Last week at the National Speakers Association meeting I attended a session on Social Media that sells. The crux of Rory Vaden’s presentation came down to one quote:
“If you suck in real life, you will suck online”
Brilliant!
His point is that as sales people and business owners it’s our responsibility to live interesting lives, associate with interesting people, and be interested in others and other things than just our business. If we do nothing interesting with our time how can we expect anyone be interested in us?
Interest is reciprocal. The more interested you are in others, the more interesting you are to others. When you are interesting ,your prospects and clients want to engage with you. When they engage, they buy and stay loyal.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting you start jumping out of airplanes or setting Guinness Books of Records – unless that is what you love to do. I am suggesting that you find ways to showcase your personality online and offline to connect with others in a meaningful way. Show your clients and your prospects that you are interested in them and selectively highlight your interests outside of work.
How to be interested:
- Send thank you cards
- Send Birthday cards
- Showcase client success stories
- Follow clients on twitter and retweet their comments
- Follow clients on facebook and comment on their posts
- Follow clients on their blogs and leave comments on their postings that resonate with you
- Recommend your clients on linked-in
- Ask questions
How to be interesting:
- Start a newsletter with a personal message (and picture) from yourself
- Have a real picture of you on your website
- Commit to trying one thing new each month and write about your experiences on social media
- Invite clients to networking events and charity events
- Write
- Speak
- Think
- Pay attention to what is going on around you and form an opinion
- Tie your hobby to the work you do (for example at Engage we once wrote about the parallels of riding a Harley and selling)
- Publicly celebrate interesting holidays with your clients -Donut Day for example
- Share trivia or interesting news about your market with your clients
These are just a few ideas from a myriad of ideas you can use to be both interested and interesting. I urge you to implement something from the list right away. Your ability to be profitable for yourself and your company depends on your ability to engage with clients. Engagement requires interest. Are people interested in you?
Dedicated to increasing your sales
Colleen
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Colleen,
Wow your summary is better than my presentation was! You really captured the essence of what we were talking about in just actually caring for people and using social media as a way to connect with them and be interested as you say. Thanks for the compliment of writing up the session and for sitting through it. This is a great post. I love your line about the more interested you are in others the more interesting you are to others.
See you in the stairwell,
Rory