I've written over 500 articles on LinkedIn and If you're in sales, why you should too, Tim Hughes

I've written over 500 articles on LinkedIn. But why?

It's part of how a modern organisation and a modern salesforce prospects.

How does a modern business prospect?

Let's think about how a modern buyer buys

We all hate being bombarded with interruptions like cold calls and cold emails. Scripts and templates that just makes all those sales people, look and sound the same. No differentiation.

We hate it and so does your buyers.

Luckily we are able to block all that noise, cold calls, emails and spam approaches on social media can all be blocked. This is not me being anti-sales, it's modern psychology.

Our data shows that the moment that a salesperson makes a cold outreach the buyer blocks you.

In fact our data shows that most salespeople are training prospects to ignore and block them.

A modern buyer ...

A modern buyer comes onto social media and searches. They have business issues and are searching to resolve them. Your job as a salesperson, is to be found and be the natural choice for that buyer and their search. How do you do that?

1. By having a buyer centric profile, the modern buyers sees this they walk towards you, great example of this happening and turning into a $2.6 million deal, below.

2. You must have wide a varied network on social media in business today, the wider and more varied the more likely you will come up in buyers searches.

3. The final piece in the modern day prospecting puzzle is content. Why content?

Why as a salesperson should I create content?

1. Content allows you to leave digital evidence of your expertise in vertical or business areas

2. It provides a digital dominance over your competition in the areas you want to be know for

3. A varied content plan, is how modern salespeople prospect

4. They add pages of keyword optimised content to your profile, which means you are more likely to be found by more and more buyers in your vertical and territory

5. You can use articles in different forms, as articles to cut down as quotes etc

6. Articles are there forever (posts have a short shelf life) and will be indexed by Google the more you do this, the more lilley you will be found by buyers on Google

7. They get engagement, which is all part of your prospecting mix

8. As part of your outreach, your buyers and prospects will see that you stand for something. Our data shows that salespeople get a higher acceptance rate on outreach, they also get a higher conversion rate on discovery calls, etc.

That's how we get into the difficult accounts

A sales leader in one of our clients, recently said

"this is a great way to get into those hard to get into accounts"

I will take that, because if it's a way to get into hard to get into accounts, you can guarantee it's a way to get into easy to get into accounts.

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" this is about revenue, EBITDA, you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

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?

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, 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 work with our partners such as Crux, Little Bird Marketing, Funnel Amplified, Accelery, EDPE Consultants, etc. We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate provided by an independent qualification body (OfQual) and 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