About This Episode

Growing a business isn’t easy. 

One of the hardest aspects of growth for many companies, especially startups, is trying to find an authentic method for conducting their outbound sales strategy. Few people know that as well as the guest of this week’s episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, the Head of Revenue of Alyce, Daniel Rodriquez. Daniel’s job is to help businesses grow in organic, and authentic ways through outbound marketing.

His job is to help companies humanize their outbound marketing. 

We enjoyed hearing Daniel point out that employees build a lot of camaraderie within an early stage company, that sticks with you as you grow. However, as you get bigger it’s hard to maintain that connection, which can be a growth pain for many companies. 

He cites an us against the world mentality to help bring an impossible vision to life, which he admits is part of the appeal of working with a startup. 

After being on the receiving end of a lot of outreach as a former startup owner himself, Daniel knew that there was a big need for marketers to treat their prospects as human beings first, and sales leads, second.

Instead of focusing on a sales persona, Alyce helps companies to show up in a way that is more believable and more genuine. 

“The reality is we don’t stop caring about our personal interests when we show up to work.” 

The 5 Pillars to the Human Selling Approach

In the second half of this episode, Daniel takes a step back from talking about his personal career trajectory, and breaks down the secret to Alyce’s success. He helps our listeners to humanize their selling approach by reframing it into five simple and easy to follow steps. 

• Be Thoughtful

 

Showing prospects that you care stands out in the minds of the buyer. For example, a hand-written letter is very memorable and can make your outbound techniques a lot more personal. Being thoughtful shows your potential customers that you are willing to go the extra mile, which champions the idea of customer loyalty. 

• Interact with the person, not the persona

 

Step 2 involves knowing who you are talking to, what they care about, and creating common ground. Without doing this legwork, your sales process is destined to fail. 

For example, it’s important to make all of your sales outreach personable by asking what your target’s name is, and pronouncing it correctly. This is basic polite behavior that shows you care about the person on the other end of the sales call. 

If you don’t know something, Daniel advises that you ask questions in order to learn what motivates them, which will give you the keys to knowing how best to serve them. 

This allows you to create common ground, which works to create a bond and facilitates a more genuine relationship from the onset of your interaction. 

• Give consistently

 

Give to someone without expecting something in return, knowing that some people will want to give back in a bigger way. Wowing your buyer is a great way to delight them and consistently prove that there is a genuine interest in them as a customer. 

 

• Empower buyers with choice

 

People desire to be able to make choices on their own without having to listen to a lot of outside opinions. Facilitating choices for your buyer makes it easier as marketing leaders to meet your buyer on their own terms. By giving your buyer a choice it allows them to feel empowered and to make a decision that is in alignment with their needs. 

 

• Stand for something 

 

For leadership, especially, it’s important for brands to stand for things on the socio political spectrum. People want to feel connected to brands and the values that they represent. 

Doing this may alienate some customers, but will win over more people than you will lose. This also helps make it easier for buyers to view interaction with brands more genuinely, and less generic.

We learned a lot from listening to Daniel’s passion for helping businesses perfect and hone their outbound strategy. 

Let us know in the comments what your favorite takeaway was! 

This post is based on an episode of The Sales Experience podcast. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Experience Podcast. 

If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.

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