Gaining access to people in sales is hard .... or easy, totally up to you, Tim Hughes

One of my team was part of a round table discussion about prospecting yesterday and a sales leader made the comment on the post that

Gaining access to people was hard

Really? I was amazed that people still think like this.

Now I totally understand if you are still using medieval sales methods like cold calling, spam email, if you are still buying lists or even throwing content at strangers I guess it's difficult.

All of us are bored with people cold calling, people spamming us with emails and even people spamming us with on social media. If you do that, getting access to people IS hard.

There is a way that getting access to people is easy

First you need a buyer centric profile, getting access to people means that a person wants to talk to you. Your social media profile is nothing about your company or your products, it's about you.

I want to talk to YOU, not your company or your products, so stop talking about your company and products and talk about yourself. After all, your social profile is a shop window to all of the 800 million people on social. They are walking past your profile everyday, it's up to you to decide if you want them to walk past, or to walk forward and be curious about you. We teach and coach you how to do this as part of our social selling and influence course.

The second thing you need is a network. Most people's network on social are connected to x colleagues, colleagues and recruitment consultants. You need to be connected to the people you want to influence. Not spamming them, not pitching to them, we teach and coach you how to do this in our social selling and influence course.

The third thing you need is content. Content is what proves you are an expert, that I want to talk to. You have an opinion, you have an understanding of my business, you understand my vertical. I'm often having calls with senior leaders in business, where they say "I read your article on .....". Boom!

I will go onto say that the only USP, unique selling point that you and your business have today is yourself. Your experiences, the fact you travelled to south America after university, etc, etc.

Some data to back this up

For a telco client of ours, we measured our social selling students with a control group of cold callers and we found that

Rank and file people we got a 11% uplift on new business calls booked.

Senior technical people, we got a 23% uplift on new business calls booked.

CXO people we got a 42% uplift on new business calls booked.

Commercial people we got a 18% uplift on new business called booked.

So, if you still think that getting access to people is hard, I would suggest your methods are outmoded.

Now Imagine .....

Imagine, I pick you up tomorrow in my car and drive you to a place which is full of your prospects and customers. All you have to do is go up and have a conversations with them.

Remember, social media is, social media. In the past you interrupted somebody with a cold call or an email and pitched your services. As social media is being social on media, interrupting and pitching does not work.

If I walked up to you at a social event and pitched, you would make your excuses and go and talk to somebody else.

So how about tomorrow, I pick you up in my car and we go to a place where all your prospects are hanging out. You can stay as long as you want. All you have to do is have a conversation with them. It's that simple, if you are interested, read on.

What is social selling?

Here at DLA Ignite, we define social selling as

"Using your presence and behavior on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction."

It's not witchcraft, it's enabling your salespeople to work from home, (or the office) and create conversations with prospects and customers. Conversations on social media and conversations that convert.

The problem with the name "social selling" is that people think that this is selling on social. All these pitches that you get on social are not social selling, they are spam.

The other thing you need to know about social selling is that this isn't about "putting out some videos" or "putting flowers on your profile" or "going viral". Here at DLA Ignite, engagement is important but we are about driving revenue, EBITDA, for your business using social media. This is about you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

Social is about having a strategy and there are two key drivers

With anything you do on social there are two questions you need to ask

1. How many leads / meetings / conversations will I get from this post / blog / activity?

2. How much revenue / EBITDA am I getting as a business?

Posting and hoping or posting random stuff is not a strategy, in fact I doubt it's driving anything for your business.

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

Andrew Ferrier who is the CEO of Display Technology Ltd and in this article it talks about why Display Technology have adopted social selling. His team have also created a social media strategy with help from our partner, Crux.

Their social media mission statement is

“We want to position ourselves as a forward-thinking, knowledgeable team of individuals who are all experts in our own right, therefore, collectively awesome!”

Andrew also says in that post

"Adopting this (social selling) strategy has taken all of us well outside of our comfort zones but the rewards we have seen in a short period of time have created an excitement within the business development team (new term for sales team).

Because of the nature of social media, quite often you can get instant results. Even if that is just a comment left on your post, or a like, or someone taking the time to want to connect with you.

The excitement around the sales team is infectious, it’s no longer a chore to reach out to the market place because the results can be instant and are there, right in front of you."

What sort of results can you expect?

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, and DLA Ignite customer, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

What happened? They buyer was on social media looking for a solution to their problem, spotted one of the Namos salespeople, who had a buyer-centric profile and asked if the salesperson could help them. That turned into a $2.6 million deal.

Contact any of the DLA Ignite team, Eric, Adam, Nick, Vanessa, Lorena, Priscilla, Lenwood, Alex and they will be more than happy to help.

Go and look at their LinkedIn profiles .... look how they can have digital conversations, create insightful content. This could be your company!

We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate in social selling sponsored by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP).

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project