Eric Morse · SRi CEO

My humble opinion is that they are wrong and I personally do not believe in the scare tactic but I do believe in Social Selling.

The good news is that they are bringing awareness to the new social world and how it applies to sales and you the sales professional or VP of Sales. Social selling skills and training are necessary. I have seen many transformations in my career, from the PC on the Desktop, to Email, to call Centers, to Inside Sales, to the Internet, then the cloud and now social. But I have also seen that in the end most great sales organizations successfully adapt because they invest.

Also from what I see and read, leading social companies such as LinkedIn, Hubspot, Google, Salesforce.com, Adobe still have sales teams and yes are they investing and growing them.

Adapt

My message to all sales professionals, Sales VP and sales organizations is ADAPT to Social Selling skills. These social tools are great, you can adapt. The buyer is much better prepared and educated by the time they call or contact you. Learn these tools to level the playing field between you and the buyer throughout the sales process.

Specifically I recommend all sales organizations assist and train their sales teams and individuals on:
• Up to date LinkedIn profiles, business pages and groups and how to effectively use them.
• Twitter account usage and guidelines
• Facebook and Google + pages for business
• CRM like Salesforce.com and all the new tools associated with CRM
• Lead scoring tools, qualification and buyer persona’s.

Use the Tools

Having the tools is one thing. We use the tools. In fact about 50% of our business comes from referrals and 50% comes in from leads. We are a boutique sales consulting firm that uses the following:
• LinkedIn for Salesforce.com. Great tool, allow you to see more information on inbound leads, opportunities and decision makers plus a lot of other great features.
• Website is optimized and inbound leads are integrated with Salesforce.com and Hubspot.
• Google for Adwords, Doc’s and email, calendar, chat, video, sites, docs, email, contacts all in the cloud. Amazing set of tools for business.
• Salesforce.com and Data.com CRM with Gmail integration. Tracking and cleaning our inbound sales leads, opportunities and accounts.
• Hubspot for Inbound Marketing. Tracks lead quality, effectiveness of our campaigns, blogs, tweets and a lot more.
• Twitter for @salesresult, yes we tweet.
• Blogs: salesresult.com/sri-blog
• Facebook pages, Google+ pages, LinkedIn for our company and groups we follow. We post our blogs or re-tweet relevant information.
• Wordstream, SEM Rush, SEOMoz.org, Google Adwords, analytics and Webmaster for our SEO and keywords. These tools assist with our keywords, competitor’s keywords and the effectiveness. Yes we use both paid and organic.
• Mention.com. Great to track who is talking about certain keywords, phrases, competitors or your own company. It also provides filters for relevant keywords.
• A clearly defined sales process that incorporates the above tools
• Finally because so many are using these channels you need to filter to get the information and data that is relevant to you and yes there are many tools for that.

Be Yourself:

You are great Sales Professionals, great VP’s of Sales. As you become great at Social Selling make sure you:
• Be yourself, that’s what made you succeed to date.
• Be relevant and add value in your social interactions.
• Be original. Think through what you are going to say first. Look at what your competitors are saying, try and distinguish yourself from the crowd.
• Be very careful what you tweet and post. You can damage your brand if the wrong tweet and post is out there.
• Try to help and engage your audience by that you can become an “expert” in your field.
• Don’t over do it. I personally find social friends/business connections that post every hour, or tweet every hour or blog every day akin to the same people that use ALL CAPS in their emails. Its coming across to me doing two things, screaming for attention and or trying to get ranked higher in keywords or other areas. It does or may work for them but clearly not my style.

Power of Personal Interaction still has Sales Relevance:

Whether you are insides sales, outside sales, channel sales or any type or now social selling the power of the personal interaction is still very powerful in todays selling environment. You just can’t put these tools on auto-drive and expect to win all of your engagements. Your ability to add value to the prospect, build relationships, differentiate, answer objections, close deals are not going away anytime soon. Good Selling and please take the time to learn, adapt and to enjoy the sales journey and provide Sales Relevance in a Social World

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This refers to a set of customer-focused steps that your sales team can follow and execute on from Cold Leads to a Closed Sales®.

It is essential to have a defined, mapped out, sequential system in place for selling your product successfully in order to avoid missing out on potential sales.

Each key activity or what we call sales milestone should have clarity associated with goals, objectives, responsibilities, roles, sales tools and exit criteria.

If your sales process overview is muddled or confused then the profitability of your company will be likely to suffer as a result. But more important you are probably losing more sales to your competitor and do not even know it.

CRM Integration

For all companies, importance needs to be placed upon keeping customers happy as well as closing sales.

This means that customer relationship management (CRM) should be fully integrated with the sales process and provide a 360 view of the customer.

