How do I get a prospect to change systems?, Tim Hughes

One of the problems, or should I say opportunities, we have in sales is the fact that often the people that we are targeting have one of what we are selling already.

My background is in selling accounting systems, as well payroll and human resources (HR) systems and whenever I was in the business of "creating desire" (prospecting) the first answer was usually,

"thanks but we have one of those already"

It was an early mentor to me in my sales career who said

"sales starts when somebody says "no", up to that point you are order taking".

Here at DLA Ignite, we work with with companies that run ABM, increasing what they sell to existing clients, we focus 70% of our efforts on helping companies find new business.

What can you do to scale your news business team?

Perception is reality

When you first make contact with a prospect, don't forget they already possess a set of assumptions, built on their current knowledge and experience. One of our clients, let's be honest here, has a "trust deficit" in the market, so while the company has changed the way they sell, there is a legacy of customers who have been "stitched up" in the past.

Let's not forget that these assumptions may not be based on fact, they may be based on third party conversations. But perception is reality.

Changing that perception is hard

As people we have different types of opinions, ones we are open to have changed and ones we are not. For example, many people will have beliefs.

For example, I'm a Liverpool FC fan, you can give fact upon fact that Manchester United is a better football (soccer) team, I won't believe you.

In our world view today, we are told that presenting facts will change people's minds, this isn't always the case.

Help your clients to discover

This is where you selling skills come to play, beating people around the head with facts, won't win them over. But helping them to discover the new reality is a good place to start.

The following is a proven way to the modern buyer will see you as the expert you are and may well turn to you for help (inbound lead) or will be willing to see you as somebody that can help them. In other words they will take your call.

How do we do this?

1. You need a buyer centric profile on social media, this ia a profile that your buyers will see you as a person that can help them. Let's not forget, buyers are on social media, looking for solutions to their problems, they are looking for help. They are not looking to be sold to, we all hate being sold to, there is a psychology condition, called "persuasion reactance" where we rebel and push back against anything where somebody tries to push us to doing anything. Like try and sell to us.

The DLA Ignite, social selling and influence course teaches you how to achieve this.

2. The second thing we need is a network. It stands to reason that if we want to influence accounts, we can only do this, if we are connected to these people. Let's not forget that social media is ..... social. Connecting and pitching or even just pitching is not social selling it's spam and it makes you look like a jerk.

Don't worry, the DLA Ignite, social selling and influence course teaches you how to grow your network and have conversations with people at scale. Afterall, it's conversations that create sales.

3. Finally you need content. Not brochures, nobody comes to social media to read brochures or brochureware. We know our buyers are looking for insight, so we should give it to them in an authentic way.

Our social selling and influence course, teaches people of all standards to create and share content.

We also go into how people need to create a digital identity, how they can walk digital corridors and how the business can create digital dominance.

Now Imagine .....

How about if I said, I can take you to a place where all your prospects hang out, would you go?

I can pick you up in the car tomorrow and you can hang out there having conversations with them.

When you arrived, what would you do?

Grab a coffee and go up to the first one and start a conversation? Of course you would.

Or would you walk in and say "buy my stuff, because we are great". Of course you wouldn't, as somebody would call security.

That's the difference. Selling on social is ...... social. You have conversations with people.

You don't go up to people and pitch to them as people will call security.

The great thing about social is that there is no "prime selling time (PST)", you can have as many conversations as you want. One of my customers, does his prospecting between putting the kids to bed and when he goes to bed.

It's time to bring your demand generation into the second decade of the 21st century and it's time to "start fishing where the fish are" ...... on social.

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". Here at DLA Ignite, engagement is important but we are about driving revenue, EBITDA, for your business using social media. This is about you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

Social is about having a strategy and there are two key drivers

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?

Posting and hoping or posting random stuff is not a strategy, in fact I doubt it's driving anything for your 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, and DLA Ignite customer, 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.

What happened? They buyer was on social media looking for a solution to their problem, spotted one of the Namos salespeople, who had a buyer-centric profile and asked if the salesperson could help them. That turned into a $2.6 million deal.

Contact any of the DLA Ignite team, Eric, Adam, Nick, Vanessa, Lorena, Priscilla, Lenwood, Alex and they will be more than happy to help.

Go and look at their LinkedIn profiles .... look how they can have digital conversations, create insightful content. This could be your company!

We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate in social selling 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