by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
Adam and I were recently in Australia where somebody said “as you are providing digital training, you must use digital techniques” and Adam and I said in unison “no”.
If you didn’t know I was part of a sales transformation of 4,000 sales people across Europe. So the first view was to provide “immersion” training. The most efficient way surely is to have a webinar invite everybody along and “boom”.
Webinars booked and executed and guess what? Nothing happened. Total waste of time. Webinars are fine when you need to pass on something factual, but not when you are expecting a change in a way people work or a change in habits. Social selling requires a different mindset. It does not invalidate your sales skills but certain behaviour isn’t tolerated anymore.
At my previous company we walked the past of many social selling programs.
- First we started with profile writers and of course, nothing happened. Social requires a different mindset and getting somebody into write your profile, changes no mindsets.
- We then started using webinars as a way to train people. It all seems to very simple, get people on a webinar, explain how much more they can sell and off they go. This is all very well but most people when they turn up to a webinar don’t listen. They eat their lunch, do email, call their mother, anything but watch the webinar. Webinars are great for teaching Excel but they are no good for change management.
- The mistake people make in terms of social selling training is to treat social selling like facts. You sit your students down and explain them fact after fact or hack after hack. The problem is that humans can only remember 3 things from this training. The rest of it just washes over people. Again a waste fo time.
We have now run our social selling program across hundreds of companies and with any change program you need these elements in place for the project to be a success:-
- High level buy-in. This isn’t about them signing a cheque (check) but actually being actively involved in the project. To quote Jack Salzwedel, CEO of American Family Insurance “I believe it’s vital for CEOs to embrace social media. As leaders, we must show others we understand the impact it has on how people communicate and connect … to know how it affects our companies’ relationships with customers and employees.”
- Ask for volunteers to the program, too often people are allocated and they are not interested, don’t have the time or the inclination.
- Give people the time to finish the tasks in addition to their day job.
- Realise that change means change. The people on the program will be different and different to your other teams after the program.
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/maybe-im-amazed-sales-and-the-world-keeps-changing/
https://dlaignite.com/why-your-cold-calling-day-wont-save-you-from-your-slow-demise-into-irrelevance/
https://dlaignite.com/but-youre-not-telling-me-anything-i-dont-already-knowas-everyone-says/
