A few years back I was leading a large tender for the company I worked for at the time. 

If truth be told, the project was a stretch for us, and we were surrounded by much larger, much more capable competition at the tendering table. We spent months on the tender, large technical, operational, and commercial sections, how we were going to be better than everyone else…. just like all the other tenders.

I had ordered Simon Sineks ‘Find Your Why - A practical guide for discovering purpose for you and your team’ and read it over a weekend. On Monday, much to the annoyance of the team, we completely reconfigured our tender.

I had missed the core reason we were tendering in the first place…our purpose. It was our purpose that would separate us from the competition, not endless sections of ‘we are better’ and corporate jargon…we started from the inside and worked out – our why, our how, our what...

We then went back and changed our website and all our 'marketing material' to Start with our why and work out to our how and what...

We all know the world has changed, in our business lives it was already changing with the shift to Digital and Social.

Leaders are now recognising that their approach to business must change and they must adopt a ‘Digital first’ mindset to meet the new needs of buyers.

So, what does this means for Sales? It means we need our Salespeople, or anyone who has revenue generating responsibility to be able to think and operate differently, they need to be the ‘high watermark’ on Social Media within the organisation…

How do they get there..?

It all starts with profiles

You need great profiles. They should be designed to attract people and work for you digitally.

The power is in the network

Your front line Salespeople need a large and meaningful online network and need to be growing their networks every day…

Trust

The modern Salesperson needs to be digitally "trustworthy" as the modern buyer is Socially smart and will check them out. This is the same for management, technical and operational people in your organisation, buyers will hold them up against the competition. If your people are held up against the competition on Social Media…who wins?

Whilst there is an element of brand in trust, this is about the people. Can you trust the CEO, the Board of Directors, the Salespeople?

With more people being on Social Media than not in the 2020’s, you have to have the C-Suite, the management team, technical, operational, salespeople, the whole company on Social Media. Take the company culture and play it live on Social. If your competition doesn’t do this, you win. If they are already doing this, you need to catch up…

We hear things like this a lot…"our USP is our culture", “we are unique in the way we operate” or a candidate must have the right "culture fit" for our team. If this is the case, put your culture on Social, make it visible and transparent. You will get the best people, make the most sales and have the most efficient supply chain.

This isn't something that just happens because someone reads a book…. this is an organisational change program driven from the top down, with the leaders leading. A methodology that your people follow which means Social becomes strategic, not a random, tactical add on. 

Purpose

Trust connects into Purpose. When your team are on Social, they are empowered to share their experiences, their beliefs and values, their truth.

As an example, a project cost controller could share an article about the challenges of cost control on projects during lockdown. This is shared through that person's network. Remember, this is not a corporate message this is shared by the employee, this is their words, their thoughts, their voice. Shared through a network that knows, likes and trusts that person. That network will amplify it. 

Your supply chain leader could share an article about the importance of local sourcing of materials, putting out a message in the market that offers trust and purpose. Shared through the employees’ network, people who know, like and trust. Before you know it, you will have suppliers that meet that sustainability criteria.

Back in the analogue days you might have used PR or adverts to do this but, these days nobody reads press releases, nobody looks at adverts, the modern world is digital and does all of this through social. Take your activity to where your employees, prospective customers, customers and future employees are ... on Social.

Back to ‘why’...

In the book ‘Find your why’ Simon Sinek says:

“your vision is only actionable if you say it out loud. If you keep it to yourself it will remain a figment of your imagination…”

Think about that for a minute….” your vision is only actionable if you say it out loud...”

In modern terms, we say things out loud on Social Media, it’s the only way new prospects and the wider world can hear us and see us. 

If we choose not to do this, our vision, mission, values, culture, people, products and service become a figment of our buyers’ imagination…

Invisible to our buyers...

Social Media provides the mechanism for communication, connection, and collaboration.

Because almost every human uses social media, we believe that this has fundamentally changed how humans makes decisions. Businesses need to embrace this in all elements of what they do. That’s why we have created a series of programmes to help businesses transition and adapt to this new way of doing things.

Culture

A trusted connection of mine recently posted that they had checked their SSI (Social Selling Index) score. Social Selling Index (SSI) is a score created by LinkedIn to rank a members' use of LinkedIn as a Social Selling tool. The SSI is based on four criteria: Creating a professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building strong relationships. LinkedIn asserts that high SSI professionals generate 45% more opportunities per quarter.  

It goes without saying that you would expect Sales professionals to be the high watermark in SSI…not so.

This connection happens not to be in Sales as a direct profession, in fact they are Industrial Scientist.

They discovered they had a healthy SSI score of 72. The results measure you against your network and Sales professional in your industry. The results on this test were "Sales Professionals in the Oil and Gas Industry have an average SSI of 24 – You rank in the top 1%..."

He was rightly surprised and wrote in his post:

“Imagine my surprise on checking my SSI today that I kinda do OK, but..., to politely point out, Sales folk in O&G have to get their collective finger out”.

The modern Salesperson must be on top of this. They should have the highest SSI in the organisation or be striving for it. They should understand that a healthy SSI brings fringe benefits on LinkedIn and that it shows we are connecting and engaging where we should.

You can check your SSI here. Drop me a line when you do and we can talk about what it all means..:

LinkedIn SSI Score...

Trust in Sales

Back in the day Sales was about who you knew but, things have changed.

Legislation on cold calling, ad blockers, email firewalls are just some of the barriers in the way of old outdates methods of contact and communication.

Social Media allows your salesforce to create real conversations. Not spamming with Sales pitches, real conversations with meaning and purpose. Properly connecting with people to build relationships and trust.

Salespeople need to focus on inspiring, educating, sharing their purpose, culture. The modern Salesperson understand they have modern empowered buyers who use Social Media.  So, they use the best methods to find them, connect with them and start a conversation. 

A big part of this is understand your why, the why of your team and the why of your organisation. Once we get your profiles optimised, we will get you connecting with the right people. We will also have you produce regular content for your network. Not Sales pitches, rich and diverse content, content that is interesting, engaging, inspiring or educational.

To produce content in this way, it helps if you know your why…

The next time you are writing a proposal or compiling a tender, create it from the inside out – start with your why, outline your how and then your what…I would bet that it looks and feels better than anything you’ve written before.

Back to the tender at the start of this article? We won the project…of course we did, as soon as we started with our why, it all made sense.

Because almost every human uses social media, we believe that this has fundamentally changed how humans makes decisions. Businesses need to embrace this in all elements of what they do. That’s why we have created a series of programmes to help businesses transition and adapt to this new way of doing things.

Lets connect here and have a conversation about Social Media and your business.

Live Social...

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite