Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Andy Paul .
About the interviewee
Andy Paul is a leading sales acceleration expert, author, speaker and consultant. He teaches organizations how to accelerate their sales by maximizing the value and power of their sales processes to move customers to make fast and favorable decisions. He was recently recognized by Forbes as one of the leading global experts on social selling.
Andy is the author of Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers To Make Fast, Favorable Decisions (AMACOM Books, 2014), and the author of Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales, which was recognized as one of the Top 3 Sales & Marketing books of 2011.
Tell me about your firm
Andy Paul is Founder/CEO of Zero-Time Selling, Inc. He works out of offices in New York City and San Diego.
What type and size of companies do you have as clients?
I work with companies of all sizes and industries.
What comes to mind when you see this topic?
What first comes to mind is that salespeople and executives are looking for a secret shortcut when it comes to attracting the time and attention of busy people. And, the fact is that there are no shortcuts. You have to earn the time and attention of prospects and this requires an investment of your own time and effort.
What are the best practices when it comes to this issue?
There are two components to the strategy to break through to a hard to reach prospect.
First, you must have your own platform in order. The first thing a prospect will do when you attempt to reach them is Google and research you. What are they going to find that will inspire them to invest their time and trust in you and the products and services you represent? For instance, are you demonstrating thought leadership in your field with a regular blog or compelling twitter content? Do you have followers? Is your LinkedIn profile complete? Do you have a substantial number of connections and endorsements?
Second, the best way to reach people is to pique their curiosity with insights into their business and aspirations. This requires deep research into your prospects before you attempt to contact them. Research the company and the individual that you are attempting to contact. Set up Google Alerts on the company and the point of contact to harvest news and other sources of online information. Spend time on their website. Follow the Twitter stream, blog output and LinkedIn updates of the person you want to reach. What are the online conversations they are having? If they participate in LinkedIn discussion groups, are you contributing to those discussions with insights of your own? Use the tools and technologies that are readily available to you to form a detailed profile of the person you want to contact and the business issues that are of most concern to them to which your product or service can provide tangible value. Do all of this (and more) before you reach out to the elusive contact.
Contact information:
