Find Someone To Be Your Advocate

Sales can be difficult, especially if you don't have a warm market, or a built-in social circle to work with. Many companies will encourage you to start off by calling on friends and family. Personally, I think this is a horrible idea. The best way to build a career in sales for the long run is to work off of referrals and new relationships. Why new relationships, you ask? Because they don't have any preconceived ideas about you or your rapport with them.

One of the best finds you'll get in your career is someone who will mention you, go to bat for you and be an overall advocate. As long as this person has some decent standing in the community, having someone to endorse you in public is very satisfying and can be fruitful. Always be grateful and reciprocate whenever possible.

In today's world, we call these people influencers. Social media is full of them but finding them and getting them to work on your behalf is difficult. Until you can find a famous social media influencer to go to bat for you, try to find the ones in your area.

My good friend, Chesty Chastain (Chastain Media), is an advocate for me. He even went out of his way to make a video for my book. I laughed, I cried....

If you're new to the business or just new to your area, go to some networking events (you can find some on Meetup) and start a conversation with some people. Maybe a couple of them will be your influencer or advocate.

For more on how to find those "big fish" influencers on LinkedIn, check out this article by Dhruv Patel.

As usual, look me up on ChrisCastanes.com and please subscribe.

Comments

The Telemarketer's Leads - A Dumb Story

For a brief few months I worked as a telemarketer for a small firm owned by a young married couple. The husband was a bit of a hot head and kind of a jerk on occasion, but his wife was nice and had to put up with the guy. One of their clients was a mobile home company that wanted people to come to the lot and see how awesome their singlewides and doublewides were. As telemarketers we offered incentives like a cooler and camera (back when they weren’t part of your phone) and other assorted giveaways. We got a small commission if we could book the client. My coworkers and I would call from a list of leads that our employers had purchased from someone. These leads were supposedly “qualified” ahead of time, meaning that they had been vetted to meet the needs of the client, the mobile home company. Unfortunately, most of the leads were useless. The people we spoke to didn’t live in the right geographical areas or their incomes were too low. “Why aren’t you guys closing anyone?” the boss w

Planting Seeds Vs. Landmines

Analogies are everywhere in business these days, but the sales profession has some of the best ones. One I have used for years is that when prospecting and marketing for clients, you should be leaving landmines everywhere, because sooner or later, someone will "step on it" and your sales will blow up. Recently, Davan Johnson, a coworker and friend of mine, appeared on my YouTube channel and we discussed prospecting for clients. He used the analogy of "planting seeds" while "preparing for a harvest". I chuckled as I explained that I preferred my more violent analogy. "I'm attaching life insurance applications to the landmine," I said. Feel free to use either analogy when you consider your prospecting plans. Both have the same principle, which is to always look for opportunities to meet people and tell your story. You never know when one will blossom or explode. Ch ris Castane s is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through

How Lame Will Your Holiday Party Be This Year?

Over the years I've worked with, and for, many companies, large and small. And as each of these companies varied in size, structure and philosophy, there was also differences in how they handled the issue of a "holiday" party. As the Christmas party became a Holiday party (and to be fair, not everyone celebrates Christmas and I can respect that), the parties themselves morphed into several formats, or worse, just disappeared altogether. One company I worked with left the issue to each location's manager to provide for a small "get together" and a small amount of petty cash could be used for refreshments. Since our location was rather small, the manager would order a few pizzas and provide soft drinks in their home. There was an unofficial "bring your own" policy for alcoholic drinks and we even had a gift exchange. It was all good and everyone behaved, however each year we would receive some story from the home office about how another location&

You're Going To Be Great At This!

Search This Blog