinkedIn: JillRowley, “But, if you’re going to invite me to connect with you on LinkedIn, don’t do ‘Social stupid.’”