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We were doing a review with a CEO of a company that has been through our social selling and influence transformation. We asked, him so why did you start reviewing different ways of selling?
and he said
In 2019 each sales person drove 20,000 miles in a year, now they drive 500 miles, that is just one reason why we should change how we sell?
And that is the conundrum.
For all of us, the internet, social media, mobile and Covid has all impacted on our ability to sell and market and even through we know things have changed. We carry on doing the things we did before.
After all, we don't know what we don't know.
How do we get a salesforce that is sitting at home to sell?
Another CEO recently asked me, "my salesforce is sitting at home, the results from cold calling and email have tanked, are you saying that we are able to create conversations with prospects over social media?"
And the answer is "yes".
But there is a caveat.
If you think your sales team can spam their way over social, you will get few results.
If you suddenly think that somehow your sales team will "get" social by reading blogs like this on the internet, it won't happen.
Or you could help that your sales enablement team are going to come up with something, sorry, they haven't so far, so why will they do something now?
How we can help
In our social selling and influence course, we teach sales people how to have a buyer centric profile that people are not only attracted to, they will "walk towards you". There is a great example of this below, where that turned into a $2.6 million deal.
You need to grow your network, stand to reason, if you want to sell to Johnson and Johnson (for example) then you need to be connected to to the relevant people in Johnson and Johnson.
One of the things that people often find difficult to understand, is the impact of content. Content proves that you are an expert, which you are. If you think about the $2.6 million deal, here was an Oracle customer who had a business issue. They went onto to social to see if they could find an answer, they looked at one of our clients LinkedIn profiles, that got them curious and then they saw an article (like this) which proved that this Oracle reseller could solve their problem.
The buyer walked towards the seller and asked "can you help me?".
This is just one of the ways that content (not brochures) will help you salespeople prospect and close deals.
What is social selling?
Here at DLA Ignite, we define social selling as
"Using your presence and behavior on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction."
It's not witchcraft, it's enabling your salespeople to work from home, (or the office) and create conversations with prospects and customers. Conversations on social media and conversations that convert.
The problem with the name "social selling" is that people think that this is selling on social. All these pitches that you get on social are not social selling, they are spam.
The other thing you need to know about social selling is that this isn't about "putting out some videos" or "putting flowers on your profile" or "going viral" this is about revenue, EBITDA, you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.
With anything you do on social there are two questions you need to ask
1. How many leads / meetings / conversations will I get from this post / blog / activity?
2. How much revenue / EBITDA am I getting as a business?
Related: Is There Such a Thing as a Proper Qualification in Social Selling?