Two terms we may have heard more of in the last few years: Buyer Persona & Virtual prospecting. But what are they? What do they mean? With so many different bits of information floating around, it’s easy to get lost in all the fluff.
In order to virtually prospect, you first need to identify your buyer persona and prospecting in the right way to individual buyers will help you Sell More. Faster.
Who is your buyer, REALLY?
A buyer persona is a makeup of what your clients look like. It can be an individual or company. Maybe it’s a single person within a company.
No matter what type of buyer persona you have in mind it’s important to add some type of key information for yourself. Such as giving your buyer persona a name.
State buyer persona differentiators such as Name, Age, Location, Goal, etc.
Adding these criteria will allow you to truly know your ideal client. This will create a sturdy foundation you can continue to refine within search such as gender, education, occupation, etc.
How narrow does a buyer's location have to be?
In traditional sales, where having salespeople able to physically visit the locations of potential clients, the location ultimately determined where your company would operate and serve. It was better to have a narrower location focus, as this helped ensure profitability was maintained. It cost a lot to serve every location.
Today in virtual selling location isn't nearly as important. By getting narrower on other elements of the buyer persona you are able to expand the location further (assuming you can still serve those areas). This means instead of expanding your product offering to accommodate less than ideal buyers, today you can target only ideal clients in remote or harder to travel locations.
What we likely don’t know
In most cases, we won't know anything about a person until we do some research. What does your ideal buyer want? What would you want if you were them? These questions will help you define your ideal buyer persona.
Consider other aspects, such as Goals, Aspirations, Fears & Challenges.
Having an idea as to their education or income will help you to tailor your messaging to speak to their skills and financial conversation comfort level.
Spend time imagining you are the client and ask yourself:
- What am I trying to accomplish?
- How can I get there?
- What am I losing sleep over/Worried about?
Finally, ask yourself where do your clients source their information? What publications do they read/subscribe to? Are they a part of an association or networking group? Do they attend specific conferences?
Regardless of how we show up, we want to show up where they are!!
What is Virtual Prospecting?
Virtual Prospecting is the method of finding and connecting with your ideal buyers through online communications.
Traditional prospecting includes face-to-face meetings, drop-ins, cold calling, and randomly connecting with people at trade shows.
With people working from home, off-site, and hybrid we don’t need to know where they are in order to connect.
However, we need to evolve and find new techniques that will help salespeople continue to find and engage with new and existing prospects.
How do I prospect virtually?
You’ll be surprised how easy Virtual Prospecting is, although learning this skill takes time and practice.
To become successful in any sales role you will need to become omnipresent:
be where your client is. Be in as many places your client is.
Salespeople need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable while they familiarize themselves with the new way of prospecting.
- Searching Google
- Join virtual networking groups or events
- Comment and share on LinkedIn
- Create videos
- Send targetted emails with memes
- Host LinkedIn Audio or Live events and invite prospects to attend
- Facilitate a webinar
Salespeople need innovative ways to get in touch with their buyers. Create powerful emails, use tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Salesloft or Owler which will help identify prospects, view insights, and gain information on your competition.
Virtual engagement
Focus any prospecting messaging on what your solution does and not just what it is. What is it that you actually provide?
Let’s use an example: Kodak
“A Kodak moment”. That slogan was used for years. You learned it, knew the brand, and trusted the name. But what was Kodak providing with “A Kodak Moment”?
When you ask most people they picture "A Kodak Moment" as a memory they want to hold. It's an image of an amazing time they had with their friends or family. It was a vacation vista they want to reflect on years after.
Kodak's demise came when Instagram, a company under two years old, was purchased by Facebook for over $1 Billion dollars. Kodak had their own photo-sharing website, but they only used it to sell more photos. Instagram on the other hand knew people wanted to share images, but not print them off.
Kodak thought "A Kodak Moment" was film (the product) and forgot it was actually sharing memories (what those pictures do).
Don’t try to start a sales conversation by spending time talking about what you do and your company. Do your research and find out what your buyer is interested in.
When you do connect focus on the questions you will ask, instead of the sentences you will say. This keeps the engagement as a conversation and not a sales pitch.
The goal is to engage with your ideal buyer, start a conversation, and book the meeting.
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