Myths of Selling to Government

The Best Government Sales Prospect is the One Who Comes to You

Rick Wimberly Season 2 Episode 10

How would you like government sales prospects to come to you? Wouldn't that be much better than you trying to cold call your way to a government contract? In this episode of Myths of Selling to Government with Government Selling Solution's Rick Wimberly, the successful government sales pro shares secrets to getting government sales prospects to seek you out as they look for a solution to a problem. 

Rick doesn't promise that a get-them-to-come to me strategy is less work than cold calling. It's not. But, the sales and marketing techniques surrounding the strategy help lead to government contracting success, produce well-qualified leads and shorten government sales cycles. For experienced and beginning government sales and marketing professionals.

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The Myths of selling to the government, if you're using traditional sales techniques to sell to government, you're doing it wrong. The podcast is brought to you by government selling solutions, government selling solutions, selling and marketing to the government free years, quite successfully. Thank you. Now, here's Rick. This is another of those episodes that could create a stir. That concept flies directly in the face of a practice that some folks swear by one that comes from years, probably generations of practice, one that I say really doesn't work, cold calling, I say, get them to call you. Imagine the better shot you have at doing all the things that need to be done to win a government contract. If they come to you, you're way ahead of the game. To me, cold calling is one huge waste of time in the government space. In fact, in most spaces, it's even a cop out. You think you're selling and going to hit a live one, and it keeps you busy. Or you're starting out. And you're told that it will be good training, it won't be and you probably won't stick around. Or you're not targeting the right cold, cold prospect. And you don't even know it until it's too late. Yet, time and time again. I have clients and others tell me about their cold calling, wondering why it's just not working. Why? Simple. No one likes cold calling. No one likes to get cold calls, and no one likes to make them. No one liked them in the old days when people actually answered their phones, and certainly not now. Enough said. So if you're not cold calling, what are you doing? You're getting them to call you. I've worked with clients have one now who find this concept real tough to understand. Have we call such and such? Did you hear they've got some money? Don't you think these folks should be buying from us? On and on? They ask. They've yet to trust the strategy used to get prospects real prospects to reach out call or send an email saying, Tell me more. Who can blame the naysayers. If they've not seen at work? They can't help but believe that precious time is passing. And we're not getting anywhere. Then whammo when they least expect it, the team is closing government sales contracts, and trust in the strategy begins to build. What is the strategy you may ask? There are a lot of methods underneath the strategy. We talked about many of them in our myths of selling to government podcast episodes, were all about getting good government prospects to expose themselves, so you can focus on them, help them and close the sale. Check out the episode three steps that will actually help you win federal contracts, or nine pieces of info you need to win government contracts. Then there's mapping pain to win government contracts, building relationships, and government sales, building trust with government buyers. Oh, and this one really hits the mark. Cold calling doesn't work your personal brand does. The overall get them to call me strategy is simple and found in this sentence. Put yourself in a position to help prospects understand how valuable and trustworthy you can be as a remedy to their pain. Let's say it again. Put yourself in a position to help prospects understand how valuable and trustworthy you can be as a remedy to their pain. Let's dissect the Senate's first put yourself in a position. If they don't know who you are. They can't relate you to a possible solution to their problem. Getting them to know you takes work in a variety of approaches. Think about that episode. Cold calling doesn't work your personal brand does. You've heard people talk about building personal brands often equated with being a social media influencer. Believe it or not, many of the same concepts apply to you developing a brand and guv markets, except there are no tick tock passes involved. It doesn't happen overnight. Like it doesn't happen overnight for social media influencers. Next, to help prospects understand how valuable and trustworthy you can be. This part of the GIF and call me strategy has a lot an awful lot to do with relationship building. You've heard me say it many times many different ways. You've got to build relationships if you're going to be successful, winning government con

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Trucks. Without relationships, there is no way that prospects will get to know you is valuable and trustworthy. If they don't believe you are, they're not going to buy from you. And don't think of all of the obstacles and bureaucracy involved in closing a contract makes this less true and away, it makes it more true. revisit those building relationships or building trust episodes. One more time, put yourself in a position to quickly understand how valuable and trustworthy you can be to remedy oops, put yourself in a position to help prospects understand how valuable and trustworthy you can be as a remedy to their pain shoe, as a remedy to their pain, last part of the strategy sentence, no pain, no gain. All right, not exactly the common use. But if you don't understand truly understand their pain, you're not going to gain a contract, someone else will, because they're better informed. They know who will benefit the most from their solution, they will be able to do a much better job than you building a value proposition. Even if you're on a level playing field, when it goes out to bid, their response will be well more responsive, they'll be able to respond to nuances that are not clearly spelled out in the RFP. That is unless you've put yourself in a position to help prospects understand how valuable and trustworthy you can be, as a remedy to their pain, do this and they'll come to you. Now them coming to you doesn't necessarily mean they're going to buy from you. But you will have truly qualified prospects and a good shot at winning. Is that something that might interest you. This by no means is a passive strategy. It's the exact opposite. It's a lot of work. Find thoughts and guidance about methods of getting prospects to come to you throughout all the episodes myths of selling to government. Oh, you can get some of this from the blog on the golf selling.com website or in our social media post. Or you can follow me, Rick Wimberly or government solutions on LinkedIn. If you have any questions or thoughts to share, reach out to me at Rick at gov selling.com. And let's schedule a chat. See what I did there putting myself in a position smarter than I look Hmm.

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Today's episode has been brought to you by government selling solutions government selling solutions getting government sold

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