I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again and again… Every h-Rep needs an e-Rep. That is, every human sales rep needs an electronic alter-ego; a highly personalized, customized, electronic version of him or herself. I repeat the refrain for two reasons:
- It is unequivocally true
- Appalling few sales reps have bothered to create one
The vast majority “gets” why it’s true. They realize that a sales rep must continuously become more efficient; get more accomplished in less time. All kinds of basic, repetitive and administrative tasks can be offloaded to an electronic assistant. All kinds of critical selling tasks can also be powerfully augmented by an e-Rep. For example:
Ever make a great face-to-face sales call? …or an average one? …or a bad one? Think about the impact a 2 or 3 minute video summary of the conversation would have to reinforce the brilliance (or whatever…) you shared. Create the video, upload it to YouTube, mark it private if appropriate, then include a link to it in your follow-up e-mail.
That leads to the second reason the vast majority “gets” why an e-Rep is essential. Your customers are busy too, right? That video not only reinforces your value proposition, it reinforces it at a time and place convenient to the customer. Anywhere, anytime, 24 X 7 X 365. And the customer can easily share your value proposition with others in their decision network who now hear the value proposition directly from you. Nothing gets lost in translation.
The example above is just one tiny sliver of an e-rep. You already know the litany; blog, YouTube, LinkedIn, radio, Twitter… Why on earth would any rep not take advantage of the time-saving, effectiveness-leveraging power of an e-Rep? The answer I hear most often? “I can’t think of anything to blog about or make an audio or video of.” My response to that statement?
AAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
OK. I’m calm again. Please pay attention… Think about the title of this post. Think audience of one. Now think of a decision maker or influencer in your territory. Now think of a message you need to deliver to that person in order to advance the sale. Now write out that message and/or make an audio recording of it and/or make a video.
Now think of another decision maker or influencer in your territory. Think of a message you need to deliver to that person. And so on. Get it?
Let’s think this through now. Let’s say in each of your top ten accounts and/or target accounts there are five contacts you either have or need to have . Let’s say there are two distinct messages you need to deliver to each. That would be 10 accounts X 5 contacts X 2 messages. That’s 100 discrete messages to load into your e-Rep. That’s 2 blog posts a week for year!
So who’s nuts? Me? Or the folks who say they can’t build an e-Rep because they have nothing to say?
Have I mentioned that every h-Rep needs an e-Rep?
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