The Social Selling Review
Published by The Digital Sales Institute,
Sales techniques are many as they are varied. They can be as much psychological as functional when it comes to engaging customers. In a heavily influenced digital sales world where inbound leads seem to rule the roost, lots of valid sales techniques have been overlooked. This has had the effect of salespeople not really understanding the nuances involved in making successful sales calls, presentations or pitches. Regardless of whether the sales call is an inbound lead, a web lead or a cold call, always approach the prospect or customer with the same degree of effort and preparation.
Sales techniques are usually part of a company’s sales playbook to guide salespeople on how to sell their products or solutions more effectively. These techniques will then be constantly refined based on past experiences and results.
Sales Techniques – Plan the sales work and work your sales plan
Prepare for success. Yes, planning and preparation are sales techniques. Before going into the sales meeting or picking up the phone, invest in planning and preparation to get insights into your contact and their company. Being able to speak about the customers industry, market trends, news and industry is a one of the most underused sales techniques. Apart from gaining credibility with the customer, it also shows your genuine interest in how you might be able to help them. Use social media to gather intelligence plus to see any mutual connections in common. Next, plan out the call, meeting or presentation step by step. What is the value proposition for this customer and what is it in for them, what is the unique selling point aligned to this prospect and what are the goals to be achieved from the interaction? To be able to put the customer as ease, plan out the opening statement and personalize the value proposition into 3 or 4 sentences (so you can get their awareness and attention).
Sales Techniques – Focus on moving them out of the status quo.
The biggest competitor in any sales situation is not the competition but the buyers status quo. Status quo bias or the natural preference for customers to avoid change is the biggest threat to sales success. Of all the sales techniques we could discuss, this one is the most challenging. They key here is to understand the status quo then work through everything that makes up the status quo to determine how, if, why, when any change would be required or more importantly accepted (as in decision to purchase). To facilitate this change, salespeople need to become “Servant Sellers" and be willing to become a change agent. This involves facilitating the buyers journey with the customer and other members of the buying committee who may not have shifted their status quo yet
The sales skill here is to magnify the pain points, make them real plus make the cost of doing nothing as unbearable. Its about moving your proposed solution up on the customer’s priority to-do list.
Returning to planning and preparation, write out questions such as:
“How would you describe your current situation? (as it relates to the salespersons product)"
“Where would you seek improvements all things being equal?"
“Could you help me understand this better?"
“What would be impact of leaving things as they are?"
“What are the obstacles as you see them in finding a solution?"
“What is the knock-on effect and cost to the business?"
“What triggered you to explore dealing with this now?"
Master the Performance.
Every interaction with a customer is a performance, to influence, to gain credibility and gain their trust. Everything from the tone of voice, from the way we dress, to what is said and how it is said is all part of the performance. The quality and relevancy of the information being delivered is what determines how the sales progresses. People buy from experts, so confidence is vital. Similar to an actor, talking at a measured pace while the words flow naturally and then using facts or data with a raised pitch is a great way to display confidence. Along with a personalized value proposition also have the company sales pitch fully rehearsed. Be ready to answer “How are you different from my current supplier?
Collaborate to uncover sales opportunities.
Successful selling is about 54% listening to 46% talking. On a sales call or in a sales meeting, measure the switch rate, this is the rate at which each party takes turns listening and then talking. This sales technique allows for the flow of information to be two-way. Become skilled at active listening so each side can work together to help find the solution that best meets their needs. To ensure the switch rate runs smoothly, a list of discovery type questions should be deployed with the added benefit of finding out if any sales opportunity does exist.
To ensure collaboration, they discovery questions should be prepared in advance.
Examples include:
Where are you experiencing challenges (role or product)?
What has been your past experience in choosing solutions?
How often would you review your current vendor/products?
In which area are you seeing most challenges (personalized to the solution/product)?
How have you gone about solving these issues?
What type of solutions or options would you consider?
When do you need to have found some options for consideration?
What is the normal decision-making process for my type of solutions?
The discovery phase (which shouldn’t be rushed) is about receiving answers that will give a good indication of whether there is a sales opportunity or not. If the switch rate is right, the questions and answers should reveal the prospects main pain points. This allows for a progression in the sales process, however if no opportunity exists or can’t be crystalized then move on.
