Welcome to Sales Kick-Off Week on Accelerate!

Joining me on Day Five of the Accelerate! 2017 Virtual Sales Kick-off Week is my guest David Meerman Scott.

David Meerman Scott is a leading sales and marketing speaker, and author of numerous best-selling books, including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Newsjacking, and more recently, The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business.

On Day Five of our 2017 Virtual Sales Kick-off the focus is on how you can use stories and other content to create value and connect with your buyers.

In this episode David teaches how authentic storytelling builds connections with buyers; how to create stories that catch the attention of the buyers; why sales pros should be curating content for their prospects, and why you need different content for unique buyer personas.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[1:01] David started at a bond trading desk, getting real-time information and pricing, before the day of the web. Losing his job, by company acquisition in 2002, led him to make a career decision. He began writing, speaking, and consulting.

[5:04] When David wrote The New Rules of Marketing and PR, its theme was that web marketing creates content for multiple people at once, and drives them to a buying process.

[5:57] The New Rules of Sales and Service applies the same concept, but focuses on content the salesperson curates, to reach one buyer at a time.

[6:48] Authentic storytelling first creates a narrative for your company, and on top of that, creates stories of value and interest to your prospects. Hire a journalist over a copywriter.

[8:51] Creating interesting stories for our prospects, forces us to look beyond our products and our egos, to the benefits they present to our clients, with stories making clients into heroes.

[9:20] A salesperson might curate existing content about one customer’s experience, and create a story for how a prospect might use the product or service to benefit their own clients.

[12:05] Hubspot measures how people click through from one place to another on their huge site. E.g., 20% of the visitors to the Hubspot CEO’s bio page become paying customers. So, the salesperson needs to know how to approach these visitors.

[14:10] Don’t just tie a new sale back to the original lead source. Find out what the customer also saw and read between the lead and the purchase — gain valuable insights.

[18:24] You need different content for each buyer persona. A college needs one set for HS sophomores, one set for seniors, and one set for parents. Most schools provide one content set.

[19:35] When someone fills in a form, follow the data to see how they got there. That shows their buyer persona, and what content you need to supply to them.

[23:40] Understand how content is used today; be curators of content. Be active on social networks, and create content that adds value for your prospects.

[33:00] Be much more responsive than you are today, to increase the business you bring in tomorrow.

CONTACT DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT

Google: David Meerman Scott

Free eBook: World Wide Rave, by David Meerman Scott

Website: DavidMeermanScott.com