Customization

It is also essential for the sales process to be tailored to your customers. The more customized it is to their buying processes, the better it will be.
When it comes to a winning sales process, it is not a case of ‘one size fits all’. Best in class sales process consulting firms can help you to find a system that works for you.

Your sales process is a reflection of how well-oiled a machine your business is.

An effective, well thought out sales process can increase the profit of a company and ensure that everything runs smoothly. It is the backbone of any sales team and an indispensable asset.

The Key to Success

Sales process consultants recommend a sales process that covers key activity metrics, methods for handling face-to-face meetings, close plans and many other aspects. In fact we teach how to plant competitive landmines at certain key stages. Understanding the competition and ensuring that factor is considered in defining the sales process is key.

It is also a good idea to use a sales playbook to help manage, train, on-board and communicate your sales process.

Having a clear plan of action is the key to success in any endeavor.

Therefore the ins and outs of your sales process overview can determine whether you languish at the bottom of the pile or rise to the top and be the best in your field.

Are you interested in learning how to put an effective sales process in place? Why not contact us for a free half-hour phone sales consultation?

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These tools ensure that mistakes that are made by sales staff early on are not repeated time and time again.

They also make sure that everybody in your inside sales team is reading from the same hymn sheet when approaching a prospect.

Best Practices

Having the information that is contained within an SaaS sales playbook to hand keeps your inside sales team on track with your company’s best practices. It enables them to see what has worked and to learn from previous successes.

Ideally, an SaaS sales playbook should aid in the identification of impediments to success and help your sales staff to focus upon the most profitable opportunities. Most best practices around sales palybooks include:
• Defining clearly “What you Sell”
• Defining clearly “Who you Sell to”
• Defining clearly “How you Sell”

“What you Sell” includes, definitions, value propositions, business pains-benefits and bold claims. It includes positioning, objection handling, story telling, references and white papers to name a few.

“Who you Sell to” includes, buyer and decision maker profiles and personnas, qualification and lead scoring tools, buying and decision process, market and competitive information and data and many more.

“How you Sell”, is a clearly defined Sales Process mapped to the buyer with sales tools, key activity metrics, close plans, how to handle a face to face meeting, online demos and many more.

Bring New Sales Staff Up To Speed

An SaaS sales playbook can reinforce a business’s sales process and improve an inside sales team’s effectiveness and productivity.

It can also ensure that new sales staff are brought up to speed as quickly as possible.

Not having tools like this causes more lost deals, inconsistency within the sales organization and poor sales forecasting to name a few. Remember time that is spent familiarizing staff with the best sales practices is time that could be spent generating profit. Therefore by completing an SaaS sales playbook, you will be saving your company money.

SaaS sales playbooks can increase the expertise of your sales staff, put in place practices that generate more income for your business and help you to avoid methods that have been proven to be unsuccessful. They are valuable assets that should not be ignored. Proper training and certification ensures the success of the investment. sales playbook is a critical toolset for successful SaaS Sales Teams.

Do you have a view on sales playbooks that you would like to share? If so then feel free to do so in the comments.

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Successful SaaS companies have great inside salespeople that follow along with a great sales process to grow the business.

The manner in which a sales staff conducts itself is often a reflection of the compensation program. Additionally, performance may be determined by how effective the compensation program is.

If salespeople believe that they are not being adequately compensated then they can become demotivated. As a result of this, they might choose to look for work elsewhere. This will deplete your sales staff and negatively impact upon your company’s profits.

Effective Compensation

Good SaaS sales compensation strategies should focus your sales staff on goals that are in alignment with your company’s corporate strategy. Most SaaS companies we work with have two missions for sales teams, new accounts and renewals.

Things to consider:
• First year value of the new account
• Typical renewal rate of your customers
• Do you want multiple year contracts
• Number of deals per month/quarter an effective salesperson can manage
• Sales cycle
• Spiffs and new account incentives
• Over Quota kickers

They should be simple yet effective, as it is essential for sales staff to fully comprehend how the process works.

Salespeople should feel as if they are in control of how great the rewards are for their work. This is the key to creating sales motivation.

A classic story is from Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. After his first year he was given a raise of $1,000. He was satisfied with the raise until he found out everyone in his area received the same increase in compensation.

Welch understood the role competition and compensation played in success. As he rose in the ranks at GE he made changes to the system and it helped to make GE one of the most successful companies in the world.

A Complex Process

The main way in which SaaS sales compensation differs from sales compensation for other solutions concerns the basis upon which first year incentive costs are calculated. For the latter, the basis is unit price, whereas for the former, it is lifetime value of a deal. This means that many people regard SaaS sales compensation as relatively complex. Done right a great SaaS company has new accounts, predictable revenue and the sales team is well motivated and compensated.

However mastering this area is essential for maintaining a company that is as profitable as possible. Losing quality sales staff means losing money. Therefore effective SaaS sales compensation can mean the difference between a company succeeding and failing.

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