First things first, if you’re easily offended, this article ain’t for you. If you’re still reading let’s talk about sales. Not your normal “look em in the eye and shake their hand” shit either. I wanna talk about modern sales. I’m gonna offend a lot of you old schoolers but it is what it is. 

THE OLD WAY OF SELLING IS DYING

It’s still 100% crazy to me, that in 2016 people are still knocking doors and making cold calls to close sales. I’m not saying they don’t work, I’m saying it’s fucking stupid to cold call and door knock when you can reach millions of people online who actually want to buy your shit. 

That’s right. Instead of pissing off 100s of people each day via cold call and door knock, how about you learn a new skill set? Instead of doing what everyone else is doing, why not try and get an edge on the competition? I used to knock doors. I used to cold call. That was in 2005. Over 11 years ago. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist then (at least for me)

I have a Facebook group with over 40,000 people in there. The ones who earn the most money in the group do anything they can to avoid knocking doors and cold calling. The ones who earn average income rely on these archaic communication methods in the time of high technology. 

Let me put it into perspective for you. Even on Wall St, where the cold call is one of the only ways to get in with a prospect, the rookies and newbies do the dialing. The people who get paid the most, close the calls, they leave the cold calling to the new folks. So even in the land of million dollar cold calls, the top dogs still don’t dial themselves. 

Ok, so now that I’ve berated you enough on old school dialing and knocking, let me lead you to the light.

We live in a time when we are more connected yet more reclusive than ever. Meaning people are connected online but rarely connect offline. People enjoy texts over phone calls, emails as to voicemails and conference calls over face to face meetings. If you try and go against this shift, you will only be left behind. Change will happen with or without you. 

Your prospects are not hiding from you behind cold calls and closed doors. They are online. All of them. Yes, I said ALL OF THEM. I hate it when people say “my prospects aren’t online” Who the fuck do you know that doesn’t have the internet? It’s a bullshit excuse for a salesperson not to learn something new and do something different. Those guys/gals are a dying breed. Me and you, we’re gonna do the next level shit. 

Let’s take Facebook alone. There’ are around 2 billion people with an account. In the last 5 years, I’ve met maybe 10 people who didn’t have a Facebook account. This tells me that pretty much everyone has an account. According to FB, the average user spends 40 minutes each day scrolling the feed. If you think your prospects are not on FB you are kidding yourself. I suppose they don’t use Google either…

If we can both agree that everyone is on Facebook, and some of them spend around an hour a day on there, don’t you think you can prospect easier on FB than cold calls? The thing is, you gotta know what you’re doing. You can’t just rush in all DICKS OUT FOR HARAMBEE spamming your offers everywhere. That shit don’t work.

Instead, you have to treat online the same as offline. When you prospect offline you build rapport, problem solve and present an offer. Nothing changes online. It’s the same process, just a different communication platform. Yet, I see so many salespeople treat online sales as if they are completely different than offline. It’s a major mistake that cost people lots of sales. 

You have to position yourself to attract, engage and entertain your potential prospects. If you’re trying to attract your perfect client into your world, you need to post things they would want to see. Go engage them on their pages. Don’t just pitch them, build a real, online relationship with them.

Maybe you have ZERO prospects connected to your Facebook profile. That’s ok too. There’s massive ass Facebook groups full of thousands of people. You can find anyone to sell anything to. You just have to be creative. 

For example, I teach my real estate clients how to use garage sale groups on Facebook to find home sellers. Think about it, if someone is going to have a garage sale, they are probably doing so because they plan to move. Now are all garage sales about moving? No. But some are and if you position yourself right, you can land the ones that count. 

The problem is that most salespeople have been indoctrinated. The sales manager who trained you, had to cold call. He/she had to door knock. When they were on the frontlines that’s how it was then. You have to remember they have been in management forever. They didn’t get “new age training” like you can have access too. Don’t get stuck doing old school shit that some old school manager tells you will work. Hell anything works if you just do enough of it. I’d rather be efficient with my efforts. 

This is the kind of sales stuff I teach. Not the “how to talk to people” junk but the “how to find someone who wants to buy your shit” kind of training. Whatever you sell, you can sell it online and probably sell more of it that way. You can learn all about it in my upcoming webinar. Just sign up at www.hcwebinar.com and I’ll show you the way.