How to make sure you get that SaaS consumption and get paid your commission, Tim Hughes

Was talking with a salesperson and a sales leader this week and the questions I was asked was around payment of commission. The sales team are SaaS based but they don't get paid until the customer "consumes" the SaaS products.

"So how can I get my clients to consume the SaaS products so I get paid?"

Trust

I realise that a lot has been written about trust and it is often seen as an "anti-sales" word, but trust me (no pun intended) trust is critical in the business world today.

Buyers, stakeholders, etc are burning their own political capital by supporting your system and they want to know that you have their back. They want to know if they take you into see the Board or a senior executive, you know how to behave and you will meet these stakeholders business person to business person.

How can you build trust?

The first thing you need to do is to set out your stall on social media. We know more than 90 percent of consumers now do online research before buying something. This is where you need to start. The last thing you need is to have a CV, it shows you are looking for a job and buyers want you to be around for a long time. You also should not look like a salesperson on social media, we call it a buyer-centric profile.

In our social selling and influence course, we teach and coach sales people how to have a buyer-centric profile, how to be "attractive" to buyers. In fact what we find, rather than run away from your profile, buyers will walk towards you.

Digital territory

In my last corporate role, we had 7 salespeople that would always make 200% of number, so what made them different from the people that didn't make quota? Well they has over 200 contacts in the accounts they managed. This is why you need to have multiple contacts in your accounts, this is your digital territory. And you should always be growing it.

In our social selling and influence course, we teach and coach sales people how to grow a network without spamming.

Digital proof you are that person who can help

I was talk the Infomentus sales methodology, the coach gave some great advice. He said whenever you go and see a senior executive you need to take something with you that will show that senior executive, the business person who are. Tell that senior executive, something they don't know, quote something from a recent piece of research. Show that senior executive that you understand the business issues, show empathy to the business issues they face.

You can do this everyday, by creating and sharing content. This means you can not just show one exec that you can be trusted and understand their business, but you will show the whole of your network, you digital territory.

Don't listen to marketing about sharing brochures and brochureware, senior executives are not interested, in fact they will look upon you as "just another salesperson" and not as an equal and a business partner.

Increase your SaaS consumption

By being a business person just like your client, by helping them, they are more likely to support burning their political capital for you.
By empathising and understanding their business issues, they are going to listen to you.
Be curious, ask questions and the buyers will welcome to you and you will see that SaaS licence start to be consumed.

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, 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