How Salespeople Can Leverage Industry Influencers To Drive More Deals

Article written by Peter Thomas.

Our guest in this webinar has over two decades of technology sales and marketing. Mark Fidelman has been listed as one of Huffington Post’s Top 50 Most Social CEOs and is the CEO for Raynforest, Inc.

Nothing can reinforce Mark’s credentials in social selling quite like his latest book, Socialized. It’s described as “the playbook for building a social business” and has been endorsed by executives at IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, and SAP.

Mark Fidelman is often invited to speak and write about the way influencer marketing can deliver a positive impact for business. Jack Kosakowski has an illuminating chat with this globally recognized marketing leader on the value of industry influencers.

Strap yourself in for an insight-packed webinar. With these touchpoints, you can start to create and influence more sales conversations.

How to identify key influencers in your industry

An influencer is someone with a special ability to change minds. When it comes to B2B marketing, the factors that really matter are distribution and amplification.

Discovering influencers in niche markets is a lot easier, through certain hashtags, forums and other online channels.

It’s vital you start a new spreadsheet to help you identify the top 20 influencers in your field of work. Jack believes online content is fairly crucial to spotting the right influencers.

Mark and Jack agree that a few hours of work will be needed for this process. A keen eye is needed to look at the levels of engagement, which will include shares and commenting.

Of course, we’re aware salespeople and buyers consume our webinars, so Jack looks at this situation from both perspectives. Mark stresses the need for warm introductions. This moves us on to our next point.

How to build the relationship with key influencers in your space

You have to prove you’re a fan of a particular influencer if you seriously want to work with them. Naturally the best way to kick this off is by sharing their content and writing some positive messages. These are real door openers.

Of course, sharing content on social media is easily done these days in the click of a button or the press of a finger. Don’t be tempted by this convenience when you want to build a bond with an influencer, look to any option that enables you to tag them in your share post. Don’t let it end there; ensure to add your own personal spin on it by putting a few words into your post.

Jack also looks at the bigger picture. You can become an influencer yourself with a few strategies that build up your name.

Key strategies salespeople can leverage as value tools to get inside their networks

We discuss ways you can give a bit of value to influencers. Mark Fidelman underlines the importance of reaching out to key people in your industry and explains the kind of things he likes to hear from his field of work. He also reveals a tactic borrowed from the B2C approach to marketing, something that can truly work for building a business connection.

Jack believes two important foundations are organic conversations and content curation. Mark agrees, but points out that content has to be relevant; as there are too many people trying their hand at curation yet end up only adding to the noise that’s out there.

Engagement strategies leveraging influencers for referrals

We discuss the importance of building up a referral network and the ways it can be done. Jack even has an anecdote on how someone has done it without even using a computer or smartphone.

This part of the webinar is really strong, with Mark Fidelman raising some eyebrows by bringing in a dating analogy. It’s a useful tactic for gaining traction when your profile is virtually unknown.

Finally, Jack gives an overview on which social platforms can best suit your strategies for connecting with influencers.

We’re certain that you’ll find the actionable takeaways from this webinar to be highly useful in making essential business connections.