I'm at the Channel Partners expo in Washington DC at the invitation of Dan Vidal and the good folk at Virgo to speak on their Tuesday morning panel titled, "Sticky Strategies for Shoring up Your Core Business". They specifically wanted "by agents for agents" content so I called Dan several months ago and offered to share what ATEL's been doing successfully for over 25 years.
(For those who don't know, in addition to wearing my TA Executive Director hat, I'm also an independent subagent with ATEL Communications & Search4Voip.com.)
To get a feel for what kind of business ATEL is, click the following two links to see two ATEL blog posts that introduce ATEL to business end-users:
"Why ATEL?" Steven Handelman, ATEL President Responds
ATEL Tour: We Watch Over Your Phones, Computers and Technology
Following are the notes I've put together for the 10 minutes or so I'll be speaking on the panel. If you're at the show please drop in and ask questions directly. If you're not at the show please feel free to leave comments or questions below.
Ten Ways ATEL "Stays Sticky" with Their Business Clients and Prospects
(Important Note: I'm an independent agent under ATEL so I'm only speaking for myself and how I sell under the ATEL logo. I use similar "sticky strategies" though when selling under own logos.)
- Connect with Prospects and Clients via LinkedIn
I always have LinkedIn open and I send an invitation to connect with every business contact - even if the contact is nothing more than leaving a message in someone's voice mail when I'm cold calling. I would not have had the confidence to do that when I first started in the business 20 years ago but hey, I'm an expert sales consultant now and the best way to prove that to people I'm cold calling is to invite them to connect via LinkedIn. (Be sure that your invitation says something like "I'm the expert you're looking for" or something equally bold.)
I get about a 90% LinkedIn connection acceptance with my regular clients and active prospects. To my surprise I get about a 30% acceptance rate to people I'm just cold calling. Remember, the people you're trying to sell to, while quite busy, are still bored. You're sending them a connection invitation is very interesting to them. The can't help but ask themselves, "Who the heck is this overly confident salesperson inviting me to connect after a cold call?" If nothing else they'll peek at your LinkedIn page to see if your resume justifies your boldness.
Once they're on your LinkedIn page they'll quickly see that because of all your high-end connections and LinkedIn content, you've got reason to be bold - because you're good at what you do.
Do make sure, however, that the "clickable" square icon next the the company name (after your name) goes to a LinkedIn page for the business that seems reasonably respectable. If you've not created a LinkedIn page for your business then you need to get on that. Click here to view my LinkedIn page. Pay special attention to the square clickable icon after "ATEL Communications" you'll see it gives a pop-up that clearly states ATEL is a real business with 35 employees.
Remember, most deals you're going to win are 75% closed before the prospect ever makes contact with you. Real buyers are stalkers. Through the Internet they'll know all there is to know about you before they pick up the phone. That's good if you look good on the Internet (and bad if you don't.)
The most important reason to connect with clients and prospects via LinkedIn though is it's the world's cheapest (and maybe best) CRM ('"customer relationship management tool") because you can download the email address of everyone you're connected to on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn you don't need to waste a lot of time keying prospect info into your CRM if you're no good at that or if you really don't have a CRM. Just talk, link and then once a month download everyone's email address and then send them a monthly newsletter that describes all the cool projects you've helped clients out with over the last month.
If you haven't got a business blog (and even if you do) you need to create a LinkedIn group to let all your clients and prospects know how smart you are - outside of a phone or in person sales call.
Put yourself in your client and prospect's place, they want to access your brilliance (because they know it will save them money and aggravation) but they want to do it without the pressure that comes with a sales contact. They know you're on commission and they know you need to sell and so they're not always going to want to waste your time even though you'd be happy to talk to them. They know if they surf around enough they'll find good information published on the Internet somewhere. Make sure the best stuff they find is your stuff - on your blog and your LinkedIn group.
After awhile, when you get lots of people to join, your customers and prospects will be impressed that you have so many customers and prospects that think enough of your knowledge to join your LinkedIn group. You're also leading with your confidence when you invite them to join your Linked in group because you're allowing all your clients and prospects to communicate with one another.
If your customers knew exactly what solution they needed they would not need you. They'd just call the phone company and order it. With a LinkedIn group or a real blog you need to:
a. Let them know what all the different vendors are doing, and most important of all,
b. Have an opinion about what the vendors are doing
All the vendors you do business with are constantly rolling out new services, solutions and specials. Most vendors are under the somewhat deluded vision that you're actually sharing the information with your customers and prospects. Pass on everything WITH AN OPINION.
THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST "STICKY" ACTIVITY YOU CAN ENGAGE IN. It's not too much for your clients and prospects. They're already overwhelmed by all the options in the marketplace. They need someone smart - someone with an opinion to turn to - you need that to be you. But they'll only believe it's you if you're actually putting your information our on the Internet, on your LinkedIn group or your blog, on a regular basis.
Both LinkedIn and Facebook solicit you for a link that you want to post a comment about. At least twice per week you need to find any bit of interesting news anywhere, copy the link page of the news, paste it into your LinkedIn group news section and then post your opinion. It takes all of 10 minutes and makes you look like a genius.
ATEL's clients are "sticky" with the owner Steve Handelman for over 25 years and Andrew Cohen for going on 10 years, not because they are perfect, but because they have a reasonably informed opinion about every competitive option in the marketplace. That's what our clients and prospects are looking for from us.
After a couple of months successfully posting regularly (twice a week) to your LinkedIn group "news blog", invest $20 a month and get a real blog from Typepad or similar provider. This blog you're reading right now is on the Typepad platform.
A real blog platform is not any more difficult to publish on that a LinkedIn group and a "real blog" will pull the whole Internet to your doorstep in that it's much more search engine friendly than a LinkedIn group. Once your real blog is launched then you'll use your LinkedIn group to post your own blog links and send your LinkedIn group members to your own blog.
LinkedIn is great among agents and partners but many business end-users are much more familiar with Twitter and Facebook business pages. Your own business blog is where you publish all your content but LinkedIn, Twitter and a Facebook business page are the "Internet sign posts" that drive the world to your blog (and your brilliance).
Once you have all your content and opinions published on your blog, each blog post will give you an "idea link" and you'll find dozens of places out in the vast Internet to drop your "idea link" like a breadcrumb that will lead prospects back to you via free Google searches.
When business prospects are typing queries into Google looking for a business solution that you're best suited to provide, what "key words" or "search strings" are they typing into Google?
For each of the product and service offerings that generate the margin you use to pay your mortgage you need to have your keywords written out on a 3x5 card and taped to your computer monitor. With every blog and post you put on the Internet (twice a week or more) you need to make sure your content is peppered with your keywords.
Prove to yourself that this works, go to Google and type into it anything that involves business phone systems or services and the word "San Diego" and ATEL Communications is bound to be close to the top of the Google search results. This is not an accident and is does not happen without trying.
Now that you're handy blogging your ideas at least twice a week you have at least 8 headlines and links to put in a monthly email newsletter to send to all your clients and prospects.
Send it through a service like Constant Contact or Bronto and you'll be able to get a report that tells you which one of your clients and prospects clicked on which one of the 8 headlines - great information that can be followed up on by your or your sales consultants.
This is a "very sticky" and successful strategy for ATEL. Not only does ATEL have an opinion about all marketplace options, they seem to know just when to follow up about client and prospect interest.
ATEL is not a big "lead swap" company. While they do in fact swap leads with IT equipment companies they also sell IT equipment, phone systems and everything else under the sun. It would never occur to ATEL to say, we don't sell _____ because we don't want to annoy or threaten our lead partners.
ATEL's lead partners trust ATEL not to steal parts of a customer deal that the lead partner brings to them but 90% of ATEL's business is getting deals on their own that they own 100% of. They do this not because they're arrogant or impolite to lead partners but because this is what business end-users want to buy - a complete solution from a single point of contact.
"Supreme stickiness" comes from being such a complete and total solution solver that a business customer has no one else to turn to to take the solution to. If you're only ever doing "half deals" because your lead partner keeps you subservient then you're the opposite of "sticky". You're expendable.
It's one thing to have an opinion about other people and vendor's ideas but quite another to have original thoughts of your own. When you spend enough time to blog your ideas twice a week as I've suggested then after a while you're going to start to have your own original ideas about how to solve problems when they come up for your customers.
This is "ultimate stickiness". Your customers and prospects will turn to you because you're going to offer them an idea that they won't first hear from your competitor. When you come up with your own revolutionary thought you won't be able to be copied or "shopped out" because your competitors won't know how your solution is put together.
ATEL gives an example of this with their new ExpenseRecoveryTM Solution or "ERS". ERS was developed to solve equipment financing problems that business customers and their equipment VARs ("value added resellers") have when their clients can't (or don't want to) finance needed technology equipment in the normal ways. ERS may or may not make sense for all clients but it's an option they won't find from any of ATEL's competitors.
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