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For the Right Sales Profile, Look to SalesBook
By Patrick Robbins
A sales professional spends much more time cultivating relationships than actually
selling products, and for many, this is the pathway to success. Some of the most
prolific salespeople in the country seemingly spend most of their time schmoozing-having
casual conversations with people, going out to lunch constantly, doing favors, and
matching up people they know who have common interests. The deals naturally come
from all of that social interaction. It's called relationship networking, and you
can build a very lucrative career out of it.
Building a relationship network is different from sales prospecting. In sales prospecting,
you make contact with people who are most likely to buy your products. In relationship
networking, you expand your sphere of influence to include a wide variety of people,
who though they may not buy your product, are influential enough and have contacts
in the business world so that your association with them often leads indirectly
to sales. When you're having lunch with the mayor for example, you're probably not
going to sell him any industrial machine parts. But, since you are in the mayor's
personal sphere of influence, when he does come in contact with other people who
need machine parts, he's likely to mention your name.
The power of networking is why the business community is now seeing the value of
social networking. On social sites like MySpace and Facebook, it is possible to
have an indirect connection with thousands of people. On SalesBook.com, a next-generation
business networking site, you can have the same level of contacts, but instead of
connecting with people who will want to talk to you about your fondness of the music
of Led Zeppelin, they want to talk to you about your business, your products and
services and what you have to offer.
A SalesBook profile is the starting point for a successful relationship networking
endeavor. You can add volumes of interactive and searchable sales content and other
support material, conduct e-mail marketing campaigns, and participate in lead exchanges,
but the basic profile is where it all starts. That's where others find you, learn
about your offerings and this forms the "tip of the pyramid" of your business network.
Include the link to your profile on your business cards and on all correspondence
to get other people to come into your sphere of influence.
From the SalesBook member profile, visitors are able to review basic information,
but it goes far beyond that. Visitors can also gain access to sales and product
material, interactive multimedia presentations, and any other type of content the
member wishes to include. The design interface is highly flexible, and profiles
can be changed easily and often to reflect new activities and solutions. Of course,
there are also tools for tracking leads for follow-up, and members can join multiple
networks based on geography, industry, company, position, or specialty. Members
can easily expand their network by joining one or more of the many available forums,
blogs and groups available through the site.
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