B2B Sales Tactics That Actually Work, Tim Hughes

During Covid I've spoken to company after company CEOs that believed articles like this Forbes article.

If we "make one more call" .... it will all be OK

These companies would have no pipeline, but bills to pay. These CEOs would know they have duty of care to the people on the payroll. They kept believing that if they make "one more call" this would somehow transform their pipeline position.

It wont and it didn't.

The sales and marketing vested interest to keep things the same

People who are writing articles about legacy sales and marketing methods, I suspect have a vested interest. A marketing agency, that hopes we can return to the 1990s and "blast" people with calls, emails and advertising, maybe? A sales trainer that has run out of ideas perhaps? The sales methodology that wasn't created in the age of social and digital?

I'm really sorry, it's over, you need to walk away and shame on Forbes for publishing such articles.

We've seen this type of vested interest before!

I remember the days (I am 1,000 years old after all :) ) where people where trying to hold onto the the fact the letters and mailshots were the thing to do. Back in the 1990s, Email had over taken, but still people tried to bang the letter drum. Article after article, in magazines -- I should say as the internet hadn't gained wide acceptance told us that the letter mailshot would never die. They did.

Cold calling and spam email are now medieval and people need to stop using as sales and marketing methods.

What do we know about sales and marketing today, if we are really honest?

1. Everybody I talk to in the industry agree that the client has migrated online, while before the pandemic we may have been online as a part time place, now it's full time. We feel comfortable there.

2. We hate people cold calling (tele-marketing) us, I for one will never take cold calls. iOS13 allowed us to make choices with cold calls, sending all numbers that are not in our address book, straight to voice mail. You do the same.

You hate cold calls, I hate them, clients hate them, so why do you think it's OK to do unto people that you hate being done to you? You don't like being punched in the face, so don't do it to other people.

3. The email inbox is not the nosiest place in the world. When you first got email you read ever email, now you get some many, you pick and choose. I was talking to a CMO this week who had 110,000 unread emails in his inbox.

Even Hubspot, and they sell email marketing systems say that email marketing now has a 98% failure rate across a sample of 70,000 of their customers. Research here. Their CMO is on record as saying that they are dropping email and moving to content marketing.

4. Nobody looks at advertising. Adblockers use is increasing, even Twitter is bringing out a subscription service because they know that adverts annoy their users. While I totally get that advertising spend is increasing, this isn't because it works, it's because it doesn't work. the other problem with advertising, is that you have to keep spending the money. Like heroin, once people get hooked on using it, they have to keep using it.

We know all this, so why do we go to our desks and forget it?

They way we work has changed how we buy

One of the massive changes that have taken place with Covid is the way we work and this has impacted on the way we buy.

We are all used to Zoom and Teams calls, we have the camera on, you can see my house and I can see yours. Children come in, we answer the door bell, cats come in, dogs come in. It's seen as normal practice today.

Buyers mindsets have changed too

But it isn't just the technology that has changed the buyers mindset has changed too.

Back in 2019 it was common to see marketers using advertising, cold calling (telemarketing) and email marketing. It was seen as normal to send these and receive them. The normality was that we received this in the office. Advertising, cold calling and email marketing; push marketing as it's often called was seen as a normal way to do business.

With the migration to work remotely and from home, now these interruptions invade our personal space. This has fundamentally changed the buyer's perception of these interruptions from "business as usual" to annoyance.

When we went to an office, we went into "work mode" and it was OK to receive these work mode interruptions. Now we work from home and these "work mode" interruptions are seen for what they are processes from a bygone age.

No relevance to us and in fact now we see advertisers, cold callers (telemarketers) and email marketers for what they are, sales and marketing dinosaurs. Teams that have no idea how to market and sell in this post covid world.

But the answer is simple

Now Imagine .....

How about if I said, I can take you to a place where all your prospects hang out, would you go?

I can pick you up in the car tomorrow and you can hang out there having conversations with them.

When you arrived, what would you do?

Grab a coffee and go up to the first one and start a conversation? Of course you would.

Or would you walk in and say "buy my stuff, because we are great". Of course you wouldn't, as somebody would call security.

That's the difference. Selling on social is ...... social. You have conversations with people.

You don't go up to people and pitch to them as people will call security.

The great thing about social is that there is no "prime selling time (PST)", you can have as many conversations as you want. One of my customers, does his prospecting between putting the kids to bed and when he goes to bed.

It's time to bring your demand generation into the second decade of the 21st century and it's time to "start fishing where the fish are" ...... on social.

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