When Jason came to me, his opportunity pipeline was nearly empty. Jason was a senior account rep with great relationships but leads for new business had dried up.
He was frustrated.
He had an audience, but his approaches were failing. It was almost as if the door was slammed in his face - what worked last year, was failing miserably now.
He knew the pandemic and business disruption had a lot of impact, but he wasn’t convinced that’s all it was.
The Real Problem
As I started to learn about Jason, it became pretty obvious to me — but not to him.
Jason had enormous wisdom about his market’s pain, but he was sharing NONE of that wisdom.
I love one word initiatives. The idea behind that is to sum up your strategy in ONE WORD, and let your actions support that strategy.
For Jason? I suggested the one word: GENEROSITY. He needed to be more generous with his wisdom.
Jason had to look get out of the old attitude of, “What was I going to get out of it?” and replace that with, “What can I share that will help my customers?”
Result: Within 30 days, he had 10 solid leads for new business.
How The Heck Did Jason Do It?
Step 1. Document the pain his market was experiencing. That was easy for him. There was plenty of market pain.
And it should be easy for you, too. Just make a list of the problems your market has as of June 2020. Jason did this in about 20 minutes.
Step 2. Select the #1 problem and create a LinkedIN article about it. Jason wasn’t a very good writer (his words, not mine). So I gave him a proven template for how to write a valuable article.
Step 3. Send EVERY ONE of his prospects and clients a link to that article on LI. The mistake he’d made in the past is he allowed his LinkedIN posts to find their own way in the market.
You can’t do that. I repeat, you can't do that!
You must let people know that valuable content exists. The way to do that is to send an email with a link. Jason had about 350 email addresses of clients, prospects and strategic partners. Not a huge list, but very targeted.
He sent out 3 emails to his list. (When someone failed to open the email, he sent it again (with a different subject line)).
Step 4. Post. Post. Repost. He did 10 LinkedIN posts over two weeks directing people to his article. Jason had nearly 2000 LI connections. IMPORTANT: You can’t count on ALL of those people seeing any one post - so you must repost the promotion to the article.
Beginning at the end of the first week, he began getting emails to set up calls. After one month, he had 10.
Lessons
Yes, this worked for Jason. BUT, he had to change his attitude about what his role was. Jason was in marketing - not in sales. Sales comes when the phone rings. Marketing is everything that happens prior to that.
Can you do this? Of course you can.
Will you? Depends on how committed you are to being generous with your counsel.
Jason was and is reaping the rewards. Now, he wants to go to phase two, a continuation of that strategy throughout 2020. Jason has goals to make and his customers have pain to solve.
This path provides a solution for both.
Good night everyone.
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