Rainmaking in Summer: How Agencies Can Nurture Prospects from Social Media to the Golf Course
By Dr. Luosheng Peng, GageIn
Dr. Luosheng Peng
Summertime, the season of beaches, sunburns, and client acquisition! It’s time to break out the golf clubs to charm and snag those prospects. While it may look like you’re taking a nice vacation, so many business deals, not to mention political negotiations, happen on the golf course. What is it about a good golf session that can really cement a deal?
By participating together in a four-hour session, you’re bonding with your prospect. You’re building a lasting business relationship by getting to know them on a different level and building a sense of camaraderie. Sales professionals understand that the best way to close a deal is to build trust and rapport with their prospects and clients, and the golf course is the time-tested “go to” venue for building client relationships.
But what is it that turns that cold call into a warm call? What gets prospects on the golf course in the first place and eventually leads to the deal?
The days when email blasts, TV advertisements, and telemarketing worked well enough as marketing strategies are long gone. People are tired of constant interruption and have become adept at tuning out the noise. Being a “one-way communication vehicle” that only pushes messages at people doesn’t work anymore.
So, what does? There is a lot of emphasis on social media and networking these days. Companies and brands live on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and a variety of other social networks. The prevailing mantra is to be found by engaging people in conversation. The strategy is not to interrupt them at their email inbox or phones and push your products and services, but to let them come to you and provide them with value. As they come to see your brand as helpful and informative and as a place with a great community, they will be more inclined to buy from you when the time is right.
Social media engagement is the online golf course. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on, social media takes you and your prospect out of the business office. In the more informal setting, you’re providing prospects the freedom to talk about other topics, rather than focusing completely on business. Through this informality, the conversation can flow and trust can be built. Share articles they may be interested in, or help them with a problem they may have posted about. The main takeaway is that on social media, it’s never about you.
So how can you make sure you can engage with someone in a meaningful way? Content is the key. It’s showing that you know what your prospect is saying in the market, being on top of a competitor’s next move and anticipating the next market trend.
You need to be up-to-date on a wide range of information, whether it be press releases, mentions in the media, videos, events they will be attending and other data that demonstrate you know them intimately.
It’s all about finding that right bit of information – that proverbial needle in the haystack – that will “wow” your prospect. In times when business professionals has access to a plethora of free and paid tools like Hoovers, RSS feeds, Google News, newsletters, data sources and other information, the task of finding the right content can be daunting. That’s why it’s so important to find the right tools that help you distill data in an era of information overload.
There are a lot of new social business networking tools available on the market. Before you choose what’s right for you, make sure that what you go with truly helps you:
- Filter and prioritize content so you don’t have to sift through mountains of data on your own.
- Consolidate multiple functions into one easy to use portal, so you don’t have to manage multiple tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, SlideShare, etc. each day.
- Track the content you share with prospects and tie that into larger CRM or business systems for continual tracking.
- Allow for secure collaboration options with your colleagues so you can share intelligence and best practices on how to get that “in.”
It takes research and intelligence that demonstrates you know the prospect, as well as their market, competitors and specific pain-points. Let technology help you find out what they are interested in and what they value, so that you can better engage them.
Remember: It’s content that gets you in the door in the first place and increase your chances to meet on the golf course, feed the lead and, ultimately, close the deal and make it a hole-in-one!
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Dr. Luosheng Peng is a serial entrepreneur and currently serves as the CEO and president at GageIn, a start-up that compiles customizable social business intelligence for enterprise users. He founded mobile device management firm InnoPath in 1999 and served as its CEO, president, and chairman until 2007. Luosheng holds a PhD in Applied Artificial Intelligence.
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Outstanding post! I love the comparison. As someone who used to play a lot of golf and who is immersed in social media for work I appreciate the analogy.