Some people may love the idea of doing a lead exchange, and finding the right people is part of the challenge. While a service like Allyforce could address it, I think it is much more important to understand the fundamentals to find your own.

One way to begin is to simply ask what is the “space” you are operating in and who are the target audience? For example, if you do application performance, but focus on the database, you could partner with someone who does application performance but focuses on the content delivery.

Suppose you’re in a field not quite as technical, say, you sell human resource and payroll outsourcing. Drill into your profile of customers *first* and really understand them. If the bulk of them are law firms, them target a company that sells contract lawyers.

The smaller the company you target, the less specific you need to be about the types of people you partner with. You may sell into IT at a law firm, but finding someone who sells to accounting is going to get you in the door probably faster than hunting and pecking on your own.

Remember the goal is to come up with names of accounts, people, and additional information you cannot get publicly. The purpose of the lead exchange is to increase your coverage and contact information, which is not easy.

Do other things still matter, like your value proposition, your sales proposition, and your ability to work with customers to discover and define the pain and challenges? Yes.

Will all customers just look on Google and social media and so proactively pushing to them is just backward and unnecessary? Heh, that’s a topic for a much longer discussion.

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling