In this blog I want to walk you through the reasons why social selling will transform your pipeline.
First let's look at some data, 73% of SDRs are under quota and I think we can put that down to the old legacy sales methods that are given to use today. After All it's 2023 and arming people will cold calling, a 1980s sales method and email marketing a 1990 sales method, means they have failed before they have even started.
It's like turning up at a swimming pool and you cannot swim, you are not going to last long and your competition is already ahead of you.
Now that could be my opinion, but let's look at the data. In this article from Salesforce, they quote that cold calling has a 98% failure rate, article here. In this article in the drum, Hubspot (and they sell email marketing systems so have a vested interest to talk email systems up) say that email marketing has a 98% failure rate, article here.
Now I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to go to the board of my business telling them, we were backing sales tactics that had 98% failure rates. It would be career limiting.
But we all know that we should "Go Outbound... Pipeline Cures all" Andreessen Horowitz
As a new business salesperson, I have always relied on my efforts and if, and it's a big if, anything came in from marketing is was a bonus.
82% of SDRs identify the top 2 factors below as the hardest parts of their jobs.
That is where social selling comes in. Legacy sales methods pushes you down in an organisation, after all, how many C-Suite people take cold calls or cold emails, they don't. Which means your salespeople waste time and effort talking to people too low down in the business.
We did some research in one of clients where we pitched a cold calling SDR team against a social selling SDR team, in terms of outbound and the results were amazing.
For rank and file, the social selling team got an 11% higher conversion rate, for senior technical there was a 23% higher conversion rate for the social sellers, at C-Level there was a massive 42% conversion rate and for commercial people there was a 18% higher conversion rate for the social sellers.
As a business that understands that pipeline is key and the need for proactive prospecting is critical, there is only one answer in sales today, social selling.
Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book
"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".
In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.
Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.
It's available on Amazon worldwide. Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.