Help the buyer to buy.
Whether selling a commodity item or an enterprise solution, it has become a buyer’s world of more – more information, more options, and more people involved in a buying decision.
Salespeople need to focus on clarity in the sales process. To collaborate and help customers simplify the buying process, to make it easier to buy. Research shows customers who experience a high level of “buying ease," the vendor helping to supply this ease are nearly 62% more likely to win the deal. This is why salespeople need to focus on moving the buyer out of their status quo, to open up new possibilities, that the cost of change is manageable, to master their sales performance, to collaborate on how to sell the solution internally and make buying easier.
To wrap up, every business should map out their sales process and sales strategy. To create a sales playbook that contains the most relevant sales techniques (social selling, sales prospecting, business development and sales model) for their product to help the sales team to stay in control of the sales process and acquire more profitable customers.
B2B sales and the impact of social media, data, connectivity, and technology are bringing a step change in how companies sell. These changes will help companies take a giant step that will take them way beyond all the traditional selling tactics.
B2B sales are about to evolve like never before by embracing the advantages digital technology provides. In fact, leading companies are already pulling away from their peers in both sales growth and sales productivity improvement.
There is no doubting that B2B buyers have moved the selling goalposts as they seek out information and content on products using the internet and social media.
This has led to a rise in challenges for sales leadership, challenges such as:
- Re-evaluating their products and services to meet buyers changing habits
- Combating new entrants, alternative business models, and pricing pressure
- The acceleration of commoditization and substitution due to buyer education
- Far greater transparency and increase in buyer purchasing knowledge
- The shift in seller-buyer control in favor of the buyer
The reality is that dealing with these challenges in B2B sales is here and now, but also that they will become more magnified in the near future.
If we add in the buyer’s preference for subscription-based models then the challenges listed above become even more pronounced, leading sales leadership to rethink how they go to market and engage with customers.
The Future Focus in B2B sales
Research into B2B sales practices being deployed by leading companies have found that they focus on 3 core strategies.
Strategy 1: Making the buying process easier.
This applies as much to the more complex sales as it does to selling commodity type products. Leading sales organizations are focused on making their product offerings, sales touch points, access to information and internal systems as easy as possible for customers and prospects. Acknowledging the change not just in buyer’s preferences but also buyer profiles (millennials are becoming the largest demographic in B2B buying), the sales interactions need to be more rewarding, informative and fulfilling.
Sales leaders are seeking out a sales strategy and methods to maximize sales touch points to improve the value buyers receive by make the sales process:
Transparency. Buyers are demanding a more open approach to purchasing, so companies will utilize new sales tools, new systems and processes to deliver a far greater transparent sales experience for their customers. The added bonus for the sales organization is this change can result in a more leaner and more flexible sales force.
Multi-Channel Unified Experience. B2B sales offerings will closer resemble the B2C sales experience. This entails the provision of 24/7 access to specs, pricing, information, ordering etc through all channels, but mostly digital or social media. It’s about connecting all the company’s channels to ensure a transparent experience across the different sales touch points.
Highly personalized interactions. Again, as with B2C selling, the concept of “my B2B sales preferences" is on the rise. Transparency and the multi-channel experience will lead to increased buyer trust, leading to more data becoming available. This data and information will give companies the ability to anticipate and adapt to B2B customer needs. At a practical level it will allow customers to receive customized and highly relevant interactions where they are presented with personalized value propositions aligned to their specific challenges.
Tools that let customers self-configure a customized product solution, quotation and a virtual implementation will grow in deployment.
Strategy 2: Focus on longer term customer value.
It’s no longer the seller V the buyer. Companies will focus on really understanding the “what, why, and when" of the customer needs. Buyers will be invited to participate in the ecosystem that serves them so they can self-generate their own value. Selling will become more collaborative and sales people will create more real sales opportunities by allowing buyers to bundle and unbundle products or solution themselves, based on their needs.
Adding Value. Companies will broaden out their offerings to include a more complete customer solution (maybe via partners) that lowers the overall cost of product acquisition, to make it easier to implement or to improve business results. The divide between products and solutions that a business offers to customers will be fluid depending on customer preferences.
