Tips for Selling to Friends

Image via CrunchBase

Throughout my sales career before Jigsaw, I never really had the experience of selling to a peer, much less an actual friend. Given the fact that I was a 20-something who spent my free time traveling, playing (watching) sports or otherwise whooping it up on the town, there really wasn’t much of an overlap between my customers (high level corporate execs-usually a VP of Marketing or CIO over 40) and my friends (other knucklehead weekend warriors).  Also, this was before Facebook and LinkedIn came along to blur the friend/business acquaintance line; in fact for most normal people “online friend” was a euphemism your IT guy used for the people he met once a month at the airport Marriott to do God-knows-what.

Now that I work for a company with a much broader potential customer base (lots of people need data) and I’m getting gray hair (proudly- it means I still have a little left), there are many cases where I am entering into a contractual relationship where money comes to Jigsaw (selling) to people I have met multiple times in person and mutually enjoy their company (friends). For those of you out there that would like to leverage your “friends- with- budgets” but don’t want to face down a life of uncomfortable social events, I have compiled a few tips that might help you. Note: I have never sold B2C, so this list is child’s play for you poor real estate, financial services and insurance guys that have to sell to friends and (I would slit my wrists) family as a matter of course…

-          Be transparent. Lay your intentions right on the table- “I’m trying to get a big check out of you or your company.” Don’t milquetoast your way around talking about partnership or some bogus social agenda. “I’m here for the PO-if you can’t handle it then let’s not do this.”

-          Be specific about what you want the person to do for you. “I need you to get me on the CMO’s calendar.” 

-          Respect privacy. Everything you know about the friend out of work is 100% confidential. What is more of a nightmare than having your college drinking buddy who has now devolved into a schmuck sales guy telling stories in the Fishbowl Conference Room about you and that Air Singapore flight attendant with the glass eye? (I let it be known that this works both ways- my checkered past has rendered me unelectable for even the most trivial government position)

-          Your friend is the boss. Let them set all the boundaries and LISTEN to everything they tell you. Give them an “out” not only at the beginning but at each major step in the sales cycle. (Except the contract stage- the fox is already in the henhouse so there will be wings for lunch.)

-          No surprises. Tell them your every move before you do it. I once had the husband of someone I worked with (definitely not a friend- that little tool) screaming at me in the parking lot when he found out that I had contacted another person in the account- it turns out she was the exec admin to the CEO and frequently made his life miserable. Lesson learned.

 

There you have it. Obviously, if you are a person that sums up every relationship you have in terms of pipeline potential then this list is irrelevant. You can sling Amway without my help.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Company Forces Employee to Delete LinkedIn Profile (newcommbiz.com)
• No Brown Nosing Required. Your RAISE Is Ready When You Are. (agentgenius.com)
• Jurors: Stop Twittering (wired.com)