I try to watch and emulate others and you probably do the same. There is a lot of confusion, particularly with B2B, regarding how to implement social selling. Our hope is that these folks will inspire those of you are still on the fence and our goal is to share with you some of the best proven selling practices that you might wish to emulate!

Today we are joined by Timothy Hughes of Digital Leadership Associates. Tim takes the mystery out of social selling by consistently demonstrating key elements including …

• Authenticity
• Personalization
• Uniqueness
• A desire to share, educate, and to promote others

Welcome, Tim!

Could you please tell our readers a little about you? 

Started on Social Media 7 and half years ago and in that time I’ve built my Twitter following to about 170,000 followers.  Some people have called me “an innovator and pioneer” of Social Selling.  My book “Social Selling – Influencing Buyers and Changemakers” got into the best seller list during the prep-sale and has now become the defacto Social Selling book for sales people and brands.

Learn how Timothy Hughes does social selling!
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How about telling them a little bit about your business?

Left Oracle 5 months ago after a 10-year stent and started my own start up called Digital Leadership Associates.  Put simply we help organisations use social media to gain competitive advantage and drive revenue.  We have Intellectual property (IP) that helps organisations at board level as well as helping people at a departmental level with programs around digital marketing and social selling.  Currently we haven’t found a company that can offer what we do, which puts us in a great position.

How did you get started in selling and when did you begin adding social selling to your business?

I’ve been selling for 27 years and made the lead from “analogue” to “digital” selling some 5 years ago.  Social allows me to do more with less and enables me to scale, I’m amazed more people are not doing it.  When I started in social 7 years ago, purely because a manager told me I need to get into it.  Thanks Vince.

What are your social selling goals, objectives, and strategies?

When Matt and I wrote the book, we wanted to create a narrative in the market about Social Selling because we felt that there were very few people driving the debate forward.  We think this hasn’t changed much.  So I blog weekly on LinkedIn to maintain and grow the Social Selling community.  Social never stands still and I’m keen to keep the discussion and debate driving forward.

Do you have regular routines? 

Have a routine which is all described in a blog on LinkedIn.  This involves starting in the morning, working with Buffer and sitting down in the evening and going through all my interactions during the day.  Use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.  Dabble in Snapchat but only so I understand it, which I need to do so I can advise clients.

How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?

Interesting question.  Social Selling is selling.  It’s the way people sell in 2017.  My background is Miller Heiman and Holden, which are the methodologies I would use, but social is business as usual.

How do you manage to stand out from the noise?

People have to be themselves and be authentic.  People also have to work out what they want to be famous for.  I want to be famous for Social Selling and hopefully I achieve this.

Could you please share with us a few of your favorite social selling tools?

Not a big tool user as Social Selling is a behavior, most of what I do is manual or with the Twitter app.  There is a list of tools in my book, I use Buffer and Crowdfire daily and the social networks above.

How do you track your results?

In Xero.  It’s all about revenue and we use Xero in our business to track all invoicing.

What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing salespeople as it pertains to social selling?

The biggest challenge we still see is the lack of support from a senior level in organisations.  We often get asked about ROI.  My blog “How to get 10 C-Level Meetings a week using Twitter” was written nearly two years ago, so there are a lot of companies way behind here.

What about their biggest mistake that salespeople make when trying to implement social selling?

They still think that social selling is “selling” over social.  We have all accepted a LinkedIn request only to get an email with some pitch about a product that is completely irrelevant.

What is your “social selling superpower”?

The passion I have to drive the social selling debate and narrative forward.

How can our readers get in touch with you to learn more?

@timothy_hughes or LinkedIn or tim@digitalleadershipassociates.com

Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!

I’d like to hear how Graham Hawkins works it!

The post How I Work It – Social Selling with Timothy Hughes appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

Certainly, for all of the great features that LinkedIn provides … they have never hesitated to remove functions that they do not feel are getting the appreciation that they deserve. Witness Signals, news feed filters, searching a connection’s connections, and Answers. Most of these former features would tend to fall under the power user category which generally equates to a low adoption rate when compared to the entire membership population.

LinkedIn Groups can be extremely valuable tools for social selling providing that you are active
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I have heard the rumor more than once that groups have been in danger of meeting the executioner’s axe so, will they be the next to go? Apparently not. Read the recent news from LinkedIn …

The new LinkedIn Groups

“We’ve been inspired by members like you to make Groups the best place for like-minded professionals to meet and converse. As a valued moderator, we wanted to ensure you knew about the following upcoming exciting changes first.

