Interesting article from destinationCRM which talks about new sales trends for 2022 for life in the post pandemic world.
The full article is here, should you be interested.
I think we would agree with the opening paragraphs
"Technology had been moving at a breakneck pace, forcing sales departments to adjust their selling techniques. Then COVID-19 hit, and business processes were instantly, dramatically, and unprecedentedly interrupted.
“COVID provided a shock to sales teams,” explains Jon Aniano, senior vice president of product for CRM applications at Zendesk. “A lot of the typical sales behaviors (salespersons on the sales floor, in-person learning, face-to-face meetings with customers) were no longer possible.”
Companies had to adjust quickly: 88% of sellers say their jobs have become more about how to respond to unexpected changes, according to Gartner.
Companies found that existing business processes did not mesh with the new landscape. So they began making significant adjustments."
But that is just the start, we all know there has been a perfect storm of mobile, internet, social media and covid-19, which has meant that the modern buyer has moved onto social media. Companies that still focus on cold calling and email spam are not active where their prospects and customers are.
Cold calling and spam email had a dubious usage before the pandemic, now the results have fallen off a cliff. But what's a company to do?
Social selling takes hold
There is even a paragraph in the article from destination CRM on social selling, which is great validation of our space. So what does our research show?
Despite the fact that response rates from databases, advertising, email marketing, events, sponsorship, cold calling…have all changed to the point where they are unrecognisable from a decade ago many companies still hold on to the belief that they are doing something wrong rather than that these mechanisms don’t work any more.
Analysing response rates, trying ever more costly and complex campaigns and creative treatments, increasing frequency, hunting for lookalike audiences, will not overcome the elephant in the room.
People do not like cold-outreach any more. (Perhaps they do for B2C but they certainly don’t for B2B companies)
"More than 90 percent of consumers now do online research before buying something.
As a result, social selling is becoming integral to the sales process. “Technology is opening up so many new opportunities to companies,” explains Colin Crowley, a customer experience adviser at Freshworks. “They now have new types of conversational engagements with live chat and new channels like WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, and Facebook Messenger. Customers may start a conversation via chat but then end up in a buying scenario. Increasingly, the entire process takes place in the chat window. The customer does not have to visit a website. These solutions simplify the process, so sales are closed with a few clicks.”
He doesn't nail social selling and link it to revenue, but it's a great try. Interesting he says that the customer does not visit the website, that certainly agrees with our research. The article goes on to talk about the fact that the salesperson is no longer the entry point for information about your company.
The salesperson is no longer the information gatekeeper
"The quick and dramatic adoption of digital technology changed the sales process. Historically, sales reps acted as technical support representatives as well as marketing and sales agents. They had the information that customers needed to make purchasing decisions."
Not buyers will avoid salespeople unless they have been socially enabled. This means business lose business to their socially enabled competitors or just leave money on the table.
Isn't Artificial Intelligence and Automation the answer?
You can drive-up response rates by using massively sophisticated technology, but it doesn’t change the fact that people do not reposed well to these techniques any more.
The trend of people not liking being sold to is unlikely to abate…so you need to try something different because you can’t keep hoping that the old ways will come back in to fashion again.
People have moved on. Your prospects have moved on.
And we all know where they are now!
Now picture this
Tomorrow, you and I are going to meet at the lobby of your target customer.
Go with me on this.
Imagine that I have a key card to get into the building, we wave to security and I let you through the security barriers. Impressive eh!
We walk over to the elevators and I press the button to go up to the relevant floors where we can meet with the people you need to sell to. Now you have never met these people before so i will introduce you. That will mean you will get to meet the people you need to meet in this target customer of yours.
Pick whatever department you want, I will take you there and introduce you.
For example, say you sell accounting systems, ERP systems, then I can take you and introduce you to the people in Finance. Or maybe you sell human resources (HR) software and I take you to meet the HR people. Or maybe you sell CRM, customer experience (CX) and I can take you to meet all the people in marketing and sales.
Now if I walked you into finance, (or any of the other departments) and I started to introduce you to the people there one-by-one. Now, you wouldn't hand everybody a brochure and walk away, would you?
This is your chance to get into the business, meet the people, build relationships. Kinda cool!
As I introduce you to the people in your target department, you would hand them your business card. You might get people to scan the QR code on LinkedIn so you are connected.
Either way you would also want to be remembered. So you might ask them a question about themsleves, maybe you spot that Manchester United mug on their desk, the Nick Saban bobblehead (doll). The photo of their family on their desk, you would start a conversation about them. You might crack a joke. You would start building trust. Maybe you would ask them about the business, be curious about them and the company?
As I walk you around the department, and introduce you to more and more people, you would get to know more and more people and the department would get to know you. In fact the whole department will know you, just think of the competitive advantage you now have.
We haven't needed to talk about product, we are connecting as humans, we are having conversations. We are being social.
Just through this simple way of showing you around and introducing you to people, you are front of mind and your competition is not. This is so powerful!
I've now walked you around the whole department, they know you, you know them. It's time to see the big boss and I take you in and introduce you.
You look around the office and see the photos of her fly fishing, you talk about when you had a fly fishing lesson in Scotland when you visited there last. You connect.
One of the things we do in life is find commonality with each other, because when we do that we start to know, like and trust each other.
You then ask her some of the business related issues you picked these pointers up from her staff you have been talking to.
If it's finance you might ask her about how long it takes to close the month end books, if it's human resources it might be about sourcing internal talent, if it's CRM you might ask about onboarding sales people.
I could go on, but you should get the picture now.
It does not matter if you know nobody in this company, they could even be using a competitive solution. But by the time I've walked you around, they know you, they know you as a human, they are aware that you work for a company and you didn't even need to pitch to them. Now it's time to start moving some of those conversations to commercial interaction.
This is social selling
Now you can stop imagining, what I've described to you is social selling.
This is so powerful, so natural and is the killer blow you need today.
Here at DLA Ignite, teach and coach you, to digitally walk into companies, build influence and trust, across the whole team from the ground floor to the top floor. From your ideal customers, to the stakeholders and the budget holders.
It could be new business, you could be trying to displace a competitor, it could be "landing and expanding" it could be part of an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy.
Either way, using social selling and influence from DLA Ignite is the fastest way to success and we can get you there.
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).
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“COVID provided a shock to sales teams,” explains Jon Aniano, senior vice president of product for CRM applications at Zendesk. “A lot of the typical sales behaviors (salespersons on the sales floor, in-person learning, face-to-face meetings with customers) were no longer possible.”
