What can Elton John teach me about Sales & Marketing I hear you say…
Ok, bear with me.
There are 3 valuable lessons that all of us SMarketers can learn from Elton.
1.) Reinvent yourself: Elton’s first number one was in 1976, and the most recent hit single, December 2021. That’s 45 years, and the man can still top the charts! Not many people can boast about being at the top of their game for that long! So how on earth does he do it?
Elton has learnt the fine art of reinvention. He understands trends and, more importantly, his market. What’s trending in 2021 certainly wasn’t in 1976!
Apply this to sales; what is working today might not have 5, 10, or even 25 years ago. High performance sales professionals are investing now in developing skills such as storytelling, social selling, and emotional intelligence.
Action: What new sales skills do you want to develop in 2022?
2.) Strategic Partnerships: Elton’s first ever number one was a collaboration with Kiki Dee and his most chart topper a collab with Ed Sheeran.
Elton understands the power of collaborating and leveraging other people’s audiences.
Now apply that to sales, and strategic partnerships are one of the most effective yet underutilised sales strategies in the book.
Ask yourself, whose audience would you love to tap into?
Action: Create a shortlist of potential strategic partners who serve the same target market as you but are non-competitive. Remember that two parties coming together creates even greater value for the end client.
3.) Build your personal brand: Now, I’m not suggesting you need to dress as eccentrically as Elton, but what I am suggesting is that you need to stand out.
96% of the content we consume is unbranded; we follow people more than brands. The onus is now on us to develop our personal brand as sales professionals.
That doesn’t mean you need to share your every move or your breakfast on socials, but you do need to contribute in the place where your target market is hanging out.
Can you share a blog, a book recommendation, a resource from your marketing, an upcoming webinar, a recent statistic, a top tip, a 60-second video filmed on your iPhone?
It is no longer marketing’s job to do all the marketing, the average person has a network of 600 people, yet only 6% of people share information about their company online.
As Maz Farrelly, who I recently interviewed on my podcast, said, “it is not my job to be interested in you; it is your job to be interesting”.
Stand out from the crowd by developing your professional personal brand by contributing to the conversation.
Action: Identify where your target market hangs out. LinkedIn? Forums? User Groups? YouTube? Twitter? Industry Groups? Commit to one way you can contribute and do it today, strike whilst the iron is hot!
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