Targeted content can help convince high-level decision-makers and executives to accept your sales meeting request.

There are many benefits to content marketing, but did you know it can help you land that next impossible-to-get sales meeting?

According to expert marketer Stu Heinecke’s new book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, top sales professionals use personalized content to target high-level relationships in what he calls “a shadow practice,” which has been extremely effective at reaching critical, hard-to-reach contacts.

In these campaigns, content is targeted to make the connection with the right people — without any obvious pursuit — and secure those hard-to-get meetings. This can be a game-changer for your business.

Heinecke’s book pools the advice of the top 100 sales thought leaders in the world. He recently shared some of his findings with Harvard Business Review.

Here are some key takeaways:

• You can use content marketing to combine marketing and selling, employing specific campaigns to connect with high-level decision-makers and specific C-level executives. Finding a few dozen of the correct high-level relationships can quickly elevate the scale of your business.
• When approaching connections derived from content, Heinecke found that response rates averaged from 60% to 80%, with some campaigns actually hitting 100%.
• The greatest success is associated with content that delivers something of value. Share the personality of your brand, but offer no sales pitch. “Your first mission is simply to create a connection, to establish yourself as someone they’ll want to listen to,” Heinecke states.
• You should offer something more, to be delivered at the meeting. The point is to continue to add value to the relationship. For example, offer to bring relevant research, a white paper, or a free audit of the executive’s business to the first meeting.
• Once face to face, continue to engage in conversation that provides insight to what the contact’s business challenges are. Refrain from a sales pitch, but share examples of other companies with similar challenges, which have benefited from your specific product or solution. Tell a story — similar to what your content marketing does.

Content can help you make important connections — just ask NoWait

The same HBR article also shares the story of the founders of NoWait, a mobile application which allows diners to put their name on the waitlist of a restaurant from a remote location.

With a minuscule budget, the NoWait founders used targeted content as the basis for their entire launch strategy. They sent personalized videos on iPads in custom packaging to the CEOs of the 30 top restaurant chains. Their highly targeted approach allowed the company to focus on the exact people who could do them the most good — the decision-makers of the biggest brands in the industry. The app is already used by more than half of their targeted companies.

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