The one skill your salespeople need to master in this digital world, Tim Hughes

Being about to walk your digital corridors (starting and having) digital conversations.

The digital perfect storm

There has been a perfect storm of disruption in society and how we work. The internet, social media, mobile and Covid-19 have all impacted us.

Want to buy something we reach for our mobiles and start searching on Google or on social media. It’s natural for us to do this in our personal lives and in our business lives too.

The same goes for our buyers.

Let me reiterate, if your buyers want to buy something, they go online and do research.

What that means to us as anybody that has a customer facing role

It does not matter if we are sales people, business developers, lawyers, accountants, management consultants, leadership or engineers. The fact of the matter is if we know our buyers, clients, investors, etc are on social media, then we need to be as well.

But Tim, that's what marketing do

I'm sorry but the days of marketing holding onto to social and having responsibility for it for a business are over.

We know there has been a perfect storm, we know that our own activities have changed and so have our clients. We have to take control of our own social activity, why?

Because that's how life works today

When, Adam Gray and I started DLA Ignite, we were in talks with a large management consultancy. They explained to us, "the way business work is like this, we take the CEO to a game of golf, they sign the contract". I'm sure some business still happens like this, but it's getting less and less.

In a recent Salesforce survey, here.

76% of workers do not feel prepared for working in a digital first world.

So how do you get digital skills?

Just like your diversity training or your health and safety training you have to invest in making sure your teams have the skills to work the digital corridors.

This does not happen by accident
This does not happen by you hoping it will happen
This does not happen by your analogue people training people to be digital
This does not happen with your team(s) watch a video or listening to a deck of powerpoints
This is not Linkedin training, this is about being social.

This happens by having a team trainers to come in and train and most importantly coach your teams in what digital means.

Coaching your team on social media - walking those digital corridors

To train and coach on what it means to have a personal brand and how to create one. After all, we know our buyers are out there, we know they are checking us out, we know they will make a decision if they should employ us or the firm by what we look like on social media.

You need people to train you on how to create networks, in your prospects and in your customers, so that you can influence these people. Creating digital influence for your firm.

You need to be trained and coached on creating content, not corporate content that nobody engages with, but life content so that businesses can see you are the great firm with a great culture.

This isn't just about understanding how to use a social platform, this is about understanding what it means to be social. Trained and coached on how to be social on social.

And finally, this is not about LinkedIn, what if your client isn't on LinkedIn but is on Instagram, or Twitter, how will you work the digital corridors if you can be social on those platforms?

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