Ducks and Water
I recently was the guest speaker for a local group of sales and marketing executives. Roughly half the attendees were business owners, with the other half the lead biz dev person for their company. However, all were the principle Rainmaker for their companies.
As my topic was social media and personal branding, I was initially concerned by the average age of the group. This is a guess only, but the average age was probably in the mid 40s. My other concern is that most of the companies represented were B2B (which have cultures not known for being early adopters).
My concern was largely unfounded. First, almost everyone in the room had heard of Twitter and Facebook (several were active on both). Second, they asked excellent questions. Maybe it was because a large part of my talk was about what NOT to do, but I was thankful for the tone. Third, for a room full of accomplished people, they were surprisingly humble. They couldn’t understand why anyone would “follow” them.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised that they “got it” so fast. Effective B2B rainmakers have a few common traits:
- They genuinely like people. This makes them natural connectors and networkers.
- They understand the art of the transaction. They know that conversions create relationships which create transactions.
- They are excellent story-tellers – understanding the old sales maxim that “facts tell, but stories” sell. This makes them interesting and worth following.
- They are natural communicators. Most B2B deals require the salesperson to take complex things and make them simple to understand.
- They know the power of managing and building relationships. This includes how to properly introduce themselves.
These 5 factors align very nicely with the culture of social media; making B2B rainmakers maybe the most natural of social media business users.
By the way, here is a nice re-cap of my presentation from the blog of one of the people that attended.