2020 is proving to be an interesting year for sales professionals. All events to network and meet with customers and prospects have been canceled for the foreseeable future. Now what?
Events that aren’t canceled have gone virtual, which is great for training or speaking sessions. But as a salesperson, this means you miss out on all the networking opportunities during the live event. This will not only affect the quarter but your entire 2020 sales goals.
How do you meet new prospects when in-person events aren’t happening?
The shift from face-to-face and event-based networking to true virtual networking is here. We are going to need to rethink how we make connections. List buying is a crapshoot and has compliance complications. Also, I think we have all exhausted the ever-diluting value of LinkedIn. (Tired of InMail spam yet?) New digitally-based social B2B networking is needed.
Here is a typical example: you have been assigned a new customer or targeted (ABM) account. Let’s call them Munder Difflin. You look them up on LinkedIn:
- 7,000 employees list Munder Difflin as their current place of employment
- 15 connections in your network currently work at Munder Difflin
- 200 people are 2nd connections to Munder Difflin
Are you going to look up 200 people to see which are the quality connections for your business? No, you aren’t. Nor should you.
And what of the people at Munder Difflin you have no shared connections with? To reach them, you have to pay a hefty monthly fee for add-on services with LinkedIn. And those services are just glorified spam #InMail.
New networking needs quality connections over quantity.
In this new era of social distancing, it is imperative that you leverage existing quality relationships. At 6DOS, we are focused on the quality of relationships between individuals. Using our proprietary algorithm, we provide unique insights into your immediate and extended network that don’t exist in the mainstream B2B tools.
As we adapt to the new landscape, putting in place, virtual networking best practices will help you meet your prospects, keep the pipeline moving, and close deals. The value of your social network is more important now than ever. And your network is better than you know. Join us today.