Selling becomes more intelligent. Sales people will use the multi-channel approach to become a trusted advisor to a core group of buyers. B2B sales organizations will invest in up-skilling the sales teams to educate their customers on needs they did not know they even had. Apart from nurturing and educating the customer, the salesperson will engage the different stakeholders and decision makers within the buyer’s organization to discover and highlight the need. They will make buying easier.
Strategy 3: Using Data and Analytics to create customer value.
The use of data and analytics will help many organizations to reframe how it defines customer value. These tools and insights will uncover greater opportunities to expand the value delivered to customers.
The future of B2B sales will to go beyond the traditional role of customer interactions, they will create value for the customer via:
Science in Sales. Data, analytics and the resulting insights will make it easier to offer the customer products and services that matches their actual assessed needs. B2B sales organizations will use deep customer and market intelligence to create value beyond what customers are able to self-educate on themselves via channels such as social media.
AI and the Virtual Experience. Engaging customers will evolve to include the use of sales tools such as AI, a virtual experience or simulated environment that will allow customers to truly absorb the potential value of a companies offering.
Sales and the social business. Companies will embrace the concept of a social business, using not just sales but other functions to reach and connect with a larger number of buyers. Social media, social selling and digital connectivity makes it increasingly easier to engage with a larger grouping of B2B buyers and influencers cost effectively.
The B2B Salesperson of the future.
The three B2B sales strategies provide some insight into the future of B2B selling. Combine these with market knowledge, the right sales training and sales motivation will provide the necessary ingredients to take B2B sales to the next level.
The future of B2B sales will see salesmen and saleswomen contributing to the overall business success with a set of modern sales practices that is focused on customer success not the companies. Sales leaders should be thinking about how they can take the next steps:
- Implement sales tactics to simplify, enrich, and elevate B2B sales.
- Utilize the digital influenced B2B sales practices as competitive business opportunities, to reach and engage a far great pool of potential customers.
- Ignite sales transformation by adopting the social business mantra.
The future of B2B sales is about involving, empowering, and enabling salespeople to perform and change how we do business. This will generate a sense of excitement and fulfilment. So, start the future day, in striving today to shape the future of sales in a more collaborative and participative way, for the customers benefit.
Sales Training Buyers Guide
This sales training buyers guide has been written to assist in designing a sales training courses alongside the sales skills salespeople need to compete in the digital economy. Due to the evolving nature of buyer interactions across multiple channels, sales teams need to be equipped with a deeper understanding of the company’s target customer profiles.
Also, insight into the buyer’s journey has become important in determining the level of success when salespeople try to engage a prospects and potential customers. When implemented correctly, a sales training buyers guide will impact the effectiveness of the sales strategy and boost the skill levels of the entire sales force.
The impact of social media and the digital channels in providing buyers with self-service levels of knowledge has somewhat diminished a salespersons role in the buyer-seller relationship. Buyers can be as much as 60% through the sales process before they ever engage with a salesperson. So, as part of the sales training buyers guide, we need to ask the question, “If a buyer can access large volumes of quality information online when considering a purchase, what role do we expect salespeople to fulfil?
Sales management and leaders should reflect on questions such as, where does business development, sales prospecting and customer acquisition fit into the modern sales process.
Understand the buyer’s journey has become critical to sales success
Understanding the social media influenced B2B buyers journey is now a key component in any sales training buyers guide. Salespeople need to both understand “what is it" and “how it is conducted" as it relates to the reality of the digital era. In the past few years the process a buyer goes through to becoming aware of a certain challenge, to considering before deciding to purchase has altered most of what sales training once taught.
The sales training buyers guide has to pay far more attention to the buyer’s journey. That for salespeople, it is not about having sales conversations but getting conversations started in the 1st place. From a skills perspective, the biggest change in selling skills is engaging buyers in the “awareness’ and “consideration" stages. Because in these stages, the reality is social media now plays a bigger part than more traditional forms of sales engagement. Sales training needs to address these skills by providing better social selling and digital selling skills or else accept that the earlier parts of the buyer’s journey has been ceded to the influence of social media.
Create a sales training buyers guide
Creating a sales training buyers guide will ensure that salespeople are skilled at using both offline and online channels to nurture both existing and potential customers throughout the buying process. Every sales team needs to sales training on what customers expect at every stage within the buying process. The responsibility to provide the training, coaching and guidance to help salespeople interact with potential customers at every stage falls to sales leadership, maybe as part of a digital sales transformation plan.
