Grab your gear; we are going hunting for ELEPHANTS. Do you have all your sales tools? Most of us would be ready to go in an instant if asked to go in the field hunting for the ELEPHANT accounts. We would have all the usual tools that we use to make our sales, but remember we are going after ELEPHANTS today. The tools that we usually use may be a good start but we need more. What else do we need I hear you ask; our networking information.
We have all been in the situation where we made the call on a major account just to be stopped at the reception area by the rejectionist...I’m sorry, I meant to say receptionist.. Well no matter they are one in the same. We are standing there loaded for bear trying to hunt ELEPHANTS. There is definitely a problem.
What would be a great solution to our problem? A NAME! Anyone’s name... just a name to get us inside. Where can we get a name? We can make one up! No that’s no good; if we get caught we will never be able to call on the prospect again. We can stalk someone; we can follow them home from work and go through their mail to get a name. No if we get caught we could go to jail! So how can we get a name?
Wait, I have an idea! We can NETWORK. Why didn’t we think of this before? We can start to ask people we know if they know anyone who works for the ELEPHANT company we want to call on. Who should we ask? Come on, I already told you EVERYONE! People you work with, go to church with, are on the same bowling team with, in car clubs, chess club, band… OK I was starting to get carried away. You get the picture. There is a game that people play that are movie buffs. It’s called Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. The game is based on the concept of it’s a small world and that any actor or actress can be linked to Kevin Bacon in six or less steps. Well let’s take this same concept and use it here only it may take a lot more than six steps. So you start asking and sooner rather than later someone is going to be able to give you a name.
However I have even a better way of finding a name and possibly a lot more information along with the name. Register on www.linkedin.com this is a business networking website. Once you register you can start to search for other people you know who are on LinkedIn and add them to your connections. When you do that you start to build a network of people. It doesn’t take long to have thousands of people in your network. Each of these people also has thousands of people and so on. You can then search for people who work for companies. Not only will you get names, you will get titles, backgrounds, and in many cases e mails and sometimes phone numbers for these people.
Using the power of the network, you can use the name of your contact that was connected to them when you make your first introduction. This will absolutely make a cold call into a warm call instantly.
By continually adding people to your connections on LinkedIn you will eventually have a connection to just about any company you could think of right at your fingertips (literally).
Now linked in is not a site where you want to play games and post silly stuff like Face Book. It is a business site used by business people so keep it professional.
LinkedIn also has a ton of useful features that can help your personal business skill development. There are groups that you can join which cover every topic you can imagine. You can post your profile and have it available to millions of people a day. LinkedIn is one of the top sites recruiters use to find candidates for jobs.
If you start building your network now, if you ever are looking for a job you will be ready immediately.
OK back to our ELEPHANT hunt. Now we have a name, hopefully we contacted them either by using the LinkedIn e mail or outside e mail or by phone. Now remember, this person probably isn’t the buyer, but maybe they can give you the buyers name and will allow you to use their name in your introduction.
Networking doesn’t mean 100% success. But it will work 100% of the time and the rest is up to you.
Lorin
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