14 Aug 101 – The Power of Social Selling and Building Relationships | Ally Brettnacher
Ally Brettnacher (@allybrett) is a Senior Account Executive at Sigstr. The company’s email signature marketing platform strives to empower companies to standardize their brand consistency and drive marketing ROI. Outside of the office, a new mom, an avid runner, and she has completed more than 30 half-marathons and five full marathons.
Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, Ally learned an especially important lesson from her father: to be able to run a company, a business owner has to know how to sell. She knew she wanted to focus on developing her craft in selling. From the very onset of her career, Ally found success embracing the role of a people person, focused on building authentic and meaningful connections.
A mainstay of Ally’s success has been her mastery of social selling: learning shared interests and connecting with clients via social media. By conveying an interest in what her clients do outside of the office, she’s been able to gain trust, credibility, and reliability as more than just a seller.
Takeaways
- Use Social for Call Prep: While doing research on prospects, it’s obvious you need to look at the company website and blog to see what their initiatives are, but it’s just as important to look at social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter to see what’s important to the person your going to be speaking with beyond their work life. Use this information to connect with them on a human level.
- Set Aside Time for Social Prospecting: It can be distracting to always have social platforms present while you’re working, trust me, that’s coming from someone who’s looking at Twitter right now. But, by setting aside time to specifically prospect via social, you can add a lot of leverage into your day. Take 30 minutes to scour your LinkedIn contacts looking for job changes. Set up searches on Sales Navigator for your ideal customer profile so you can be alerted with they post something. Set up TweetDeck to look for keywords and phrases that you can respond to in real time. And lastly, set a goal for yourself so you can measure the activity.
- Focus on Doing Great Work: I remember being “busy” early in my career and looking at those who had kids and wondering how in the world they did it. Then I had a kid of my own. Now, this is not advice just for parents, but the lesson learned can be greatly impactful for your career. Take an honest look at your day. How much of it are you wasting in-between meetings, having mindless banter with coworkers, or checking your fantasy sports scores? What if you had to get all of your work down between 9 and 5 and weren’t allowed to open your laptop later at night? What would you cut out? What would you be intentional about focusing on?
Book Recommendations
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Sponsor
- What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
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