You may remember our earlier blog, “Hot Sales 2.0 Tool Timetrade” by Jamie Shanks, that describes a hot new sales tool called Timetrade. Since that blog article, Jamie has had the opportunity to share our latest social selling tips with Timetrade’s audience. Check out the full interview (screen shots & audio) with with Mike Puglia from Timetrade.
Browse here for the ultimate guide to social selling that might help you to proceed with social selling.
Open your Outlook and count all the emails you sent to new prospects this week.Let me guess, you didn’t receive 1 of 5 emails returned back to you with next steps.
Why is that? Because email is the black hole! If your sales team still thinks emailing new prospects is going to stand-out – good luck. Your reps and 7 of your competitors thought emailing your prospect today was also a good idea.
We at Sales for Life enjoy coming across new Sales 2.0 Tools, and have recently fallen in love with TimeTrade.This tool absolutely SHORTENS the sales cycle. Clients and prospects can see your availability in real-time to drive a next step.
I feel privileged to have joined the sales community at (what I believe) is the trifecta of sales styles. I started working during the tech bust of 2000 (leaving briefly for graduate school) and came back in 2004. This period of time in software sales was the height of “smiling & dialing”. I remember cold calling off printed lists of names/numbers with a telephone connected to a telephone line! There was no research, there were no “sales intelligence” – it was all General Benefit Statements & Feature, Advantage and Benefits.
Sales professionals forget to look at their LinkedIn profile as the expensive real estate on a newspaper. The information at the top of page #1, is where most of your readers go. This is a quick video to show you how Social Sellers move information around in their profile to maximize effectiveness.
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.
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.
