Here is a story of two sales people;  both of them striving to sell the same product; photocopiers, one uses different methods than the other and has, not surprisingly; different results.

Frank arrives at his office at 0:830 and prepares his morning tasks; he gets out the yellow pages and starts to look for local medium sized companies to cold call ready for 0:900. This has been Frank’s way for the last six months and it’s a routine that he is now used to. Precisely 0:900 he starts to make his calls to unsuspecting companies, during his morning five people have thrown the phone down on him and most of the people manage to gate keep him away from the real decision makers.

By 12:00 lunch time, he has made 36 calls, where he managed to speak to a few people who at least could make an appointment with, and has managed to make one appointment. He drives for one hour after dinner to get to his appointment and is met by the Assistant marketing manager and begins his sales pitch at 2pm, by 3 pm he is finished and he walks out the door with no order as the Assistant Manager closed off the meeting un committedly telling him he will present this to his superior; ‘The Manager’ of the company the next day and the decision will be his.

By the time Frank gets back to his office at 4 PM there is little else for him to do but chat with the secretary and then go home.

On the same day across town: Michelle opens her laptop at 0:900 at her home and starts a blog about the different graphics that can be used on different photocopiers. Michelle invested in herself a while back and learned how to blog, and has her own domain and website costing her less than $50 to build. She uses social media to share her blogs and to brand herself as the paper, colour, and graphics expert.  She started her blog about 6 months ago and has been blogging consistently  twice a week. Each blog takes her around 1-2 hours to write, publish and then share to social media.

She opens her LinkedIn and sees she has two appointments confirmed from people she started chatting to a while back, they contacted her after reading her blog that was giving tips about the different toners to use and where to find them at a good price.

She meets with the CEO of one company at 1 PM and because the CEO already has a rapport with Michelle from her blogs, she walks out with an order at 1.45 PM.

At 3 PM she meets with the office manager of another company who found her on social media after they started asking her for help with paper management, and again walks out with her second order at 4 pm

She arrives back home at 5 PM with two orders to boot, and has not had to be spoken rudely by anyone on the phone, and she did not have to meet any unqualified prospects.

Frank certainly is old school and he actually hates the cold calling part of his business, but how else can you find fresh new blood? It is now actually proven that even the top cold callers of the industry are making fewer and fewer appointments by introducing themselves over the phone.

Michele on the other hand has embraced technology, and realised that by having a good brand image before you go into any appointment is paramount and can really sway the decision to buy. She understands that if you can create rapport online through blogs and people see you as a product expert and come to you for advice, then an appointment for when they need to buy large capital goods as you are already top of their mind; is a natural and an easy decision for potential customers.

All sales online or offline is about trust, the old adage has never changed; you have to develop trust before anyone can buy anything from you, how do you develop that trust when you can’t get past the gate keepers on the phone anymore?

How do you develop rapport before you go into an appointment so you already have half the job done?

It is a fact that 83% of all people will look up your company online before they contact you, and if you have published consistent useful information on the internet about your business, your potential future clients are going to see it first because Google and search engines reward consistent non sales knowledge giving blogs, so you will be high on search engines when people search, but more importantly that that; people will read your stuff because it’s useful to them and they will remember your name, and when appointment and buying time comes, they will respond in kind. It’s just the way of the world now Frank, come on!

To learn how to develop your online brand and stop cold calling NOW Contact Netmedia.