by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
Thanks to Philip Hesketh (@PhilipJHesketh | LinkedIn) for his contribution in writing this piece.
I’ve written before about how to prospect with Social Selling, and I wanted to update you on some of the work we are doing with companies to transform to Social only prospecting. The objective is to make the sales team self-sufficient in demand generation. This does not mean of course that Marketing stop lead generation but what they create is the “icing on the cake.”
(Another quick point is some Sales Gurus say you cannot prospect with Social Selling. Well, they are plain wrong, if you come across these self-proclaimed experts saying this, please tell them they are wrong and/or tag me. Thank you.)
To equip yourself for social selling, you need to have several things in place:
- Stakeholder support
- Have taken your sales team through a robust social selling methodology
- Understand this is about a mindset change
- Understand this is about habit change
- You have the authority to challenge the status quo (what does this one mean?)
It is about transformation; it is not about “business as usual” (BAU) and for some business leaders and salespeople this will scare them.
Ok this is fine, it is maybe a slow slip to obscurity is what they want.
We believe based on evidence is that the Internet, social media and mobile require us to evolve the way we sell. Change has always been present in sales and change agents ourselves for our customers; sales are the first part of the organisation that need to change.
While I’m on the subject of change. You don’t get mindset change and habit change through profile writers and you don’t get mindset change and habit change by delivering materials through webinars. You also need to look out for people just delivering “US cookie cutter” programs.
It works fine in the US but not in Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia and Australia. People flying out to you does not scale, you must have local Social Selling experts. These people will know local customs, local psychology, local systems and more importantly what and what does not work.
Took a while to get here…
So to my update;
Each person we employ has many competencies, and I urge you to ask for these in anybody you hire to do this work for you. You will, of course, be able to see this on their LinkedIn Profile. By the way, there are no excuses for a social selling expert not to be a social selling expert online. If they have a crap social presence, it is because they probably are crap!
The competencies are as follows:
- Working knowledge of sales navigator
- Working knowledge of corporate CRM systems like SFDC, Dynamics, etc.
- Have been accredited to DLAs Social Selling standard?
- Have worked in large companies and understand how to make a change in such corporations
- Working knowledge of existing and future B2B sales processes.
Our driver in these such projects, working with organisations is to find (net-new opportunities, nurture pipeline and stuck deals), move these forward and close them using social.
To start the program, each one-to-one with the salespeople splits into two parts:
- The 3 critical components of social selling, Personal Brand, having a strong network and the use of content.
- The second half is taken up with a review of target accounts, prospecting, existing pipeline and sales navigator usage.
I’ve written before about the three main components many times before so let me focus on the pipeline review.
We would ask the Stakeholders to support us in getting the salespeople to share with us “stuck” pipeline, nurture pipeline and closing pipeline and then working on these to get social to unstick them, get a proper nurture program in place and to help with closing deals.
One of the guiding principles is the latest Gartner research that says that there are currently 10 people making a decision in your average Enterprise B2B deal.
It, therefore, stands to reason we have needed to have met all of these people before the decision is made. We therefore, expect the salesperson to be connected on social with at least 10 people, but if you don’t know who the decision markers are then, you need to connect with to 20 or even 50 people within an account.
We detailed this in the following blog “How the 10-1-1 Social Selling Method Enables you to Sell Wide and Deep within Accounts”
Talking, connecting and meeting with as many people as you can has always been the order of the day. Same in the social world, but it’s better now:
- People connected to you will see your excellent content. It is such a fantastic way to nurture and accelerate deals without annoying people.
- Though sales navigator and team link you can see who in the sales team and the wider tram are connected to whom in your prospects. In a recent review we did with a client there were 11 people in the sales organisation connected to the decision maker. But the lead sales person wasn’t. Obviously, this would provide us with a suggestion as to the salesperson as to remedial action and insight to the sales leader as this is a forecasted deal.
As a sales leader, if you want to reduce the risk of your pipeline, there should be no upper number of connections in each closing account.
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/rain-makers-vs-rain-barrels-prospecting-with-social-selling/
https://dlaignite.com/taking-action-often-equals-success/
https://dlaignite.com/can-social-media-be-the-oasis-you-seek-in-a-competitive-market/
