The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Selling, Tim Hughes

I speak to a lot of business leads about sales and marketing.

how that business worked in the past, what they do currently and how they would like to sell in the future.

This got me thinking, what are the 7 deadly sins of social media.

Lust

A friend of mine sent me an article he had posted on social, he had got 40 likes and was very proud of it. The problem was, that 35 of those likes were from his own staff, three were from mates and two were from people outside of the job title and company he was trying to influence.

I'm not saying this was a waste of time, but I doubt they got anything from it. And in business, that is a cost and not a profit to the business.

Gluttony

Prospecting today is not about cold calling and email. If you have any cold calling expert come to you, ask to see the results they are getting from social selling. You will be surprised, time after time, we see cold calling experts on social saying they don't get many results from social.

Also, social selling is not just Linkedin. A friend of mine told me the story of how he got a C-Level meeting, the person wasn't on Linkedin, or twitter, but was on Instagram. In fact, they often posted photos of their two dogs. And as any social seller knows, that is an opportunity to have a conversation. No gatekeepers and no spam filters to get through. Salespeople today have a working knowledge of all social platforms.

This is why in sales today you need to understand how to have a digital conversations and walk digital corridors.

Greed

I recently spotted on a salesperson Linkedin profile "made presidents club the last 4 years in a row. Whenever I get my teeth into a customer, either I will die or they will die before I let go". What an amazing, macho (it is a "he"), sales dinosaur thing to say.

I often show it to buyers and they laugh and say what a "sad individual" and "doesn't he know that buyers will avoid him like the plague". We (the buyers and I) assume he must work in a market where the buyer is naive, or he is look for a job.

Sloth

I cannot write an article without mentioning "lazy selling". A headhunter friend of mine, spends his days on Linkedin. He will be retained by a company to fill roles. These companies will be paying good money to the salespeople and to my headhunter friend. He's looking for the "A-Players".

The headhunter will get a list of 250 potential people he will approach from sales navigator. He will need to get it down to 20 people to approach and he will do that by checking to see if the potential candidates have a "personal brand".

While "personal brand" is often seen in some circles (the "B players" I guess) as some sort of "marketing fluff", if you want to get a top job in sales today, according to the people that recruit these people, you need to understand what it means and you need one.

Wrath

A prospecting skill in this digital world is "engagement". I have closed business from a buyer, who has found me, based on a comment I have left. Engagement is a great driver of "inbound".

It is also a great way to prospect, by liking and commenting on people's posts, so your target prospects notice you. (I need to point out that if you look like a spammer, then, people will assume you are a spammer, so it's not just about engaging.)

What you say, the comments you write, the articles you like, the content you post all reflect on you and what you stand for. If you leave comments such as "I think that the people who think this are idiots", and your prospect who sees this, it might impact who they place their business with.

Envy

If you are making your number today, well done. I always found as a salesperson, I need to try new things to give me an edge. After all, we are all "just another salesperson". If you are not making your number, is it because you have fallen behind.

I guess there are "new fangled ways", I do recall some salespeople saying to me they wouldn't use email, because it was "new". How often, the "new" becomes "old".

Now is not the time to fall behind, but to stand up and tell your management that you need to be trained in the ways of social, digital, remote and moderns selling. My advice is not allow people to "nickel and dime" you with hints and tips, it will get you nowhere. And every salesperson is doing this, read a book here, read a book there.

You need a cast iron methodology.

Pride

Many sales leaders and sales people say to us, they are "all over social". What actually does that mean and how can you measure it?

Yesterday, I read a blog by Eric Doyle, which detailed how you can measure "being all over social", he describes it as follows.

"Check their profile.

This needs to be buyer centric and digitally optimised, not easy to spot if you don’t know what you are looking for but…is it complete and interesting? Does it look as if they have spent time on it? Does it create a good image, does it feel right?

Check their follower count?

You won’t be able to check how many connections they have but you can see how many followers the have on their profile in ‘Activity’ section. The average is around 950 these days, you are looking for more than average. Ask them how many connections they have and what they do to grow their network. What percentage of their digital network relates to what you want to be famous for…? If most of their network is in other sectors, you may have an issue.

Check their activity.

Where do they hang out and interact? What content do they like and comment on and why? Are they actively engaging with others content and is that in any way related to what you do?

Check their content.

Do they post regular content and what is it? Does their content get engagement, and do they follow up?

Check if they multi-channel.

Do they take their Social Strategy to other platforms…?"

For example, are they digital where their clients are on Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse tec.

You can find Eric on Linkedin here and his blog here.

There are plenty more sins and plenty more cognitive biases as to why people don't want to adopt modern selling, but maybe, just maybe, you will stand up and be counted. For the business leaders reading, maybe it's time to leave a legacy?

Now Imagine .....

Imagine, I pick you up tomorrow in my car and drive you to a place which is full of your prospects and customers. All you have to do is go up and have a conversations with them.

Remember, social media is, social media. In the past you interrupted somebody with a cold call or an email and pitched your services. As social media is being social on media, interrupting and pitching does not work.

If I walked up to you at a social event and pitched, you would make your excuses and go and talk to somebody else.

So how about tomorrow, I pick you up in my car and we go to a place where all your prospects are hanging out. You can stay as long as you want. All you have to do is have a conversation with them. It's that simple, if you are interested, read on.

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". Here at DLA Ignite, engagement is important but we are about driving revenue, EBITDA, for your business using social media. This is about you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

Social is about having a strategy and there are two key drivers

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?

Posting and hoping or posting random stuff is not a strategy, in fact I doubt it's driving anything for your business.

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

Andrew Ferrier who is the CEO of Display Technology Ltd and in this article it talks about why Display Technology have adopted social selling. His team have also created a social media strategy with help from our partner, Crux.

Their social media mission statement is

“We want to position ourselves as a forward-thinking, knowledgeable team of individuals who are all experts in our own right, therefore, collectively awesome!”

Andrew also says in that post

"Adopting this (social selling) strategy has taken all of us well outside of our comfort zones but the rewards we have seen in a short period of time have created an excitement within the business development team (new term for sales team).

Because of the nature of social media, quite often you can get instant results. Even if that is just a comment left on your post, or a like, or someone taking the time to want to connect with you.

The excitement around the sales team is infectious, it’s no longer a chore to reach out to the market place because the results can be instant and are there, right in front of you."

What sort of results can you expect?

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, and DLA Ignite customer, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

What happened? They buyer was on social media looking for a solution to their problem, spotted one of the Namos salespeople, who had a buyer-centric profile and asked if the salesperson could help them. That turned into a $2.6 million deal.

Contact any of the DLA Ignite team, Eric, Adam, Nick, Vanessa, Lorena, Priscilla, Lenwood, Alex and they will be more than happy to help.

Go and look at their LinkedIn profiles .... look how they can have digital conversations, create insightful content. This could be your company!

We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate in social selling sponsored by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP).

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project