The good news is there is no mystery to the social media influenced buyers journey. The key to successfully engaging customers on their buyer’s journey is constant engagement using content and relevant conversations. The latest sales training techniques are showing salespeople how to skilfully engage with prospects throughout each stage of their journey across multiple channels. Sales training that teaches the goal is not just about selling, but to build longer term trust and rapport between the business and the prospect. The future of successful selling could be about getting a prospects trust to engage further. Sales training needs to focus on showing salespeople how to build credibility, usefulness and trust above the competition in the quest to win over customers.
Sales Training that reflects the Buyers Journey
Sales training needs to accurately reflect the modern buyers journey. For brevity, we have condensed the buyers journey into a three-step process.
The 1st being “The Awareness Stage" – The buyer realizes they may have a problem.
The 2nd being the “Consideration Stage" – The buyer defines their problem and researches options to solve it
The 3rd being the “Decision Stage" The buyer chooses a solution.
The Buyer Awareness Stage.
In this stage, buyers will identify issues or challenges they should be addressed. During this stage they will decide the priority level the issue or challenge should be. Sales training for this stage would include topics such as:
How do buyers describe their challenges as they relate to your product?
How does the buyer educate themselves on the challenges and trends facing their industry?
What would be the compelling reasons for a buyer to decide whether or not this should be prioritized?
The Buyer Consideration Stage.
During this stage the buyer will have defined the issue or challenge facing them and then shared this internally. A buying committee may be formed with a mandate to dealing with it. Now they will self-educated, read whitepapers, review information and start to evaluate the different options available in order to resolve the challenge. Again, sales training needs to address:
What categories of solutions do buyers investigate?
How do buyers educate and inform themselves on the various options or solutions?
How do buyers perceive the pros and cons of the available solutions?
How do buyers decide which option is right for them and how can salespeople influence this?
The Decision Stage.
The last stage is the “Decision Stage". The decision could be to do nothing, in fact over 60% of buyers go through the sales process with a no decision at the end. Some sales training buyers guide questions to be answered are:
What tools have you trained the sales team to use in closing the conversion gap?
Which criteria or other considerations will a buyer use to evaluate the available offerings?
When the buyers conduct research on you, business and your company’s offering, what do they like about what they see or read compared to the competition?
What are the concerns you will need to cover off on your solution?
How do salespeople go about engaging the buying committee or anyone else who needs to be involved in the decision? For each person involved, how does their perspective on the decision differ?
What is the buying process or will the buyer have expectations around sampling/trying your solution before they purchase it?
What are the major buyer hurdles or obstacles that will prevent a buyer deciding to progress to a signed order?
Do buyers need to make additional plans around implementation, IT or training and if so have the sales team been trained to cover this off earlier in the sales process?
Other Sales Training Insights
Within your sales training buyers guide, it is important to break down each step in your sales process and then match the sales training to the buyer’s journey. Each individual sales training session should concentrate on a single step in the sales process, including what sales tools, assets, content and information to use.
The next generation of B2B buyers are digital natives. How they buy and interact with salespeople will put greater demands on sales training that matches this reality. All sales training will become more dynamic, multi-channel and digitally driven, because that’s the way our buyers want it.
https://www.thedigitalsalesinstitute.com/sales-training-buyers-guide/
This is a list of popular sales interview questions used by many leading sales organizations globally. We all know that selling is a producer’s role, so interviewers will have high expectations regarding your ability to communicate, to demonstrate your persuasive powers, to perform under pressure and leave them with an impression that you are the one!
So, you need to walk into the room prepared to sell yourself, your track record that qualifies you for the job, and show the prospective employer that you have the ability to close deals.
Remember the sales interview starts in the corridor.
An age-old trick of hiring managers is to break the ice with you as they walk towards the meeting area and to get a measure of you. They will be asking themselves if you have researched them and do you have initiative. So always a good idea to share information you have researched about them and break the ice – “I noticed you have been with Acme for six years, you must have interviewed lots of people:
Some Tips for Answering Sales Interview Questions
Much like a good story, your answers should have a beginning (you understand the question), a middle (the answer with concrete data or examples) and an ending (did I answer that OK or would you like more detail- closing). Come armed with information on how you can be an asset to the company and help them grow sales. Always have numbers (printed to handout is good) to support your statements. An example could be, “While at ABC company, I broke into [named account] which is now one of the most profitable customers. (maybe share a press release or email congratulating you on the win from your boss).
