Sales

Is Thought Leadership Ruining Your Ability to Close Sales?

April 29, 2013

Producing thought leadership has quickly become an effective way for salespeople to acquire and nurture prospects. But does it present a significant sales problem, too?

Lead Nurturing: When to Switch from Thought Leadership to Closing
In the old days, it used be that perhaps what salespeople knew wasn’t quite as important than who they knew. Networks trumped domain expertise and product knowledge, and a beefy Rolodex full of string-pullers often proved more fruitful than being the salesperson who knew the most about a particular market, solution, or customer pain point.
Today, however, sales strategist Jim Keenan argues that formula has reversed.
“What you know is quickly becoming the way you meet the who,” writes Keenan in a post on his top sales blog, A Sales Guy. “That’s created a new type of network that isn’t based on who you know. I call it the ‘knowledge network,’ and it’s comprised of people we’re connected to because of what we know and what we’ve taught them.”
In other words, knowledge is a hot sales currency. And whether that knowledge is delivered through a blog, newsletter, video, podcast, case study, or whitepaper, Keenan believes unique and relevant insight can help salespeople forge critical customer relationships through learning and teaching.
But he also says it can create a fairly distinct problem.
“As they become these objective thought leaders in customers’ minds, some salespeople find it difficult to then flip the switch and become the subjective closers they need to be,” Keenan told OpenView in a recent conversation. “They almost get stuck in nurturing purgatory.”

Trusted Advisor or Aggressive Closer: Can You Really Be Both?

One of the reasons for the nurturing stall, Keenan says, is that many prospects still remain somewhat skeptical of the sales thought leaders they follow. In many cases, they’re simply waiting for the salesperson to go into pushy sales mode. And when that happens, it’s like a line has been crossed.
“It’s kind of like being a doctor in that way,” Keenan explains. “You’re giving your patient all of this great advice about how to get healthy, and they appreciate that. But the moment you start pushing some brand name drug or prescribing expensive medical treatments, the patient may begin to doubt your motives.”
So how can you avoid that fate?
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Know When and How to Transition from Lead Nurturing to Closing

In the context of content marketing and thought leadership, Keenan says there are a few different ways to progressively develop your role from thought leader and lead nurturer to successful closer:

  1. Build a lead funnel: Similar to a typical sales funnel, salespeople need to come up with a lead funnel for the prospects they engage through content. That funnel, Keenan says, should have rules that qualify the stage that a particular prospect is in and provide a framework for advancing them.
  2. Don’t just speak/broadcast: Listen to what prospects are saying as you deliver insight to them. What caught their attention in the first place? What content can you deliver to more deeply address their problems and move them through your funnel? If your content never pushes prospects to explore an issue further, it will be difficult to ever progress to the point of a sale.
  3. Make closing the natural final step: If you’ve progressively addressed all of a prospect’s problems and appropriately moved them through your funnel, closing shouldn’t be such an abrupt surprise. In fact, Keenan says, prospects should be expecting (and maybe hoping for) it to happen.

The bottom line is that if you have a solution that fits what your prospects need, then Keenan says nurturing through thought leadership should simply be another way to usher prospects from opportunity to close.

Make Sure to Put in the Necessary Work Up Front

Keenan does warn that nurturing and closing prospects with thought leadership isn’t as simple as starting a blog and publishing content.
“There’s upfront work that needs to be done,” Keenan explains. “You need to do some research into the topics that your prospects care about, and spend some time truly understanding the solutions to their biggest pain points.”
The good news is that once you’ve done your homework and you begin to produce thought leadership, you should be able to go about your business as usual.
“Content and thought leadership shouldn’t change the timing of your sales cycle,” Keenan says. “Once you’ve put the work in upfront and the leads start to flow in, you should be closing those deals in the same timeframe and in the same way as deals from other lead sources.”

Additional Resources

3 Steps to More Effective B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns3 Steps to More Effective B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Are you nurturing your leads or just being annoying? Bestselling author and sales advisor Kendra Lee shares three steps to improve your B2B lead nurturing campaigns and take your prospects from cold to sold.
 
3 Tips to Avoid Sales Burnout3 Tips for Helping Reps Avoid Sales Burnout
The year’s first quarter has come and gone. Is your sales team’s excitement about the New Year still burning brightly, or is it already showing signs of fizzling out? Sales strategist and consultant Jim Keenan recommends doing three things to avoid burnout and get back on track.
 

We Want to Hear from You

Is there an ideal point in the buyer’s journey to transition from thought leadership to closing? How do you know when the time is right?

CEO & President

<strong>Jim Keenan</strong> is founder and Senior Partner of <a href="http://asalesguyconsulting.com/">A Sales Guy Consulting</a>. He has over 15 years of sales and executive sales leadership with particular experience in sales process, and sales team development. Prior to that he was also founder and CEO of <a href="http://profy.com/2007/09/14/cre8buzz/">cre8Buzz.com</a>.