Can social selling help me with virtual selling?, Tim Hughes

In this article, McKinsey (spelt McKinsey and not McKenzie) say that 70 to 80 percent of buyers prefer virtual selling, well virtual buying.

This is all very good, but what is virtual selling?

I recently read a book on virtual selling and it was totally bizarre, it would seem we have been doing virtual selling for years. You know cold calling and spam emails that don't work anymore?

Well you know you have been doing them in the office, well virtual selling is doing the same old demand generation activities that don't work anymore, but you do them at home.

As I said totally bizarre.

Yep, you can actually buy a book and pay for a course that tells you this .... buyer beware!

What is our definition of virtual selling?

Using your presence and behaviour on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction

We know our clients are online and we know we need to start conversations with them online.

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.

Social selling have been proved to increase revenue in an organisation by 30% and reduce the sales cycle by 40%.

This is not my opinion, there is data to back this up.

Yesterday, I wrote about how social selling was increasing the conversation rate on Director level calls by 42%. Again, not my opinion, this is all date backed. I agree that we can only increase the conversion rate on rank and file people by 25% but either way scaled across your business this will make transformational difference to your revenue, profit and EBITDA.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.

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This is all very good, but what is virtual selling?

What is our definition of virtual selling?

So who's social selling?

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