Ensure you get a few minutes to outline your best achievements to the interviewer. Be specific and passionate – “I take it as a badge of honour that I overachieved my annual sales target by 25% for the past two years, making me one of the top performers in the company.
Interviewers are always keen to hear and be convinced that you have the necessary skills to fulfil this role.
Always make sure to tailor your answers that matches the company’s products, services, and industry. Do your research on the company via their website, blog, press releases, Leadership team bio’s, analyst coverage and competitors. The more you know about the company, their industry and market, the better equipped you’ll be able to communicate your candidature.
Sales Interview Questions and Sample Answers
Q= Tell me a little bit about yourself.
A = “I grew up in Townville, My Dad was a [position]. From an early age I was always taught to set goals and then go after what I want, plus to never give up. I love sport, I was team captain for 2 years. In college, I worked to part-time to fund my studies (and repay some of the money to my parents). I studied business and finance because I’m fascinated how business works."
Q= Why did you choose career in sales?
A = Well I chose a sales career because I see it as a stepping stone into management. Sales is one of the few professions where hard work, performance, research and preparation pays off. I want to use my sales success as proof that I can grow further with more responsibility. It’s also fun, challenging and rewarding."
Q= Are you comfortable making cold calls
A = Yes, I still believe cold outreach has its part to play. In fact one of my larger accounts was the result of a cold call. Someone I had connected to online but showed no interest in my product when I first interacted with them, so I picked up the phone.
Q = Have you consistently met your sales goals?
A = Yes, I have achieved or surpassed my sales targets and personal goals every quarter over the past three years in the business. In fact, last year I exceeded my sales target by 25% which helped the team target come in 10% above plan. I was thrilled with that result.
Q= What is your best memory of a sale you won?
A = “The one I remember most is a sale I won against all odds. I knew I was in competition with 3 other vendors. Each meeting I felt I was closing the gap (list some obstacles) and getting closer to the commitment and then suddenly they were hard to reach, it seemed like priorities were shifting and the sale was slipping away. I realized quickly I had to get more strategic in my approach so I [ went back to my other contacts, did the following…proposed the following…..]. After securing another meeting, we won the deal. This was just so rewarding as I never gave up.
Q = How would your people describe you?
A = As part of my self-development I had to ask three work colleagues that question recently. They have told me that I am organised, committed and passionate. During one sales team meeting, the team praised me helping training on a new product especially with the newer members of the team. Our sales manager won manager of the month for how quickly our team got selling the new product, which was great.
Q = What are you most proud of?
A = “I am most proud of earning enough money through my sales success to not only repay my parents for my college fees but also to have saved enough to purchase my own home.
There are many other sales interview questions, others to prepare for include:
What are your long-term goals?
What do believe are your strengths and weaknesses?
What do you find most challenging about selling?
Tell me what do you know about this company?
Why did you apply for this sales position?
What makes you a great sales person?
What motivates you the most?
What sales skills do you feel are important in selling today?
What is your understanding of a sales process?
What is your view on sales training?
So, there you have our sales interview questions and answers guide. Does it cover off every question you could be asked at a sales interview – No. However, we hope this article might help you in some small way in preparing for your next move in your sales career.
In this post, we want to share 7 social selling tips that can be used as part of a digital selling or social selling campaign. Used in a proper manner these 7 social selling tips can help salespeople to engage with more prospects or customers than ever before and help uncover sales opportunities better than the more traditional approaches.
Today’s buyers are far more empowered with information and insights to help them assess purchasing decisions. So rather than a salesperson who just provides details they can freely access online, they look for trusted advisers who can help them achieve their goals. The days of smile and dial for a quick sale are long passed.
So Here Is Our List Of Our 7 Social Selling Tips.
Cold pitches are not social selling.
Social selling is not about employing the social channels to replace cold calling or replacing the telephone with Twitter and LinkedIn. Simplistic bare faced cold sales pitches do not work (they have rarely worked via the phone, so social media is no different).
