Making the first move to introduce yourself to a stranger is an intimidating thought to most people. However, if you are in sales and part of your job is prospecting for new business, this is a serious anxiety that you need to confront. There are all sorts of reasons why we struggle to extend our hand and say hello to someone we don’t know but it all relates to one central issue; confidence. Overthinking, negative self image, not knowing what to say next, fear of rejection etc. all comes back to confidence. Just knowing what to say and how to say it can go a long way for a lot of people who are trying to overcome this social awkwardness. But there’s a problem in that conventional sales training has taught us to memorize 30 seconds of whatever we think would be interesting or important in order to capture someone’s intention. Yup, you’re supposed to memorize over a paragraph’s worth of information as the potential customer politely waits for you to work through your soliloquy, er, I mean elevator pitch. So talking this through, do we expect people with confidence issues to talk about themselves for 30 seconds to strangers in an effort to engage them?
Being able to concisely express your selling points is indeed a valuable skill that all salespeople should have, but it needs to be authentic which means you need to speak it from the heart and not from a script. But I’m getting ahead of myself at this point. What we need to have is a simple way for any salesperson to engage a new prospect while making a first impression and it all starts with a goal. This is where things often go wrong because, as salespeople, we honestly forget why we do various parts of our sales process. In the case of making an introduction the goal is simple; to have a conversation now or at a later time. More importantly, that goal is to talk about both them and yourself. Never make it about one or the other because the ask and reception feels, and is, imbalanced. It is more important for you to memorize that simple goal than it is of any elevator pitch of any length. Let’s demonstrate how easy it is to do that.
- Your name/ company – This is simple enough. “Hi, my name is _______ with _______”
- What we do – Also simple, but please don’t use this opportunity to go over a list of products and services. If you do the introduction right there will be time for that later.
- Customers we work with – This is your chance to make yourself relatable to the prospect. This can be expressed either by identifying a specific industry or a trend that is common with the customers you work with.
- The outcome – This is the solution and opportunity that is commonly achieved with the customers you work with or the one you believe is most important to the person you are talking to.
- The goal – Why did you take the time to introduce yourself? Now is the time to let that person know and, guess what, they won’t be surprised because having a conversation is the whole reason for making an introduction. It’s up to you if you want to have that conversation now or later.
Putting the pieces together the introduction sounds like this (pardon the self promotion):
“Hi, my name is (1)Aaron Jacobs with Scorecard Sales. We (2)optimize sales teams for (3)companies that are having success and want to (4)improve their performance to reach higher sales goals. I would like to (5)have a conversation with you at some point to learn about your sales team and share some of the ways we can optimize them.”
In case you were wondering, that took about 60 seconds to memorize and 12 seconds to say.
