I recently spotted a VP of global sales posting about the fact that her company had taken 6000+ colleagues to a hotel some where to celebrate that companies “world leading” (they would't say otherwise would they) products
Now, I've been in sales a few years and I've been to these events. As a salesperson they are great. All your mates are jealous as you are jetted to some amazing location. While it's work, there is some down time in the bar with your colleagues. You stay at a 5 star hotel. Probably even a hotel you couldn't afford to stay in, IRL (in real life)
You have amazing meals, as much as it you can eat. There will probably be some awards and merch. Something you may well remember for years to come
The post had 749 likes
So what's wrong with all of this?
This is the trap all salespeople fall into when they are not taught about content and how to use it as a tool in their kitbag
Content, we are told, we all need to be posting it, which is true, but if it isn't insightful or educational to your audience it's just noise
Think who is your audience? Your prospects and customers, not other salespeople
Because salespeople are not taught and coached on creating content, they create it on what they know about ….. sales
This is a massive turn off for buyers
What does a buyer want to know? That you've just spent the money they given you on shipping 6000+ people on an all expenses paid trip to somewhere exotic? Where you drank and danced to the early hours on the money they just gave you
I doubt it very much. It's probably the best way to motivate your buyer to look at alternatives
The sales leader, if she reads this, will probably be saying, “this isn't what I meant”
But in life we know that if somebody is going to misunderstand us, they will
As a buyer, I don't want to see my money spent on lavish 5 star hotels and expensive bar bills, however much “value”, “networking” and “back slapping” you think you get
I want to hear about how much you spend on R&D, the feedback you get from clients for product enhancements, how other users are using the product, the future road map
Add to this, think of the carbon footprint and the waste of shipping 6000 + people. The post flys in the face of how proud the sales leader was in the companies ESG policy only last week
As a buyer, I would question the moral compass of this individual and the company
Now, I bet that wasn't what the VP of global sales was thinking when they posted this
But you can see how people could be thinking this
Content is a strategy and salespeople, in fact all employees should be empowered to understand how to use it to drive the results and objectives they have. Which may or may not be selling. For example, I'm surprised that the companies HR team is posting about this event as it would be a great recruiting tool. Do you see here how this piece of content isn't fit for sales, but it for a different department?
One last point …
- As a sales leader she has another problem, if there was 6,000 plus people at this event and she only gets 749 likes. Surely, there should be 6,000 plus likes if people had enjoyed themselves as much as she makes out in her post?
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 on 1st January 2023 (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, the good ones are getting 25 meetings a 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.
Imagine you are at a conversation and. the day before the event, there is a drinks in the evening, you have a call and so you are late by 30 minutes. As you enter the bar, you see all of the conference delegates and you realise they are all your ICP (ideal customer profile). You also see that each ICP is talking with, and laughing with a salesperson. Now is that salesperson they are laughing with, your salesperson or is it the competitions?
That is going on out on social media, day in and day out and if your ICPs are laughing and talking with your sales people, will be if you have trained and coached your salespeople in a sales methodology.
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.
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