Remember, the most important activity in social selling is to bring VALUE. One of the biggest of the seven social selling tips we can share is to always provide VALUE to your potential customers and social network. So, you will need to find relevant information, content and conversations that people will value and allows you to build relationships with others.
Providing value on the social networks can be pinned to a series of tactics (sharing articles, quality content and informative research and engaging in conversations etc). In time, people come to acknowledge the sharer, which gives sales people a deeper understanding of the buyer’s profile. To build value you need to consistently offer really relevant information and insights, market trends, latest research or whitepapers.
Always keep in mind that the social networks allow us to interact with other human beings in meaningful ways online. Social Selling is an evolutionary step forward making the sales process more productive and meaningful. It is not about using social media to shout at, stalk, or spam people digitally.
Build your personal brand.
Credibility and your level of value are critical aspects of social selling. We know that social media can boost the level of influence a salesperson or a business has within a market, and can even impact buyer decisions. Building your personal brand online is important because within the social networks “your reputation can determine your level of influence".
Building your personal brand online will allow you to nurture relationships, to stay top-of-mind with the purpose of creating “sales time" with buyers at the right time. It is about positioning yourself to have influence and high levels of perceived value with prospects or potential customers. Remember, it’s not just about building up our own personal brand but also to support the company’s brand online.
Pick your Profiles
Who do you sell to? Who do you want to influence? Who do you want to connect to? These are important questions not just in social selling but in any sales activity. So, you need to create or select one or more “ideal customer profiles" to target with your activity. Your profiles will prioritise the individuals and companies that you know will get the most value out of your product, and will also provide the most value back to you.
By picking which profiles to engage with, it helps you find qualified prospects and protects you from selling to the wrong customers.
In social selling, your profile will give you a clear target to aim for, resulting in highly qualified leads. As you refine and connect, if they don’t match the criteria you have set then you’ll know to move on.
Simply put, an ideal customer profile helps you identify and engage with the type of people that will most benefit your business.
Become a Content Champion
Content and conversations power social selling. In order to stand out from the 2 million blog posts published online every day, you will need to cut through the clutter.
Did you know that the top 3 content tactics are blog articles (65%); social media sharing (64%); and publishing case studies (64%).
How can I cut through the noise with my social selling? I hear you ask.
Well research shows you need to have “likeability" in your content, that is how much a post or piece of content is “likeable"? In both the B2B and B2C (but especially content shared by sales people in B2B sales), the content being shared needs to have social reach, be liked and deemed to have value by people. The likeability of any content can be affected by crafting assets using the best practices for each individual social network (media, language, tone, topic, length, etc) matched to a buyer persona or ideal customer profile. Right Profile – Right Content – Right Context and Right Timing!
When it comes to learning more about these 7 social selling tips, salespeople are publishing to be seen, to create awareness and get expression of consideration to get buyers into the sales process. With the amount of content listed above, the challenge is how to stand out and turn social content into quality sales leads?
A formula for Content Likeability could be
Targeted Content + Situational Context + Buyer Stage + Timing
Be a Conversation Channel
Position yourself to become a conversation channel. Gradually becoming a valuable connection, one worth listening to and engaging with. Once the quality of your conversation contributions have established yourself as a valuable connection, you can nurture and build a buyer/supplier relationship far more quickly.
Why not have a plan that on a daily basis you will review discussions on your groups in LinkedIn and give honest answers to questions people have without plugging your business. Also, conversations are not there to tell people how wonderful you are or how you can help solve their problems if they meet you. Spend time looking for articles, news and research you can use in conversations with people without interrupting them and that is on the money. This will help you throughout your sales career no matter what product or service you are selling.
Social selling should drive two-way conversations with your audience via social media. You need to engage them not just as your buyers, but as people and really help them achieve their goals whether it be answering a question or finding information for them.
Avoid Connection Collecting
Look up Dunbar’s Number and see how it is relevant in social selling. Ask yourself, “Is there real value in connecting with 5,000 people". Connections should be a bridge to lead you somewhere. You need to think more about the quality and relevance of your social network." Building an engaged following takes time and effort, you need to sow, nurture before you can harvest. To make valuable and relevant connections, you must make sure you’re giving them distinct value that others are not.
