I know, you’ve heard about LinkedIn Groups before, and this blog seems redundant. Trust me when I tell you, if you read this blog – you will have a new sales philosophy that works! When I say works, I mean book meeting-after-meeting of new opportunities, you didn’t realize was possible (or as easy).
Before reading this article, you must come to terms with the cold hard truth – Social Selling is NOT a trend, it IS a sales evolution. That means reading “Social Media for Dummies” will not constitute you as a Social Selling leader. Social Selling is changing sales philosophies to the point that any rep that does not adapt (and we mean totally invested), will become completely redundant by 2015.
Yes, we said REDUNDANT – like Beta tapes, CD’s and Kodak Camera redundant. Sales reps that do not adapt will have equally little shelf-life or value to bring to their buyers.
At the 2012 American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) Leadership Summit in Dallas, the top minds of inside sales have seen the power shift. The shift was very obvious – our traditional cold calling tactics, basic email campaigns, and voicemail drops was a 2008 strategy. Any company that are only using these tools to drive business will be left behind in 2013. The top inside sales talent in North America are now focusing their attention on a new phenomenon – Social Selling.
Social Selling is simple to understand – using your social presence as a means to guide and influence prospects through their buying process. The key here are two pieces.
Recently, we held quarterly sales team building activities with a client’s entire sales staff (over 20 reps) – new business development, client development & client services. The discussions were less focused on quantitative metrics, more on career growth and aspirations. We really wanted to see what made our sales teams tick!
168 hours per week… this is all the time you and I are allotted – but the reality is sales reps are only given 40+ hours a week to accomplish all of their tasks. What ends up drowning 80% of sales reps, is not their quota target, not difficult “sales patches”, but their own poor time management.
This is basic and nearly every sales organization has monitored & analyzed a portion of their sales volumes
Volumes measurements are more advanced once you think like a Sales 2.0 organization. If this were a ski run, these are your BLUE runs, the baseline for the mountains terrain.
Welcome to your BLACK DIAMOND run – understanding the percentage chance of winning, losing and positive momentum. Nearly any leading CRM will help you understand:
The utopia – a DOUBLE BLACK DIAMOND mogul course; your eyes get ambitious, but your legs freeze with the possibility of the punishment. Velocity is not just the “Opportunity – Average Days Open” report defaulting in Salesforce.com, its analyzing timelines that help you understand the break-even point between high % ROI and diminishing ROI.
I’ll put this as politely as possible – any company interested in driving new business, that is NOT using Linkedin, is marketing from the Stone Age! Linkedin is becoming the world’s most powerful database of business professionals (sorry Data.com). It’s nearly impossible for Data.com to compete with Linkedin for data quality long-term as people are apt to keep their Linkedin profile accurate to the DAY. Data.com is refreshed monthly at best, most likely quarterly.
Sales for Life was founded with one goal – to become the most trusted sales resource for its customers. During our journey, we’ve had the privilege of serving thousands of sales professionals and leaders around the world, from start-ups to Fortune 50 corporations.
