Why prospecting today is about clicks and likes, Tim Hughes

A cold calling guru recently posted on social (Ironic I know) that "Social selling without social interaction is social stupidity." I totally agree with that.

This mindless posting of brochures and brochureware in the name of "employee advocacy" is just creating noise and it no use to person or brands. The idea that somebody will see a post of a brochure and somehow will buy is naive and idiotic.

In this webinar Gartner share research that states that

"64% of B2B customers cannot tell brands apart"

The cold caller went onto say

"We cannot spend a day on social media and assume business will appear out of thin air."

I totally agree with that.

We see so many social "gurus" who seem offer magical suggestions. Read my book and somehow you will magically get a $1 million deal with a set of templated Linkedin messages. It's farcical. Looking at their Linkedin profiles they don't live what they preach, many of them have little or no sales experience.

We get asked in by so many companies who have fired these people when the client realises that actually, social selling, like any form of sales requires structure, a process and a methodology.

One client said to us, "we thought the person would know about social media, because they had a beard".

But what about clicks and likes?

The cold caller then said "When we shift our focus from "clicks and likes" to helping people and using the tools available to us on LinkedIn, it's amazing how much quality business we'll create."

This is really bad advice and a deliberate tripwire for the those that don't understand social.

Let's first talk about content.

Why content is so important to prospecting

Content is so important to prospecting today, this recent gartner webinar talks about the way buyers do their research.

Buyers searching for content now on social media is a given.

But what type of content.

We undertook research on what makes great content, you can do the same, social is a democracy after all.

If you look at adverts on social, they have very few likes, so we can tell that few people like them. Anything that is about a product or brand again gets few likes. Note: we are not talking about posts where somebody has got a whole hosts of likes from people within that company. This is just talking within an echo-chamber.

As you move up this pyramid you will get more and more likes. "So what!"

I guess you and the cold calling guru are saying.

Why likes are so important for prospecting today

Take this post from Eric Doyle, part of the DLA Ignite team.

I'm guessing you have seen many a post like this on LinkedIn.

The difference is that this post has some 200 likes and comments and I guess for this cold caller this is all a big yawn. But this post got

124 leads
28 new outbound connections
13 new inbound connections
6 c-level meetings
2 proposals
1 purchase order
Nearly 20,000 people ‘saw’ me / profile / DLA
…..from 10 minutes work.

There isn't one legacy demand generation activity, advertising, email marketing and cold calling that can get you 6 c-level meetings, 2 proposals and 1 purchase order from 10 minutes of work on social.

This is why we need to be shifting our business into the social media engagement 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.

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, 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.

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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