What is Propinquity?

PROPINQUITY - CLOSENESS OF TWO BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS SHAKING HANDS

The goal of digital marketing is to create propinquity. That means you are creating positive brand exposure. This could be for both your corporate brand as well as your personal brand.

Propinquity is a term that comes from the Latin propinquitas which means “nearness”. In social psychology, it is one of the main factors that lead to interpersonal attraction.

For Marketing purposes, we use the term to refer to the familiarity generated through the ever-presence of a brand. There is a comfort created by exposing customers to a brand regularly. Think about large brands that sponsor sports teams. Their goal is to create comfort with a brand versus trying to sell anything specific.

In Sales, propinquity is the key to generating trust. Some industries require their sales team to make regular visits bearing donuts. In business-to-business sales, at a minimum, a Sales professional needs to keep a list of his/her top 20 customers and top 5 prospects near his/her desk. Making regular calls, sending personalized emails and visiting once a month is key.

Propinquity in Sales is where narrowcast and broadcast marketing intersects. If broadcast communication is advertising and narrowcast communication is one on one, belly-to-belly meetings, then propinquity in Sales is achieving familiarity and branding through one-on-one communication regularly and reliably.

Propinquity Best Practices – Top 10

Here are some best practices to achieve Propinquity in Sales.

  1. Create a “Defend” list of your top 20 customers
  2. Consciously send them a personalized communication every month at a minimum
  3. Make it your business to know when their birthdays are, and send them a simple note to wish well once a year.
  4. Send a note for all job promotions and work anniversaries.
  5. Endorse them personally for their top 3 skills on LinkedIn.
  6. Write a sincere recommendation.
  7. Engage in value-added content on LinkedIn by liking, sharing, and commenting.
    • Stay away from politics.
  8. Send a handwritten thank you card after key meetings.
  9. Put brochures in the mail quarterly
  10. Send “Did you know” emails monthly building awareness around all the products and services your company offers.

How to Create Propinquity with Defend Customers

Each Sales professional should have a list of his/her top 20 customers at his/her desk. These are customers from which 80% of their annual business comes. It is important to stay in front of your most valued customers. If you are not creating propinquity on a regular schedule with those who are responsible for your paycheck, you are risking losing the customer to your competition.

See below for a general guideline on creating propinquity with B2B Defend customers.

Propinquity – Defend Schedule

ACTIVITYWEEKLYMONTHLYQUARTERLYANNUALLY
LinkedIn Post Engagement 3 times
Phone calls X
Emails X
LinkedIn Messaging X
Product Postcards X
Brochures X
Greetings Card X
Birthday Greeting X
Line Card X
LinkedIn Skills Endorsement X

Creating Propinquity with Attack Customers

Every Sales professional, in addition to having list of (20) Defend customers at his/her desk, will also have a list of (5) Attack customers. These are the customers one’s competitors value most dearly. If you are a market share driven industry, it crucial to growing your customer list by targeting your competition’s Defend list.

Here is a guide on how to achieve propinquity with your competitor’s most valued customers.

Propinquity – Attack Schedule

ACTIVITYWEEKLYMONTHLYQUARTERLYANNUALLY
LinkedIn Post Engagement 3 times
Phone calls X
Emails X
LinkedIn Messaging X
Product Postcards X
Brochures X
Greetings Card X
Birthday Greeting X
Line Card X
LinkedIn Skills Endorsement X

The Challenge of Being a Sales Manager

In addition to hiring talent, training them, measuring performance, and celebrating the high-performers, one of the key responsibilities of every Sales manager is to ensure each Sales professional engages in propinquity inducing narrowcast communication with his/her customers. This can seem exhausting and sometimes overwhelming.

Many times, Sales professionals do not recognize their own lack of propinquity. A lack of awareness will usually lead to a lack of commitment to changing their communication approach.

Increase Communication for Increased Sales Results

Show me a breakdown in performance and I will show you a breakdown in Communication.

Sales managers, when coaching Sales professionals under her care will often hear, “I am too busy. There are not enough hours in the day.” Trying to change communication habits in the face of such resistance can be challenging to say the least.

In these situations, the Sales manager can feel stuck. S/he knows that the key to increased performance is increased communication, but s/he is met with an unwilling or incapable Sales team in changing the communication status quo. Frustration or apathy ensues.

Sales manager frustrated with her head down on her desk
It can be frustrating. We are here to help.

Need Help?

Lean Inc. specializes in helping business-to-business Sales professionals create propinquity, using our narrowcast communication tools. We have the experience of knowing how difficult coaching Sales professionals to embrace communication best practices can be.

That is why we advocate for Sales Managers to remove the burden of propinquity from their Sales team’s shoulders and perform the customer engagement for them.

Lean Inc. provides highly customized, and narrowcast B2B customer engagement for the Sales Professional. We stay engaged with the customer so that the Sales professional can concentrate on closing deals.

WATCH OUR VIDEO: Sales Engagement

To find out more, schedule a meeting with us by clicking below.

Lean Lead Generation

Set a time with us that works for you to review what we do, and how we do it, and see if there is a fit.

