The practice of social selling has crossed the chasm and entered the tornado stage. (Huffington Post, see Mike Kunkle’s excellent webinar) To fuel this content dependent activity, many are urging sales people to blog, and to become thought leaders. (Lori Richardson, John Jantsch, ITSMA) This is a logical extension from a belief that sales people must think more like marketers. In my view, “think like marketers” means sales people must approach selling from a buyer perspective. They must understand and align to the issues, questions and process buyers must address to make a buying decision. (See Sharon Drew Morgen – Buying Facilitation) Not all buyers are ready or interested to hear about your company and product — especially those features. But I also know that thinking like a marketer does not mean thinking like a journalist. It does not require sales people to “blog” – certainly not in the way most people, and marketing bloggers, think of blogging. Social (or digital) selling makes sense because it embraces new tools and methods to conduct core activities sales professionals have always performed: research, networking, prospecting and building relationships with people. Sales people need content to build credibility, provide innovative insights (please, let’s stop with “thought leadership”) and give value to get attention and interest. Here’s where the blogging premise is flawed: they shouldn’t have to create content. Indeed, isn’t this what we’ve been trying to avoid for 20 years? We want to reduce the time sales people need to spend creating and editing […]
The post For Sales Blogging and Social Selling – Think Like a Publisher appeared first on Avitage.
