It’s often said that thought leadership is a tool to enhance the three Rs: reputation, relationships, and revenue. Of the three, revenue is usually the weakest link. Lead generation, sure: you get our research study; we get an email address to stick in our marketing automation system. But thought leadership that fuels sales conversations? Most salespeople use thought leadership like chum on the water: they spread it around and hope a few prospects circle close enough to bite the hook.
Or as John Shumadine, Deloitte’s Director of Market Insights, told us a few weeks ago: “The goal of our thought leadership program is to enhance our reputation. It’s not about selling.” ITSMA’s thought leadership definition appears to support his point of view:
“Ideas that educate customers and prospects about important business and technology issues and help them solve those issues—without pitching.”
But sales is more than pitching. Pitching happens in boiler rooms; selling happens everywhere. Even in an IT or professional services environment, where the sales cycle is long and the investment is high, selling is a series of conversations over time leading to a decision to embark on a journey of change. In a services environment, selling is education. It’s consultation. It’s about ideas, insights, and epiphanies. It’s not “always be closing.” It’s “always be coaching.”
When Deloitte’s Mr. Shumadine spoke to us a few weeks ago, what he was really saying is that thought leadership is not sales collateral. He’s right. Narrowly construed, it isn’t. But as part of the process leading to a decision to buy, thought leadership is very much part of selling. And although salespeople will never become the pure subject matter experts who we usually think of as thought leaders, a little bit of expertise goes a long way—especially when true subject matter rock stars are in short supply, billed out to existing customers and wearing a dozen different hats.
How would your customers react if salespeople became subject matter knowledgeable in their own right? It’s not impossible. Becoming a subject matter expert is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Think of the one-eyed man—and remember that we’re all one-eyed men, flanked by the blind eye on one side and the fully sighted on the other. In some situations, your salespeople may already be subject matter conversant. In other words, a little help from marketing—with a 30-minute presentation at the sales meeting, a script, a few examples, some slides with notes—can help salespeople take the conversation further and build more credibility with customers.
Of course, you can do a lot more to help salespeople elevate their conversations. The point is that there’s an entire range of subject matter expertise. Some knowledge and understanding is better than none. To the extent you build bridges between full-blown thought leadership content and sales conversations, you’ll be helping salespeople become better at engaging customers.
Aristotle taught that persuasion requires credibility, logic, and emotion (ethos, logos, and pathos). Thought leadership selling provides all three: the credibility that comes with targeted knowledge, the logic of a resonant argument, and the emotional connection that comes with personal engagement. Helping salespeople achieve all three may be the highest form of sales enablement.
“Image courtesy [Feelart] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”