Leading the Charge-Looks Like 321 Biz Dev Will Take the Responsibility to Help Businesses

The timing is right.

Small business owners are not receiving the necessary business development training they need. It's obvious because of the marketing gimmicks 321 Biz Development sees every day in America's towns and cities.

To be specific, small business owners selling big ticket items are having difficulty finding enough clients in 2022, more so than in 2012 and 2002.

Overall, besides the changing economy, the biggest obstacle to small business owners adding new clients is the shifting dependence on big tech and social media as primary marketing sources.

It was a mistake in 2006 when small business owners began thinking social media was the answer to connect with new customers. And, it is a bigger mistake in 2022.

Why?

Selling high-price, big ticket products and services is not a social event. Earning a customer's trust to motivate him or her to pay $10,000 is not social. Moving a product or service from a business to a customer is about creating a sales experience from the beginning to the end of the transaction.

Most of the work to deliver a great sales experience begins at the contacting and prospecting stages of 321 Biz Development's Selling Without Appearing to Sell, five-stage process which is: contacting, prospecting, appointment setting, closing and getting zero-cost referrals.

What are the two scenarios 321 Biz Development sees the most with small business owners in cities across America?

1. We see 2,000 small businesses doing little to nothing. Or,

2. We see 2,000 small businesses doing the same thing on social media.

321 Biz Development has been working to change this behavior. But, it's very hard to reinsert a proactive, business development paradigm that existed before social media.

Stanford Professor, the godfather of social media, B. J. Fogg, wrote many of the social media algorithms used by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Please read the Tedx article.

The godfather of persuasive technology, psychologist B.J. Fogg resides in Palo Alto, California, in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, created a lab purpose built to produce “machines designed to change humans”.

Living in California, in the San Francisco area officially since the 1990's, I've seen persuasion psychology change the way many Californians interact with others. People are conditioned to avoid others. The avoidance is not malicious. It's really a behavior where people prefer to not put themselves in confrontational situations even there is zero chance for rude feedback.

Social media's attraction originates from the belief humans can exhibit machine-like behavior. Our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter posts are entered into machines connected to our laptops and phones which upload our content to huge servers for end-users to experience.

Doing business with mostly machine to machine communication is 100% without a soul.

The most important, pre-sale interactions (contacting and prospecting) using mostly machines, are destroyed. When there are no pre-sale people interactions, there are few opportunities to move products and services to clients.

Human beings are not machines.

People like interactions with others. Interactions are how people begin dating. Before social media, business owners respected roles between themselves and potential customers. Now, for many business owners, meeting with people at stages 3 and 4 (appointment setting and closing) seems very cold.

Bypassing stages 1 and 2 (contacting and prospecting) not only results in meeting with little to no clients, but initiating engagement with people at stages 3 and 4 allows minimal opportunity to build rapport.

Prospects, having little to no professional engagement prior to stage 4, use price as their defense mechanisms during negotiations. Prospects feel getting the lowest price is the motivation to purchase the product or service since they have had no prior conversations that would have occurred in the contacting and prospecting stages,

The experienced, well-educated attorneys, CPAs, dentists, and plastic surgeons are treated as commodities.

321 Biz Development is unhappy that 16 years of social media and digital marketing have erased professional development as the standard to grow businesses.

What can small business owners do to regain control of their businesses and give American consumers the engagement they seek?

Business owners can enroll in 321 Biz Development 6-9 hour training to understand how to professionally engage potential customers throughout the five-stage process.

Please contact us to learn more about repositioning your business to maximize sales productivity and sales performance with purpose and results.

Thanks for reading this article.

Rick Nappier, President

321 Biz Development

(855) 585-2500