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Top 10 Tips From AA-ISP Social in Phoenix

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

aa-isp

AA-ISP couldn’t have chosen a better location – hot and sunny Phoenix. When you fly from Toronto, all you hope for is an outdoor venue. No such luck.

There have been amazing presenters talking about very practical and tactical ways to drive new business socially. Here are the top 10 tips + a link to Matt Heinz’s Top 10 list, (which he sneakily was writing beside me as I was writing this – haha) you can take to your sales team.

  • The role of inside sales is evolving AGAIN – the opening remarks from Bob Perkins & Larry Reeves were very telling. Inside Sales used to be a subset of sales, now it’s the fastest growing department (by far). The real future is the evolving role of sales & marketing into a hybrid (Revenue Generation) sales rep #MicroMarketing.
  • Social Listening is becoming a big part of sales’ role – every presenter talked about their success with Social Selling stemming from Social Listening. You can’t argue with the sales minds in the room, all you can do is join them using tools like LinkedIn Signal & Hootsuite .
  • The buying process is happening with, our without you – Don’t fight it, you’ll never win. The buyer is doing their due diligence on Google, downloading eBooks and watching webinars – with you or with your competitors.
  • The modern sales professional simply facilitates the buying process – there were funny stories about sales reps trying to bang their way into an account, only to crash and burn. They burned on impact because they tried selling, not patiently helping that buyer solve a problem (at that buyers pace).
  • Everyone wants to talk “Tools” – everyone loves widgets, and #insidesales2013 was no different. Just before lunch there was a sharing of “cool tools” – everyone had a special widget they loved. Sales reps now have a Swiss army knife of social tools at their disposal.
  • ABC = Always Be Connecting – a coined phrase from jill_rowley @ Eloqua – sales reps that aren’t connecting, are dying. I recommend you listen to Jill, she’s turned her Account Executive role into a demanded VP of Social Selling, simply by building more powerful networks than anyone else.
  • Storytelling is still a major part of the sales process – all the research, facts, product knowledge in the world is useless if you can’t turn this information into a great story. Steve Richard @ Vorsight said that during their training programs they make sales teams find 5+ great stories ASAP before selling. It’s the stories that get buyers to buy.
  • Sales spend on recruiting costs are stupidly higher than training Lauren Bailey at Factor 8 had a crazy statistic – annually $25,000 is the average sales recruiting spend, while $1,100 is the average sales training spend (per sales rep). That means that sales teams are happy to drop 20% of an employee’s salary to hire, yet neglect to give sales reps innovative coaching to grow their skillset.
  • We are in the caveman days of Social Selling Aseem Badshah @ Socedo made a great comment “We are in the absolute early days of Social Selling – still grunting like cavemen “Like”, “Look at me”… there is nearly no complex workflows, CRM integration or strategy.” I 100% agree, but it’s all coming down the pipeline!
  • Jill Rowley can definitely pull off pink better than I can – I call Malarkey, but according to Steve Richard, she looks better in pink than I do.

The Bottom Line!

If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you need to start to take action. The following dozen blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out 42 LinkedIn Tips

Jamie Shanks

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