Can I get headhunted for my next job with social selling?, Tim Hughes

Last week I posted a list of areas that we see have changed in sales and the type of skills that are needed for the modern salesperson.

A headhunter friend of mine, Robert Tearle made the following comment

First, his comment is validation, I know a few people reading this won't agree with my post, which is fine, but great to see a headhunter agreeing.

He also makes the comment

"FIrstly curiosity - we need to be hyper relevant

Secondly subject matter knowledge ie product and market

I always like your comment about customers doing research far in advance of engaging with sellers"

He then went onto say

This is a great quote by Robert

"by the way the significance of market and product knowledge is that every year the customer gets smarter, and has access to info at his or her fingertips. If the seller has little knowledge they have little credibility."

But is my blog just a loan voice or are all sales teams carrying on with cold calling like we always did?

More and more companies are now stopping cold calling and moving to digital for sales

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling

The article states...

"Merrill on Monday rolled out a revamped adviser-training program that prohibits participants from cold calling and directs would-be brokers to use internal referrals or LinkedIn messages to land clients instead. The decision comes after the program’s 3,000 trainees were told to stop outbound recruiting efforts to find new customers last year after problematic phone calls."

Why?

"The revamped program is intended to bring the firm’s prospecting techniques into the digital era and boost completion rates."

No shit sherlock!

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"

This isn't me saying that social selling has a better response rate, which our research shows, this is Merrill Lynch saying it. Merrill Lynch the multinational sales organization.

Mic drop!

Does any other organisation support this?

OK, but what does McKinsey say?

A recent McKinsey report announced that, those companies that sell digitally are out performers, see article here.

You can see that the market has flipped from analogue to digital. From cold calling to social selling.

Time to join the dots...

With Bank of America Merrill Lynch and McKinsey both saying that digital selling is the way to go, how long will you go keep ignoring this?

If you wanted to get headhunted today you need to be social savvy, you need digital skills.

It's time to go to your leadership and ask to be trained on social selling and not to be parmed off with some "hints and tips" sessions, that won't give you the skills you need. You need a proper framework, a methodology from a reputable company.

STOP PRESS: On posting this article, Robert left this message. There you have it, without a decent (don't forget you are not the judge of that) LinkedIn profile, you will not progress your career.

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