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Blog Sales Sales Process

10 Things That Sales Teams Will Need In 2015

Sales Toolkit

As 2014 winds down, salespeople and managers should look at the current environment to figure out what elements will be most important and useful in the months to come. Here’s a short list on what many experts are calling for to prepare modern sales forces for the next wave of advancement in a data-centric world.

1) Social Selling Platforms

Social selling has proven to be a key tactic for companies, and having the right tools to get onboard and seek out customers is going to mean everything to a sales strategy. This article from Mashable, which looks positively at LinkedIn’s new Sales Navigator tool, cites studies that show that sales people with social selling strategies are 51 percent more likely to beat a quota, partially by eliminating the need for cold calls and other traditional tactics.

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Blog Social Selling in 60 Seconds

Unleash Your Inner Steven Spielberg: Engage Clients With Video For Only $600! (Video)

Social Selling

You don’t need to have a top-of-the-line video kit to make amazing videos. It would obviously be ideal to have the Lord of the Rings‘ production company at your disposal. But no reason to worry, because if you’re making your own video, you can still look great without breaking the piggy bank. Here’s a lost of items you can get for only $600:

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Blog Content Marketing Infographics Sales Sales Metrics

The ROI of Social Selling [Infographic]

Project Analysis

Social Media has become a key digital strategy for a vast majority of sales and marketing teams (70%+). But how are companies measuring the impact of Social Selling? Do they even see value in tracking those channels? For those who do gather Social Selling data, what results are they reporting so far? Is Social Selling driving actual revenue?

The following infographic reveals that although social tactics are indeed having a positive effect on the bottom line of North American businesses, most of them still struggle to measure the ROI of those efforts.

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Blog LinkedIn

The Social Selling FAQs Series: The Ideal LinkedIn Profile

Social Selling Faqs
Having a robust LinkedIn profile is the corner stone of any Social Seller’s activity. As we share out content and engage with clients on a daily basis, our LinkedIn profiles represent who we are, what we do and, most importantly, how we can help. If you have not already optimized your LinkedIn profile to be buyer-centric I would highly recommend doing so because it is the #1 place where buyers come to learn about you and your products/services.

Keeping this in mind, I have compiled a list of Frequently Asked Questions & Answers below regarding LinkedIn profiles:

How do I attract buyers to my LinkedIn Profile?

One of the best ways to attract buyers (aka prospects) to your LinkedIn profile is to make sure it is keyword optimized. This means that you want to have industry buzzwords that relate to your product/service and your buyers’ needs mentioned many times through the different sections of your profile. The more times specific keywords are mentioned in your tagline, summary, experience, referrals and skills section the higher likelihood you have of being found for them.

Is it important to hit the “500+ connections” mark?

YES. Having more than 500+ connections will show your potential buyers (and employers) that you have put time into cultivating your social network. Personally, I have spoken to several employers that will not even look at a job applicant unless they have 500+ connections. Buyers often share a similar mind state as they are also assessing you.

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#S4LSocial Blog

How to Sell on Social Media: When To Pull The Trigger

The advent of social media has fundamentally and permanently changed the sales process. Given the behavior of today’s buyer, savvy sales professionals increasingly turn to social platforms as a healthy source of potential prospects.

How to Sell on Social Media
Gone are the days of information asymmetry, outdated sales transactions where one party (usually the salesperson) has more or better information than the other (i.e., the buyer).

Today’s buyer is better informed and better educated about your product or solution before s/he contacts you, the sales professional.

Statistics show that the buyer’s journey can be as much as 90 percent completed before s/he ever thinks about interacting with a sales person.

As the Social Selling revolution continues to captivate the sales industry, the most successful and forward-thinking sales representatives utilize social media to connect and capture more business than ever previously imagined.

According to an oft-quoted statistic from Jim Keenan, a whopping 78 percent of sales people using social media outsell their peers who aren’t using social.