Simpler privacy settings. Now, there are just two types of groups. Standard Groups are findable in search and members can request to join or be invited by any existing member. Unlisted Groups are not discoverable and membership requires an invite from a manager. In both types, only group members can see the conversations.

• A new mobile app. Being part of group conversations is easier than ever with a new LinkedIn Groups app for iOS. Android app coming soon.

• Images and mentions. Post your images and mention other group members with just a tap.

• Less email. We’ll digest the best content from all of your groups into one weekly or daily email.

• Easy invites and less work. Any member of any Standard Group can invite their connections, making it easier for great groups to grow faster. Read on at Maximize Social Business ..

The post Using LinkedIn Groups for Social Selling appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

While I can’t do extensive research or a full review on each, hopefully you may find some gems for your own use that have been hidden inside this regular curation. Please note that I do not endorse, or represent, apps unless indicated. I do, however, feel that all are worthy of your inspection!

Apps

Twied – Consumers want and expect one-click interactions. Response rates on emails sent by sales teams are dropping because consumers no longer want to spend time typing long responses on their mobile devices.That’s why we’ve built Twied. Twied is the only platform that makes it easy for people to take action when you email them. We do this by inserting smart calls to actions into every email you send: manual and automated.

Calendly – Simple, beautiful scheduling. Say goodbye to email tag for scheduling appointments, interviews, calls, demos and much more. Save Time – Eliminate email and phone tag. Get more done with time saved. Accelerate Sales – Don’t lose hot prospects to email or phone tag. Allow them to connect right away. Improve Service – Make it super easy for customers to connect with you.

Appear.in – Start talking in seconds. It has never been easier to start talking over video to your friends, family or coworkers. This app is browser based and NO installation is required. With appear.in you can:

• send messages and links in text chat while seeing each other on video
• claim your own personal video room
• set a custom background image of the room
• lock the room for private conversations
• share your screen

Unroll.me – We identify your subscription emails and neatly list them for you. Do you remember signing up for that newsletter? We didn’t think so. Chances are, you’re drowning in unwanted email subscriptions.

We give you the option to unsubscribe from junk emails right off the bat. One click and they’re gone.Done.

Now that your inbox is junk free, easily combine your favorite subscriptions into a beautiful daily digest email called the Rollup. You choose what gets rolled up and when you receive your Rollup. Like to browse email with your morning coffee? You can get all your newsletters and social notifications at 7 a.m. each day. It’s up to you.

Handle – Handle brings together your email, calendar, and to-dos so you know exactly what you need to accomplish today, tomorrow, and beyond. With a few simple habits, Handle can help you stay on top of your workday. It’s as easy as 1-2-3.Go cross platform with Handle for Desktop Gmail & Google Apps. Available at Handle.com/chrome.

• Turn emails into to-dos by typing “t”
• 2 powerful views: side-bar within Gmail or go full screen
• Drag to-dos to your calendar to schedule them
• Use words like ‘today’ to have reminders automatically setup

Articles

Here are some really great articles which focus on prospecting and generating leads …

High Quality Prospecting for Broke Sales Teams – There are a ton of tools out there for sales teams to prospect, but the reality is most of them are costly. A lot of smaller companies can’t afford these tools. There must be a way to get the job done without breaking the bank, right? Lucky for you there are actually many free tools that help sales teams drive an engine of consistent, high quality prospecting and build their brands with social selling.

Cold Calling Is Dead: 12 New Prospecting Strategies Salespeople Should Use – Forty years ago, cold calling was one of the best — and only — ways to identify new leads for businesses. Not only that, but it was also one of the only ways that customers could find out about new products and ideas.The technology revolution changed everything. In today’s digital world, the days of smashing out 80-plus calls a day to generate new leads are gone.

5 Easy Ways to Make Your Sales Emails More Effective – Do you struggle to write effective sales and marketing emails? That’s not good. Your writing can make or break a deal, so it’s important to make your sales emails as persuasive as possible. And you don’t have to be a professional copywriter to do it. Here are five easy tips you should implement to make your email campaigns more successful right now.

How to Use the News Stream to Generate More Leads – If you’re an account executive, your company depends on you for consistent sales lead generation. Generating qualified leads means uncovering new opportunities. It also means nurturing your “not quite ready to buy” prospects so that you gain access to the buying cycle once they transition from consideration to evaluation. Here’s four ways you can use the news stream to generate more opportunities.

5 Steps to Generate More LinkedIn Sales Leads – Do you want more leads from LinkedIn? Wondering how others turn connections into leads? With the right approach, you can be the first person your connections think of when they need someone in your industry. In this article, you’ll discover how to turn LinkedIn connections into qualified leads.