LinkedIn Narrowcast Marketing Best Practices

two people meeting one-on-one

Broadcast marketing is advertising, newsletters, and billboards. It works for building the brand. Salespeople need and want a strong brand, but what they really care about is LEADS.

In Sales, narrowcast marketing is what counts.

What is narrowcast marketing?

Narrowcast marketing is one-to-one communications. It is picking up the phone and having a conversation in which you listen for opportunities. It is sending a carefully crafted email or a message through LinkedIn.

Follow these LinkedIn narrowcast best practices to generate leads:

  1. Search for and view up to 100 new targeted contacts in your APR every day
  2. Make connection requests to up to 30 decision-makers every day
  3. Send new connections a request for them to follow your company page
  4. Send birthday wishes, work anniversary greetings, and new job greetings daily
  5. Endorse your new contacts for the top 3 skills and talents they have
  6. Send up to 50 messages polling for interest in the various products and services your company offers
  7. Send emails to your LinkedIn contacts’ email address and attach brochures

Engage in these best practices every day. If you need help doing this daily, speak to us about performing the narrowcast marketing process for you. The Sales professional only needs to respond to LinkedIn messages when a customer requests a proposal. No software to run, no configuration.

Want to Learn More?

If you are curious about how we would tailor a narrowcast marketing solution for you or your Sales professional and you are ready to meet, click the link below.

Lean Lead Generation

Set a time with us that works for you to review what we do, and how we do it, and see if there is a fit.

LinkedIn Best Practices How-To Video

Here are some best practices when looking to building a prospect-rich network of contacts. If you are in Sales and want to grow your pipeline and increase market penetration, LinkedIn is the perfect place to start building B2B relationships.

Watch this short video for a step-by-step guide to using LinkedIn to its fullest.

For help automating the process of narrowcast marketing using LinkedIn, fill out the form to the right and Lean Inc. will assist in building your network and quote log, or you can schedule time with us directly below.

Learn More About LinkedIn Narrowcast Marketing Solution

If you are curious about how we would tailor a narrowcast marketing solution for you or your Sales professional and you are ready to meet, click the link below.

Lean Lead Generation

Set a time with us that works for you to review what we do, and how we do it, and see if there is a fit. https://letsmeet.io/simonwalker2/discussion

LinkedIn is a great place to find new business

Looking for new business on LinkedIn

If you are looking to increase business in the post-COVID19 world, LinkedIn is a great place to start. LinkedIn is the meeting place for business leaders and a great place to network in order to find new business.

LinkedIn may not be the most popular social network based on the number of users, that spot is reserved for Facebook. But as of July 2020, LinkedIn had 170 million users in the United States, of which over 40% visit the site daily. Indeed, 90 million are senior-level influencers and 63 million are key decision-makers. LinkedIn is most popular with older users aged 46-55. That means a great deal when you consider the average age of a Fortune 500 CEO is 58 years old.

PROSPECTING FOR NEW BUSINESS USING LINKEDIN

92% of Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn

If you represent a major brand or you are looking to sell to a major brand, then LinkedIn is a great reference book of companies and business leaders to network with. Generally, you will be able to find out a lot about the businesses you are hoping to do business with.

57% of companies had a LinkedIn company page in 2013

More and more companies see LinkedIn as an important vehicle for communicating with prospective customers and prospective employees alike.

A quick search will reveal the basic information you might be interested in when preparing for a presentation. The company website, phone number, industry, number of employees, the year they were founded, and the location of the head office is displayed.

46% percent of the social media traffic to B2B company sites is from LinkedIn

Companies know that posting and engaging with prospective customers through LinkedIn works. With almost half of interest traffic referrals coming from LinkedIn alone, companies are investing in their LinkedIn presence in order to boost traffic on their company website.

97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as a content distribution channel

PROSPECT FOR NEW BUSINESS ON LINKEDIN

If you are looking to find new business on LinkedIn, you will find you are not alone. 97% of business to business marketers use LinkedIn to distribute their content and find new business. If you are not already using LinkedIn to develop new business relationships, you are bucking a very popular trend.

Only 3 million LinkedIn users share content every week

Despite 97% of B2B marketers using LinkedIn, they are not facing very much competition. Only 3 million users actually shared content each week. That means, there is plenty of room for you to get your message out and be heard. In fact, with only 0.05% of users posting and 40% of the users visiting the LinkedIn daily, that means you have a large passive audience looking for and ready to accept your broadcast and narrowcast messaging.

LinkedIn is responsible for 80% of B2B leads from social media

LinkedIn is a great place to find new business. If you are spending time and energy using Facebook or other platforms to get your message out, you will be surprised to learn that 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn. Therefore, LinkedIn is a very efficient platform for generating B2B leads.

Sign up for Lean Pipeline Solutions LinkedIn communication tools.

LinkedIn is a great place to find new business

Where else can you ensure your sales reps connect with up to 30 new contacts per day, send 50 messages to potential customers every day, and email up to 400 prospects every day?

Lean Pipeline Solutions fills sales reps’ pipelines by engaging daily in LinkedIn communication tasks and employing best practices for accelerated business development results.

Interested in exploring Narrowcast Marketing? Want to learn more?

Lean Lead Generation

Set a time with us that works for you to review what we do, and how we do it, and see if there is a fit.