Yesterday, I got a LinkedIn connection request from a sales guy, of course he’s doing his best, but like so many people, they think they can have a “make it up as we go along” social selling process.

That is versus the social selling process and methodology that we have been creating, developing and coaching for the last 8 years.

This person was doing so many things wrong, but well intentioned, I’m sure.  But so many things wrong that their LinkedIn profile was working against them, not for them.

Which is why their LinkedIn profile was in fact an act of self-harm.

Let me walk through what they were doing wrong.

• Their summary title, wasn’t their job title, which was good, but a title of “Helping sellers delight their prospects with video”.  The issue with this it’s what you do.  I know LinkedIn trainers tell you that you need to make your summary title what you do, but they are wrong. We all know what’s coming next when a person has a title like this, it’s a “connect and pitch”. So, we ignore them. Your summary title is the most visible thing about you on the internet it should create curiosity and a conversation, which is why is needs to be your “why”.
• The second thing that was wrong about their profile was that it was about them, their company and their products. Sorry, not sorry, I’m not interested. I’m interested in my business issues, not what you have to sell.  Your profile needs to be about your customer, it also needs to be about you, the real you. Say I met you at a networking event, you wouldn’t pitch me about your company and products we would find common interests, values.
• The third thing he did wrong was that there was no message in the connection request.  We all know that means this is a connect and pitch spam message coming.  Now I might be missing out on the biggest opportunity of my life, but that’s my bad.  I understand from somebody I know that works for that company that they have decided to stop sending messages with LinkedIn connections as they come across as “salesy”. Of course, they are if you are in the “connect and pitch” business, rather than the business of conversations.

I've just rejected another LinkedIn connection request, apart from the person is using automation as the message starts with "Hi Timothy (Tim)", (always make sure you can spot automation), "Simpler Selling for Startups", we all know this means it's a "connect and pitch", which is why I just rejected it.

Another person, harming themselves and losing business by making their social media profiles non-buyer friendly. 

Businesses need to stop implementing “let’s try and guess at a social selling process” you are all missing out on revenue, conversations that you never even knew you could have.

Here at DLA Ignite we will train and coach your sales team to be fully trained in social selling, we are even able to offer our social selling methodology with a certification from the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP), an independent body.  The only social selling qualification backed by an independent sales trade body in the world.

Want to know more about the business case for social selling, read on.

Let's look at the data, cold calling vs our social selling benchmark

Here at DLA Ignite, we are always wanting to push forward the boundaries of sales, so we decided to put cold calling head to head with the DLA Ignite methodology for social selling and create a benchmark (and business case) for our version of social selling.

So we took a team of "cold callers" cross trained them in our methodology for social selling and here are the results.

It's worth shouting out the team, Alex, Jordan and Jensen and they work for a company called Supero.

Don't believe me? Please check the team out on social and ask them about the results!

The results with cold calling

When the team were cold calling, that is, before we trained them on social selling.  I'm not sure what results you get with cold calling but they did whatever they could in terms of warming up the calls with emails or webinars, etc.  And the results, they got about 2 calls a week.  

As with any cold call, your job is to take the call to a next action, which might be a demo, discovery call and they averaged 0.3 of these calls.

Anyway, you will have your own figures for cold calling in your business and you will know what they are. 

The results for social selling

What is social selling?

The DLA Ignite definition of social selling is

"Using your presence and behaviour on social media, to build influence make connections, grow relationships and trust.  Which leads to conversation and commercial interaction".

(Please note these figures are for the DLA Ignite methodology, we cannot speak for other suppliers, please check with them, before signing any contracts.)

I need to say, before I get any comments. 

There is no spam and no automation in the DLA Ignite social selling methodology!

The DLA Ignite social selling methodology does not use connect and pitch!

The DLA Ignite social selling methodology does NOT use inmails, which are spam. 

In fact the program is now back and certified by the Institute of sales professionals (ISP), the only such methodology backed by a sales professional body.

Let's get onto those results for DLA Ignite methodology of social selling

The team are getting a 9% response (on average) to social selling cold outreach, so for every 100 people they ask for a call, 9 say "yes". 

This figure is an average, so we think somebody with intermediate skills or an expert should be getting a higher figure should be getting a larger response.  In fact, our benchmark for an expert is 13%, but I want to keep figures realistic and conservative. 

As we mentioned above, with every "call" based on cold outreach, there has to be some sort of next action.  For your own company, you will know what your next action is, it will be a demo, a discovery call or something. 

We have found that with DLA Ignite social selling methodology 9% of the people (on average) that agreed to a call, 33.6% are converting to a next action.  

This is exponential growth when compared to cold calling. 

Each salesperson is averaging 10 calls / meetings per week.

Just think if you scaled that across your sales organization! 

(The most successful SDR complains he has got too many meetings, which think is a great problem to have!)

Just think about that being rolled out across your sales team(s).  

It's time to work smarter not harder. 

Let's look at this with a business case

Let's take a sales team of 10.

We know that the average person can grow their network by 3,000 people a year.  Let's assume of these 50% are going to buy, this gives you a network growth of 1,500 per person per year.

If you have 10 salespeople that gives you a total addressable market (TAM) of 15,000 new people to have conversations with.

With our, Institute of sales professionals (ISP) backed, DLA Ignite social selling methodology, (note: we cannot vouch for anybody else) based on our measured benchmark, you should be able to get, on average, meetings with 9% of this TAM of 15,000.  This means your sales team can have 1350 new conversations every year. 

(As we know, conversations create sales.)

As we discussed above, with any cold outreach the objective is to get a next action and using our social selling methodology and using our measured benchmark we can get 33.6% of 9% of our TAM to a next action, which is 454.

Let assume you win 1 in 3, that's 151 new sales a year using social selling, average order value (AOV) $100,000, that's 

$15,120,000 = $15 million

That's an additional $15 million that you are missing by cold calling rather than social selling.

or $1,26 million you miss every month you delay moving from cold calling to social selling.

Of course, if you have more than 10 sales people, you can scale the figures up. 

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, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.