But, how exactly is this accomplished? Here are three simple steps that describe the transformative process of “Social Selling,” or how to use social media to generate revenue:

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Blog Content Marketing Sales Sales 2.0 Sales Advice

Attention CMOs – 4 Ways To Organize Your Content Library For Sales [Video]

Organize Your Content

There’s no denying that content marketing has become a key tactic for marketing teams. With so many assets being created on a consistent basis, CMOs need to make sure that their content is easy to access and leverage by sales teams! Below is an ESSENTIAL list for the success of any Social Selling program. Here are 4 simple categories of tools to consider when creating a content library for sales:

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Blog sales training Social Selling Webinar

Certifying Your Team In Social Selling [Online Panel Discussion]

Resource For Learning Online

Sales enablement leaders know their sales professionals need to embrace Social Selling. The problem — “Where do we begin?” “How long will this take to execute?” “How do we measure success?”.

That’s why we’ve organized an online panel discussion for September 24 at 2:00 p.m. (ET) with some of the best thought leaders in Social Selling. You will hear from six companies that have planned, designed, and executed a Social Selling certification program. This session will outline a prescriptive process to implement a program in your company. Click here to register.

Title: Certifying My Team In Social Selling – 7 Experts Weigh In
Date: September 24th @ 2:00 p.m. EST
Host: Kevin Thomas Tully, Chief Sales Officer @ Sales for Life
Panelists: Jill Rowley (Social Selling Guru), Jamie Shanks (Sales for Life), Liz Gelb-O’Connor (ADP), Tynan Fischer (New Horizons CLC), James Clifford (Direct Energy), Elizabeth Kempinski (ADP), and Kevin Coppins (Meru Networks).

Sign up!

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Blog Sales Sales 2.0 Sales Advice Sales Inspiration

8 Shockingly Inspirational Quotes for Sales & Marketing Professionals

Everyone in the sales & marketing industry hits motivational lows from time to time. It unfortunately comes with the territory. Perhaps no one has been returning your calls today or engaging with your content. Maybe you just lost a big deal or have hit writers block trying to meet a deadline for a new blog post.

It happens to ALL of us so fear not if this is currently your situation because you are assuredly not alone. This low you experience may last a day, a month or even a year at times. And there is no mistaking it, the feeling just down right sucks.

Luckily though inspiration is all around us in this brilliant age of information that we live in. On the other side of one simple mouse click could be a quote, video, picture or message that picks you back up again and puts a smile on your face. As some of you may have noticed (if we’re connected on LinkedIn) I love sharing inspirational quotes with me network. This is partly because it is a nice break from the constant Social Selling content that I post out and also partly because I hope that maybe, just maybe, someone out there who is experiencing one of these low points happens upon my post and it brightens their day a little bit.

So by popular demand, here is a list of my favorite quotes that individuals within my network have liked, reshared and commented on because they have also found a little inspiration hidden within… I hope you do too 🙂

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#S4LSocial Blog

What To Do When Your Content Cupboard Is Bare?

It’s not just a bad dream – the type where you wake up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, with a feeling of impending doom. When your content cupboard is bare, you feel naked and exposed before your audience.

Cupcakes

For sales professionals, the content equation can seem both uncomfortable and overwhelming at times.

Content is the life blood of social selling. Without a constant source of relevant and helpful content, your prospects and potential buyers will wither on the vine and die like spoiled fruit.

Feeling an increased pressure to provide value to prospects and buyers during all stages of their buying journey, sales professionals must avoid any interruptions in their content stream or risk alienating their target audience.

Here are three strategies to fill any content chasm and help position you as a continuous, supportive resource to your buyer:

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Blog Sales Advice

Developing A Routine For Social Selling [Google Plus Podcast]

Top Tips for Content Marketing-Success

If content is King, then Social Media is Queen. Kevin Thomas Tully, Chief Sales Officer at Sales for Life, was interviewed as part of the Linking Into Sales podcast. Among other topics, Kevin explained why content has become such a key element in the sales funnel and how social media enables buyers to engage with that content. He discussed the first levels of the 12 Step Social Selling Routine and described the difference between creating content and curating content.

Kevin stressed the importance of networking and building professional relationships. Take a look at the video, and read 6 key quotes from the session below: