Working for a cybersecurity specialising company, I understand the concept of Zero Trust and think it’s one that the majority of companies should adopt. When it comes to securing your infrastructure that is. Not so much when it comes to sales.
In my past life working within Business Development in the motor trade, time spent on inbound rather than outbound sales was far more advantageous, most car owners drive daily and they see the health and wellbeing of their car as crucial to their everyday. The same ethos should be implemented when it comes to cloud and cyber security, you wouldn’t get your brakes changed after they had worn away and not stopped you, why wait for your data to be compromised before looking at how to secure it for next time?
There seems to be a lack of trust in the motives behind a lot of Business Development. I can sometimes hear people’s eyes rolling when I attempt to reach out, why is it that the immediate perception and response to a sales-related communication is one of derision? I genuinely had a reply to an email last week that just said ‘Unsubscribe’. They seemed pleasantly surprised when I replied to say there was nothing to unsubscribe from as it was a genuine and natural outreach email. Yes, my ultimate goal is to bring in sales for Yobah and increase our revenue, but that doesn’t mean that our offerings won’t be beneficial to you. The days of ‘I could sell snow to the Eskimos salespeople have all but died out, people have realized there is no longevity in that sort of partnership, I know I’d much rather sell products and services to the people who actually want them rather than force them upon people who don’t but that might just be me. 99% of BDMs want to first and foremost help the customer, this in turn creates much more pipeline down the road, rather than a one-off ‘win’. This is where the frustration on our part comes in, the kneejerk reaction is that we only want to help ourselves and take every penny we can get, and that’s just not the case.
So the next time you get an email explaining the benefit of procuring services from a new company, or a phone call asking for 60 seconds of your time, don’t try to read between the lines, second guess the reason behind the contact, or immediately dismiss the information. That person ultimately feels that they have something that could benefit you or your business, if you disagree then fair enough, but have a think and ask yourself why does this person, that probably knows what they are talking about, want to discuss a partnership with me?