[achillesheels]

I made a living using LinkedIn’s sales navigator premium subscription to field prospects. It required me to (a) have a large amount of connections in the first place and (b) have a solution for large enough companies to be represented on LinkedIn. (I did electrical product contract manufacturing sales)

Once the decision-maker position is knowable thanks to (a) + the subscription, it was quick to find a name to use to break into the fort so to speak via a “two-touch” method of email and cold calling. A sale at the end of the day begins with a conversation and a persistence in continuing the contact in order to accelerate a deal.

It’s important to note that presentation goes a very long way; it helps I write in my leisure and have a fastidiousness which shows off in my email templates. That’s where I think many cold callers fail: they are too urgent or come across as too unprofessional which registers as a sense of risk before the relationship can even begin.

Finally, everything involves iterating. I was able to comfortably deliver my sales pitch in under 10 seconds over the phone to some of the largest retail buyers in North America by crafting the message via answering the question: “what is it they need to hear?”

10 seconds is a lot of time, but not so much time that it will leave a bad taste in the customers mouth if they have no current interest. You are trying to help them, after all, and they should be able to receive that first impression no matter what.