Mark Donnigan | The Modern Way to Build Credibilty & Rapport

Marketing and sales alignment is pivotal in the modern era of sales, and building credibility and rapport in your communication for all departments is essential. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the CMO of Growth Stage Marketing, Mark Donnigan, to discuss his take on building rapport while unifying departmental collaboration.

Good CMOs think about marketing campaigns. Great CMOs bring value to the enterprise.

• Between the evolution of technology and the pandemic, sales has completely transformed. Buyers no longer attend trade shows to talk with peers; they organize entirely through online forums.
• Buyers are 50% or more through the buying process before reaching out to their first vendor. A seller’s job is no longer to get the first meeting; it’s to state the problem that the solution solves while differentiating from competitors.
• CMO turnover is almost exclusively because they repeatedly try the old playbook rather than embrace these new changes.

Credibility plays into rapport building:

• There’s one thing sellers can do at all times - add value to their network through social channels.
• Nobody wants to be sold to, so content shouldn’t be explicitly sales-focused. Instead, create helpful content the audience will read. 
• People are drawn to others who make intelligent observations about a problem or solution. 
• Add value to customers as someone who can bring thoughtful insights to the industry - that’s the open door in the modern sales landscape.
• Only 2% of LinkedIn users post content, so seeing thoughtful and relevant content from a person on the platform makes an impression on anyone. 

Create your own opportunities by providing internal and external value.

• Too many executives see themselves as professional managers, but that position is a commodity. However, when you can add insight to a large enterprise organization, you become a lot harder to replace.
• The new Rolodex isn’t names and addresses; it’s the community that forms around the network. People who like, respect, and are engaged with your content are more valuable than a simple name and number registry.
• Create a network that respects your insights and content. There are plenty of other competitors who are just as competent and insightful. However, nobody knows it because they don’t post.

Mark’s final takeaway? Focus on the seller - find every possible way to add value to those in the ecosystem around you. Visit his company website at growthstage.marketing and connect with Mark on LinkedIn for more interesting and insightful content. 

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

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This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to