We met with Vision Critical today, 2 months after finalizing our last Social Selling Training module. The goal was to take the SUMMER (yes I said summer, they rocked their numbers in the summer) and digest & implement the Sales for Life best practices.
Adoption was an understatement. We were pleasantly surprised just how successful their inside sales team has been with LinkedIn. They were doing it all – monitoring, curating, posting original content and engaging. Engagement comes in 2 forms – some the soft, nurturing relationship development and some the tactical hard-sell for a next step. Either way, they are doing an outstanding job.
Put their success into context. They are not selling $5,000 SaaS software. They are selling complex market research platforms to very specific prospects; typically companies larger than $1,000,000,0000 in revenue! Their inside sales team are engaging the top (thus most frequently solicited) brands in the world.
As we shared success stories, best practices and new insights – each inside sales rep was proud that they were on target. Absolutely! They are using LinkedIn as another arrow in their sales quiver.
How Are They Generating so Much Success?
An Engaged Sales Team – Their team was hungry to learn from the beginning. They had all bought into Social Selling even as some sales reps had little-to-no LinkedIn experience. Obviously this engagement flows top-down. Their sales leaders are passionate and energetic about being the best, thus the inside sales team saw Sales for Life’s training as an investment into THEM.
They Experimented, Without Giving Up – Social Selling is about building blocks. The sales reps realized it’s not about sending 10 InMails and weighting the future of their LinkedIn usage based on its success. They tried, tried, and tried more. They used various messages and engagement tactics. Some were making connects on a personal level, some using or Jeff Hoffman’s “Why You, Why You Now” others used LinkedIn as a call-to-action to drive prospects to their calls/emails/VM’s.
They Realized It’s Not a Race – One sales rep told the story about a prospect leaving a company he was chasing. Using LinkedIn monitoring, he noticed a job was posted, and then a new decision-maker was hired. This all took 1 month… but guess who messaged the new decision-maker on their first day on the job? You guessed it!
They Used a Multi-Touch Approach – LinkedIn is not a 1-and-done messaging system. One of their sales reps would start an engagement via LinkedIn, and if no results, forward the InMail to his email address and email the prospect (with the original InMail attached). The response generated greater return rates, and ultimately more meetings.
Next Step
Call, email, LinkedIn or book a meeting with Jamie Shanks, Managing Partner at Sales for Life, to discuss the Social Selling Training program. We have sales reps engaging prospects via LinkedIn & Twitter within 1 day.
Jamie Shanks
Managing Partner
Sales for Life
800-643-5512 x4009
ca.linkedin.com/in/jamestshanks
@jamietshanks
