Is your sales team paralysed by ignorance? - A series of case studies .., Tim Hughes

This week has been interesting, I've had three situations where businesses just seem to be paralysed and unable to do anything from a sales prospective.

Let's pick these case studies up, one at a time.

1. Digital Hope

I was contacted by a friend who showed me a slide from a presentation they had given to their sales team. In the presentation was a slide that showed my LinkedIn profile and the message to the sales team was "be more like Tim".

I've seen this many times before, it's called "digital hope".

The person who gives the presentation, however well meaning, thinks that the sales team will go, "that's amazing, I must do that".

It never works that way, when I worked in corporate life we even did presentations where we showed the salespeople can earn more money. And nothing happened.

We all know this won't change anything. Power point presentations never do change anything.

I asked the person who was to give this presentation two questions.

How many meetings / leads do they expect to get from the work on social?

How much revenue do they get from the activity on social?

The answer I got back was "food for thought". In other words nothing.

People need to be given the digital skills, presenting my LinkedIn profile and hoping that somehow people will magic the skills .... it won't happen.

Digital hope, won't enable you to win more business, in fact it's a sink on your time and effort. It fills people with hope, when there isn't any.

2. The need to sell into a brand new account where there are no contacts and relationships

Ever been on one of those calls where you need to target an account where there are no contacts or relationships and people "dance around handbags".

Bless; even the salesperson said they had made a few calls.

I had to laugh, as calling or sending emails are not going to get you far.

You need relationships and conversations at scale.

3. The need to sell global deals

Always a difficult one, there are so many countries, and people, in fact it's similar to the issue above.

You need relationships and you need conversations and you need them fast.

Especially if you have to kick this off in 2022 and make a sale by December 2022.

The problem with salespeople today

The problem with all three of these scenarios above is that the salespeople today are not being given the skills, to the answers to solve these problems.

Businesses are not investing in the digital skills which will soon unlock new accounts, and accounts, big or small so you turn companies where you have no contacts into new logos. I even give an example below on how people are doing this, turning investments in their teams into big deals.

How do you create something from nothing in sales today?

Social selling is the ideal vehicle for originating deals.

Why? Because it allows you to sell higher and wider than legacy sales methods, it also gets resonance with people higher in organisations.

But you are here to find out how to solve the three problems above, so let's walk you through it.

1. Buyer centric profile - The first thing you need is a buyer-centric social media profile. This is a profile, that when your target accounts look at you, they see you as the expert you are, they see you say a human being that can help them, they see you as that sherpa, that helper, the person that can solve their business issues. Don't forget, that they don't know they have the business issue that you are going to solve. Well they don't know, yet. Let's not forget this company has zero understanding about what your business does. Hold that thought.

The last thing you you want is your LinkedIn profile to look like is a CV, it means you are looking for a job, or maybe you look like just another salesperson? This is the big prize, invest some time. Don't forget, you need to look different, like an expert and look human.

2. Build your digital network - Then taking your buyer centric profile, you start building your network, that is connecting with the people you want to influence and sell to in these global accounts.

There is a tip here, don't sell. Yes I know you have an amazing solution and you are passionate about it, (after all it pays your mortgage) but I don't know that. Yes I know it's called "social selling". But simple psychology tells us all that we all hate being sold to. So don't. It's your job is to get me into a conversation.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. We don't buy from people who turn up and pitch to us on social.

Don't worry we train and coach you on how to create a buyer centric profile and how to create a digital territory at scale as part of your social selling and influence course.

One final thing on a network in global accounts, let's take BMW as they are clients of ours. How many people do you think you need to connect to in BMW to make a success of the account?

There are 100,000 people in BMW and 100,000 people in the dealer network.

To be honest, I have no idea how many people, but it will be more than 1.

We are transforming a supply chain software companies salesforce and they tell me there are 100 stakeholders in their sales. In that case, it's going to be more than 100.

3. Content - The final thing you need is content.

Please forget the brochures that marketing create, nobody reads them.

I would suggest you flip articles from an app like Flipboard or better still, create your own blogs, like this. Let's not forget, I'm not telling you "buy my product, because we are great" I'm giving you insight, I'm showing you I'm an expert, I'm explaining how to sell global deals.

This is what you need to be doing, with your content.

Explain the business issue(s) one at a time.

Post everyday, don't forget if you don't post you are invisible.

We will take you through how to create content as part of our social selling and influence course.

Originating deals with social is easy

Originating and creating deals, in fact any deals is very easy today as social gives us a global stage. Then it's down to you, do you look (on social media) like a person the company can do business with? Are you influencing, having conversations and building relationships with the right people? Are you influencing people and getting conversations with your content?

It is, that straight forward, and if you need any help you know where we are.

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.

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

What is social selling and what it isn't?