I came across some excellent tips from Johnty Mongan, Managing Director of The Mongan Group concerning the new European sales environment post-GDPR. Selling in Europe will be trickier in May as reps need to obtain opt-in approval
Mongan provided the following advice:
GDPR is about protecting our interests from unlawful behaviour. GDPR removes the unwanted cold calls, email campaigns and any other processing that we haven’t agreed to. A transparent and fair existence for all. I really like it, it fits with my karmic views of the world.
It won’t how ever stop marketing activities through publicly available information, like a company email or a company number…
It’s time to go old school… here’s what you can do to reach new customers in a lawful and GDPR way:
- Get consent from current customers to continue marketing to them. Do it in an engaging way. That’s a must.
- Provide explicit consent of your intentions to all new prospects when luring them in with shiny content. For example, download this form so I can phone you. That’s a must.
- Go to the events your customers go to, get over yourself and introduce yourself. That’s a must.
- Hold your own events.
- Get more business cards…. they are not as useless as you may think.
- Offer referral schemes to current customers. You should do that anyway.
- Market your services within ethical channels. Where you customers go, you go
My list goes on, but it all centres around building clear authentic relationships. This is a good thing because most “sales” are won on the back of authenticity and trust. I see leading the charge with GDPR compliant sales processes a fantastic way to demonstrate your intentions.
So basically, what’s old is new again. While marketing needs to be particularly attuned to GDPR, sales reps also need obtain permission.