Have a Social Selling Strategy
The last of our 7 social selling tips is to have a strategy. A social selling strategy which acknowledges that the modern buyer needs education but they educate themselves. A strategy that helps guide people, one where audiences can expect meaningful insights from experts helping business not yours.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/222529482?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
Benefits of Social Selling from The Digital Sales Institute on Vimeo.
Modern sales strategy understands that the key to sustained success is to include social selling training and social media marketing alongside the more traditional sales tactics. Due to the increasing amount of information available to buyers online these days, the time is fast approaching when the amount of trust buyers has in you as a sales professional will be the primary thing to influence their buying decision. Due to the power of social media and self-education, fewer and fewer salespeople are going to have the ear of their buyers on a constant basis. A social selling strategy can be a powerful way to build a higher level of trust with customers and prospects. The blending of digital selling and social selling is no longer a foreign approach to any salesperson wishing to succeed in the digital era.
A bonus 7 seven social selling tips is that when we talk about the next generation of buyers coming through, the digital natives, then social selling is going to be a natural path on their buying journey. Make sure you have your social selling strategy ready.
Free Sales Training Video Content from The Digital Sales Institute. The videos include cold calling tips, sales habits of successful salespeople, sales phrases (what not to say), sales techniques, sales tips and sales prospecting tips. Our library of free sales training video content is growing so check back regularly for new content.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/245005056?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
https://player.vimeo.com/video/240139030?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
https://player.vimeo.com/video/237569906?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
Phrases a Salesperson Should never Use with a Customer from The Digital Sales Institute on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/236460475?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
Effective Sales Techniques Tips Video from The Digital Sales Institute on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/235783604?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
8 Sales Tips to Inspire Performance from The Digital Sales Institute on Vimeo.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/232646152?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
Sales Prospecting Tips from The Digital Sales Institute on Vimeo.
We hope you enjoyed these free sales training video lessons.
OUR MISSION IS TO EMPOWER SALESPEOPLE TO BETTER ENGAGE WITH THEIR BUYERS – WITH EFFECTIVE ONLINE SALES TRAINING COURSES.
The Digital Sales Institute online sales training courses work hand-in-glove with our customers as part of a selling skills and sales transformation plan that puts sales skills center stage of buyer engagement.
Our business school standard online sales training courses will help Automate, Integrate, Measure and Scale the adoption of the latest selling techniques into the sales and marketing process for improved revenue performance. All the courses are designed to crystallize the sales habit loop, increase the quality of interactions with buyers, demystify any confusion regarding “social selling" and “social media" in the sales process and to speed up buyer qualified leads into the business.
Learn sales prospecting, digital selling skills, how to use social selling plus other core selling skills in 1 all inclusive online sales training package that lets you training across all courses for one low price.
WE ARE ALL ABOUT SALES SUCCESS
• Close the selling skills gap to to generate more sales
• Training salespeople to sell socially – offline and online
• Drive up qualified leads by 30-40% over a 6 month period
• Implement a prescriptive process to help sales find and engage buyers
• Understand how social networks can drive leads
• Learn how to re-tune the sales habit loop to make it part of your DNA
• Speed up the sales cycle and path to revenue by focusing on buyer stages
• Install clear KPI’s, sales metrics and sales playbooks
• Eliminate any roadblocks to becoming a sales driven business
When it comes to generating sales leads via social networks, is never easy even with the openness of social media. Using social media to generate sales leads whether you are just beginning in business or are well established, can be demanding. Add in the fact that the older traditional forms of lead generation such as cold calling, trade shows and emailing are in decline, you may be scratching your head as to how exactly to find new customers. Two words – Social Networks.
What is lead generation using Social Networks? Generating business leads or sales leads via social media, is a solution that can help you engage buyers where they gather to source information and avoid you becoming another annoying, disruptive cold caller who still engages in disruptive practices. Before you start trawling the social networks looking for buyers, you need to identify your Ideal Customer Profiles plus define what the term lead means. Next, we will cover what lead generation is, why you need to spend 25-30% of your time on it, how you qualify sales leads, how you generate leads, and why social media lead generation is much more effective than other activities.
What is your definition of a Sales Lead?
This is important to justify your time and results when social selling etc. on the social networks. This definition might assist. A lead is a person (based on your Ideal Customer Profile) who has expressed an interest in learning more about your product or service.
