You’ve heard of product-led, marketing-led and sales-led, but have you heard of the community-led approach? And what does this mean for the future of sales? It’s no secret that “community” is gaining traction as one of the most prominent, up-and-coming new functions of business. When I joined Commsor as the Head of Sales in August of 2020, I entered this role having no idea that my team would not only be developing tools for folks in an essentially untouched market, but also completely redefining how a company could approach their sales process.
A community acts as a micro version of your total addressable market and by managing it, you now have direct access to the topics, ideas, thoughts, wants, and needs of your current and potential customers all in one place. Information obtained from managing a community can be used to build trust and credibility with your “market place”, as it can be used to aid your team in launching the right marketing campaigns for your target audiences, the creation of relevant content that your prospects actually want and need, the ability to stay up to date with your industries trends and pivots, as well as arming your team with the information they need to better engage prospects during the sales process.
It’s important to keep in mind that community must be built for the sake of community – you can not build a community for the sake of sales, your members will see straight through your intentions and you will immediately lose any trust they have your company. This is why adopting the community-led sales approach is important if one of your community goals is to increase lead gen and revenue. So what does this look like? It’s a long term game. The sales team can not treat the community as a prospecting pool, but rather your team must engage, build relationships and provide value to your members, LONG before they enter the sales cycle. At Commsor, many times our first touch point with prospects is simply inviting them to join our community, The Community Club. We do not ask anything of them, we simply provide value up front by giving them the content, education, training and resources they need to better do their jobs. Today, more than 50% of our sale leads come directly from active members of our community.
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