by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
In the old days as a salesperson, you would meet a colleague in the carpark 10 minutes before the meeting and that would be the background work. Some people, I’m sure still do this.
In those days you would meet a client and ask “so what keeps you awake at night”, today you are expected to know this.
Today, you are expected to have looked at the clients website and know what they do. You are also expected to have looked at the clients social profiles before a meeting. I always connect on LinkedIn before a meeting.
This is all ‘business as usual stuff” so what about high performance teams?
If you look at any sport today, cycling, football, soccer, rugby, golf, formula 1, everybody knows that to win it’s not about turning up anymore. It’s about incremental gains. To win the “world cup” in anything requires you to make all of those incremental gains, because your competition will be as well.
Turning up and meeting your colleague 10 minutes before the meeting, looking at a clients website isn’t enough.
Social allows you to build relationships at scale. The winners of sales will have excellent relationships. Let’s start with some fundamentals.
- All of the sales team must have a personal brand. When I say all, I mean all. There will be people that will say they don’t need one, they do.
- All of the sales team need to build a network over the prospect organisation, this isn’t just the decision makers, but right across the business. It should also involve third party influencers.
- Then all of the sales team have an opportunity to influence the sale by sharing relevant content. This content should be around the sales themes and win themes. Obviously this should not be an “advert” for your business and it should not be corporate content. People see through this. If, for example, you are selling an accounting product, you could write an article about how the importance of a faster monthly close. Tip: Don’t get all the team to share the same content.
- The same must be said for the execution / delivery team.
There will be people that read this and say “this all sounds like hard work” and it is.
If winning sales and building high performance teams isn’t for you then totally agree you should not do this.
As an aside, many people will read this and say “this is all very well but my clients are not on social”. Two things:-
- The leaders may not be, but the influencers sure will be.
- How about if we act like leaders and invite senior leaders to social media? As leaders we will have great personal brands, having senior people in our networks will enhance our standing senior people will be enthused by our insightful content. In my previous company, we did just that and during a bid process, the decision maker, a Finance Director “liked” one of the salespersons articles. We went on to win this bid. I’m sure, you wouldn’t expect me to say that won the bid, but in a world of incremental gains and high performance teams if you are not doing this, you are surely leaving money on the table.
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/whats-your-usp/
https://dlaignite.com/5-keys-to-building-a-sales-enablement-program/
https://dlaignite.com/the-business-benefits-of-having-your-ceo-on-social-media/