Or put another way, instead of a buyer getting a random cold call from someone who sourced their contact information, they will hear from someone whom they already have had some communication with via the social networks.
An example could be, a buyer reads an article you published on LinkedIn pulse, they liked and commented on the article telling you how insightful it was. Now if they got a message from you about how you could assist them sometime in the future, it would be less intrusive and more relevant than if you had phoned them at random with no knowledge of whether the buyer cares about your product.
And from a social business perspective, the information you gathered from the interaction will help you personalize further social communication to meet the existing needs of the other potential customers.
So, What Is Lead Generation using Social Networks?
Generating business leads using social networks is a non-interruption process of attracting, engaging and converting buyer profiles into qualified sales leads by sharing content and insights.
In a nutshell, it is about exchanging value to attract people to your business. You want to provide them with enough quality content to get buyers naturally aware of your company so they gradually warm up to the brand enough to want to hear more from you!"
This is exactly what lead generation is: It’s a way of been seen and then being found useful to potential customers for your business and getting them on the path to eventually become actual customers.
Why is Social Lead Generation So Important?
By creating social awareness and natural interest in your business, it’s those buyers and prospects that are displaying an interest in you as opposed to you trying to interrupt to initiate a relationship with them. As more of the buyer’s journey is done online, this makes it easier and more natural for them to want to engage with you at the consideration point.
How Do You Qualify Someone as a Lead via Social Networking?
This is the part that requires patience, consistency and skill. So, we generally agree that a lead is someone (think buyer profile) who has shown interest in your company’s product or service. Now, let’s talk about the ways in which someone can actually express that interest on the social networks.
In reality, a lead is generated through content shared, consumed and the resulting interactions that you collect. The resulting information you collect could come as the result of someone liking your articles or conversations, a buyer requesting a connection on LinkedIn or just someone following you via your social media accounts.
Listed below are just a few of the ways in which you begin to qualify someone as a lead on the social networks. Remember, you need to nurture each lead as each person’s level of interest in your business, can vary. Let’s look at each scenario:
- Profile Views and Followers: At its simplest, profile views are like handing out business cards, this shows your social reach impact and ability to attract people to find out a little more about you. As one swallow never made a summer, one profile view from a buyer does not equal a lead. Instead note down or record profile views especially from potential customers. As you published and share more content, are you getting repeat views and interest. Also, check your followers on your social media accounts daily, which of them fit with your Ideal Customer Profiles or which are social influencers you need to connect with. When you think, the time is right, you can reach out to connect directly with them to start the lead conversion process.
- Likes/Comments/Shares: A bit like profile views and followers, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon your profile. But if they find your articles, comments, conversation contributions and your profile pitch (make sure all your social media profiles are optimized) valuable enough, they may be willing to connect (and in so provide contact details/email address) to continue enjoying your insights. While people who engage with your activity may not seem like a lead source, it’s enough for you to know that someone has interest in your social activity.
- Content Engagement: This is the biggest magnet to attract buyer’s attention. People who engage (competitors aside) in the content you publish is an indicator that they have interest in your product or service. We are not discussing gated content that you publish on your website but rather the content you publish and share on the social networks. We will discuss content marketing for inbound leads in other articles. Publishing and sharing content on Twitter, LinkedIn including LinkedIn Pulse and Groups, Facebook, Bizsugar, Google+ Communities, Tumblr etc. is not only good for SEO but also for direct buyer engagement. The goal is to get people interacting and sharing your content to boost your social influence. Then the key is to collect data on who is liking, commenting or sharing your content. Some will be advocates you need to connect with while others are potential lead sources. In order to truly understand the nature of the person’s interest in your business, you will need to collect more information, enough information before you actually understand whether the person is interested in your product or service, and whether they’re a good fit (back to Ideal Customer Profiles again).
The above three are just general examples of generating business leads on the social networks. However, remember the mantra that a lead is only an opportunity to communicate with someone, so you will need to collect enough information in order to ascertain whether someone has a true interest in your product or service.
Putting these and other digital selling elements together, will allow you to use various promotional channels to link and drive traffic to your social media channels so you can start generating leads. With some learning , social selling training and dedicating 30-40 minutes a day to a social selling habit loop you could be your way to digital sales transformation, meaning engaging buyers in a more intelligent, meaning full way.