Do You Have Access?

Access, not Outreach, is the Key to Success in Sales

One of the best lessons a mentor shared with me as a young salesperson was this,

“A wise person knows everything, but a shrewd person knows everyone.”

Understanding this opened a new world of opportunity.

There’s no position that I’ve found that epitomizes this statement more than that of a concierge.

I have traveled a lot for business and pleasure. Whether courting a prospect or surprising my wife, it’s always the same. Whenever or wherever I am if I ask about the best restaurants, tickets to shows, concerts, sporting events, or even booking a meeting room at the hotel’s front desk, I always get the same response: “You’ll want to speak to our concierge.”

A good concierge is your gateway to obtaining anything you desire anywhere you travel.

Suppose you’re in NYC and want tickets to Hamilton on Saturday night. Ask the concierge.

Happen to be visiting L.A. and want reservations at Nobu Malibu tomorrow night. Talk to the concierge.

The best concierges have cultivated a vast network of people with whom they trade, enabling them to fulfill your requests. They have immense referral networks. They’ve spent years accumulating contacts at their area’s most popular venues, establishments, and destinations.

They routinely trade and leverage the goods and services they can provide within their network to accomplish what you couldn’t do by yourself. Of course, you’ll pay for these services and provide a healthy gratuity for their efforts, but you can’t beat their access.

And access is the key. You may have the money, the time, and the desire, but they have access. Without that, you could make dozens of calls or spend hours searching online only to come up empty-handed.

The best sales representatives I’ve ever worked with had the same mentality. They understood that cold outreach was necessary, but slow and exhausting. So, anything they could do to reduce the need for cold calling and emailing and increase the number of warm introductions to decision-makers or tips they could get about opportunities that no one else knew about, meant they could grow their pipelines and sales in a fraction of the time.

They sought access. They built networks with other professionals and began trading access to decision-makers and opportunities.

It takes time and diligence. It means that you must truly understand your customers and build relationships with top professionals in other industries that can solve issues they may face or sell products that you don’t provide.

There is risk involved in initially building your network. You must vet your potential partners and ensure that when you provide a referral, they will treat your clients well, provide solid products and services, and not damage your relationships.

Building your network also requires you to maintain deep relationships with your customers and regularly sniff out any service or product needs they have, even though you sell them to accumulate the currency needed in your network as trade value. No one wants to provide leads to someone who doesn’t reciprocate.

From there, it becomes a matter of letting people know you’re “connected.” This is the best part. When a client shares a need you have a contact for, offer them access. It’s as simple as saying, “I have a friend who is an expert in this area,” and “I’d be more than happy to introduce you to them if you’d like.” It never hurts to mention that your connection will probably save them a lot of time and effort as they are highly respected in their field.

If your client has a good experience with your connection, you just made yourself a trusted concierge in that client’s mind. The next time they have a need, there’s a strong chance that they will reach out to you to see if you know anyone that can help them.

Do this consistently and clients will reciprocate. They will introduce you to people they know who need your services as a quid pro quo.

Cold outreach at this point becomes a want-to instead of a need-to. You’ll have a steady flow of referrals coming from customers and other professionals, creating a never-ending pipeline of prospects that required no cold outbound efforts. You’ll have access.

In B2B sales, referrals are the best way to generate revenue from new and existing customers.

Salespeople who actively seek out and act on referrals earn 4 to 5 times more than those who don’t.

Here are some key stats:

• 84% of B2B buyers begin their process with a referral.
• 73% of executives prefer to work with sales professionals referred to them by someone they know.
• The lifetime value of a referred customer is 16% higher than that of a non-referred customer.

So if you want to fill your pipeline and close more deals, become a concierge.

Chad is an award-winning senior sales leader, public speaker, and author with 25 years of experience managing client accounts in the digital technology, SaaS, automotive, advertising, and telecommunications industries. He has served in large multi-national public companies and smaller privately held organizations, modeling, building, and scaling high-performance sales teams throughout the U.S.

In 2022, Chad founded Best Life Ventures, LLC, utilizing his career experience to advise, train, develop, coach, and mentor sales leaders and their teams through fractional leadership and consulting. He also provides one-on-one coaching for sales leaders.

Contact Information

email: chadjohnson856@gmail.com

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/Chad-Johnson

Header Image Credit: RDNE Stock project. Find it here.