Have you:
- Ever got a cold-call from someone who clearly doesn’t know anything about your business?
- Ever received sales email after sales email offering you something you already have (or worse, sell!)
- Ever accepted a connection on LinkedIn only to get an ill-judged sales pitch immediately after?
I expect you have. I certainly have.
As well as being irritated by unsolicited sales pitches, I am also frustrated. Frustrated, because if any of the humans behind these pitches (when they are humans) had spent a few seconds Googling me or the startup I work for then they wouldn’t have wasted either mine or their time.
There is also the remote possibility that, had they pitched their product appropriately, I might have wanted to carry on the conversation.
The thing is, there isn’t a shortcut here – who are you more likely to listen to? A stranger sending you a knife to eat your soup with, or someone who’s spent time getting to know you and your business?
We call the latter technique social selling - read all about it below...