Firstly, social selling implies that you’re selling on social. I see plenty of sales posts on LinkedIn which usually get ignore because they’re SPAM. Someone throwing pasta at the wall and hoping it sticks is not a strategy, and unsurprisingly engagement is low (usually from employees of the same company).
We define Social Selling as using your social presence and active behaviour on social to build influence
…make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
…conversations and commercial interaction.
I was astonished chatting with a CEO of a data services company this week, to learn they had burnt £250k on sales and marketing in a relatively short period, in an attempt to generate new business. This money has quite literally gone up in smoke. For their size this is an eye watering amount!
Sales doesn't have to be a dark art or a complex beast that can never be tackled. When you think about it broadly there are only three stages of a deal you need to worry about:
- Opening new doors
- Managing deals
- Closing
The hardest thing for any company to do is open new doors and create new relationships that lead to new pipeline and revenue. So why hire people or an agency to do this job for you, when these are people far less experienced than you and don’t really understand the value you or your company can deliver, how can you expect them to do the job that is most difficult to do!
Your leadership team and lead consultants are the most valuable asset in your business, you should leverage this asset in a way that scales pipeline generation and in turn your business.
It only takes an individual between 1-2 hours per day to generate multiple net new conversations, that lead to at least one new commercial conversation a week, a new proposal a month and an additional deal a quarter.
What would it mean if it were two or more additional deals per quarter…
60-120 hours of time per person per quarter for one new customer. You know what your current close rate is, what if you can sustain your close rate and scale pipeline at the same time. And maintain or even increase the average order value. You do the math. That’s a cracking return!
Your sales reps (if you have any) don’t need to be highly paid sales experts, they’re essentially project managing each deal, orchestrating the moving parts of the deal and then depending on its size, they or the lead consultant or MD closes the deal.
Teach your best consultants and leadership team how to generate pipeline by owning their digital presence and social behaviour to build influence at scale.
You can’t rely on partners to bring you pipeline like they once did - they now find it just as hard to generate pipeline! You know that buyers do more research online and avoid where possible to speak with sellers. You don’t need me to throw stats at you. I’m sure you’ve read the same research I have. And actually, feel the pain of not having enough pipeline!
But in case you need a few stats;
- Between 70-90% of the B2B purchase decision is concluded before the buyer is willing to speak with a seller (Forrester)
- Less than 20% of the purchase process is open to the seller or supplier, and if you are 1 of 4 companies in the mix, that's just a measly 5% of the purchase process you have access to in order to influence the purchase decision.
- Buyers retreat into the zone of resistance and rely on information online and on social to form opinions (you and your teams need to be more active on social)
- Buyer influencers, the people doing the research are getting younger. They don't like to receive cold calls or even read emails. They are Gen-Z and Millennials and would rather hide behind their screens and not e influenced by a sales person.
90% of the internet population is on social media and 76% use social media to research companies. If your consultancy does not have a social strategy there’s no wonder you’re struggling to meet your commercial objective. And I don’t mean you post stuff and run campaigns on social. I mean a social strategy that includes your employees and is designed to grow EBITDA.
Your biggest hurdle is aligning your teams and changing mindset. If you do that and follow a set of prescribed activities - well, you can predictably influence growth and profit.
There are 25+ outbound and very human focused activities that can be done on social media to scale the number of conversations you and your team is having. Activities that cost nothing but time.
There are 9+ inbound activities you can expect as a result of your outbound effort.
And there are 9 measures to monitor progress and adapt your approach to drive a consistent level of performance and coach your team effectively on.
Linking these activities to EBITDA isn’t difficult. If you have a strategy, learn the activities including how to apply them effectively, you will soon be generating new conversations that lead to commercial ones that deliver pipeline, in turn revenue and profit.
Supero are one of a handful of certified providers of the DLA ignite Social Selling & Influence program, recognised by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP), the only social selling training program in the world to have a globally recognised qualification, unique to Supero and the DLA ignite partner community.
The ISP chose our program because it not only focuses on the acquisition of knowledge, it focuses primarily on the application of knowledge and the quality of application as this has the greatest effect on the commercial outcome.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can create predictable pipeline, revenue and profit, drop me a DM on LinkedIn or Twitter @Alex_Supero
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