People don’t buy the same way anymore.
We’ve had enough of unsolicited and unwanted phone calls, both at home and at work. Likewise, we hate having to comb through hundreds of unsolicited emails. We’re fed up with intrusive social media messages. We’re sick of companies providing poor service, that refuse to treat us with respect, and that deliver us into a phone mail maze that does nothing but waste our time and never connects us with a real living person.
While we’re rejecting all of these things, every one of us–you, me, and each of our potential and existing customers–turn to the web for solutions to problems.
Yes, it’s true: Buyers are now in charge.
Mystery no longer exists in the sales process. Before agreeing to that first date, we answer the question: is he a creep? Prior to an initial business meeting, I fire up LinkedIn to discover if she has anyone I knew in her network. We access an on-demand movie trailer before deciding which film we’re going to see that night. Before booking a reservation at a restaurant, we check out restaurant reviews and look over menus.
There’s a huge disconnect between the way people research products and services they are interested in and the way companies market and sell.
Bring your sales and marketing into alignment
We’ve got to educate and inform instead of interrupting and selling.
The good news is the Web has liberated us from the tyranny of paying for attention! There are four main ways to generate attention:
1) You can BUY attention (this is traditional advertising)
2) You can BEG for attention (this is traditional media relations)
3) You can BUG people one at a time to get attention (this is traditional sales)
4) Or you can EARN attention online by creating great information that your buyers want to consume such as YouTube videos, blogs, Twitter feeds, photographs, infographics, charts, graphs, and ebooks—and it is all free.
Best of all, we can communicate with buyers in real-time, reaching them at the precise moment they’re interested in what we have to offer.
From an original article by David Meerman Scott.
Pipeliner CRM empowers companies for sales and marketing alignment. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.
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