How to Vastly Improve Mobile Sales Leads – The process to optimize your mobile sales pipeline is very different from how you optimize your other channels. The mobile sales experience must be extremely efficient and intuitive at every step. Unfortunately, many businesses lack a cohesive mobile sales strategy. It’s important for your business to understand what makes mobile sales so unique so that you can create a plan and a strategy that thrives.

Bonus Checklist!

Small business owners are often the primary sales person of their companies, a position that they habitually don’t have much experience or training in. One of the most important facets of the sales process is prospecting. Sales Prospecting is the method of reaching out to potential customers in hopes of finding new business and is often the initial step in the sales process. This may be the most stimulating part of a sales professional’s job. It’s monotonous, time-consuming and filled with rejection. But prospecting is also vital.

Use this Sales Prospecting Checklist produced by Sales Empowerment Group — you may be surprised at how much fun you can have and how well you can do … when you prospect like a pro! (click the pop-out icon in the top right corner of the document to download your own PDF copy)

Provided by Sales Empowerment Group

The post 2017 Social Selling App and Article Roundup #1 appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

For the record, while I like the product, the company, and their people very much, I am not affiliated with KiteDesk in any way nor am I being compensated for this review. I do support companies that I believe in. Enough about that.

KiteDesk is specifically a prospecting tool. Not a CRM. Not marketing automation. Prospecting. Nice. It allows you to find new prospects based on accounts that match your desired profiles (target buyer personas), discover key personnel within that company, assign leads, and it then enables you to nurture a lead into a viable opportunity.

Learn about KiteDesk – All In One Lead Generation, Routing, & Management
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KiteDesk is an all-in-one tool when it comes to lead generation, lead routing, and lead management. You can create various prospect lists, route them to reps, put them into communications sequences known as FLOWs, measure their conversion rates, and have every aspect of your lead management handled in one, easy to grasp, place.

While automation is a certainly a part of this process but, it is sales automation vs. trying to force a salesperson into adapting to a marketing automation application. Also, you can have KiteDesk integrated with your CRM, your calendar and your email (Gmail, Outlook) to manage them all through a single dashboard.

There are two major elements … FIND and FLOW. Let’s take a closer look at each …

FIND – Lead Generation

KiteDesk FIND is lead generation software – A web application and Chrome extension that travels with you across the web.

• Account-based sales prospecting based on your ideal customer profile builder – Work companies and find the people that you need within each company.

• On-demand data marketplace – Unlike buying a list and watching that data decay, KiteDesk’s on-demand resource are constantly being updated.

• Multiple data providers – KiteDesk pulls information from multiple resource including FullContact, InsideView, Zoominfo, NetProspex and more. Select the records that provide the information that you need!

• Tech stack, news, and alerts data – Get the latest news for this organization or person along with an analysis of the software that the firm currently deploys.

• Upload and enrich – Take your existing .csv prospect file and upload it to KiteDesk and then let KiteDesk enrich each record with social profiles and more!

• Chrome extension – The Chrome extension allows you to capture leads from anywhere on the web and then save them to a prospect list via a 1-click import.

• Email guessing – I’m not sure why they call it guessing. It is more prediction based on researched email naming configurations for a given organization.

• Easily export from KiteDesk to your CRM or sync to Salesforce.

• Bulk lead assignment

FLOW – Lead Management

Designed to boost the effectiveness of your Sales Development Team, KiteDesk flow is full-featured lead management software.

• All-in-one lead management platform.

• Consolidated view includes single sales development screen.

• Email templates including tracking, opens, replies, and notifications.

• Analytics and insights reporting

• Integrated calendar – Right within KiteDesk.

• 1-click dialer with local presence – Place calls from within KiteDesk. Local presence is a fee-based option that will allow you to display local phone numbers for caller I.D.

• Voicemail drop with call recording – Not only record calls for review later, have pre-recorded messages that you can drop in when you need to leave a voicemail which frees you up to go to your next call!

• Coordinated FLOWs – Includes communications sequencing based on configurable recipes to achieve Conversion Rate Optimization (Sales)

• Rules-based engine with configurable assignment options (round-robin, geographic, other) and automated triggers.

• Track leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities

• Mapping of data fields (including custom) for export or 3-minute sync with Salesforce.

• Inbound leads for your SDR team and outbound hand-offs from SDR to Sales.

KiteDesk is certainly not your only choice in the sales enablement product space. The folks over at KiteDesk have created this feature comparison between themselves and three other alternatives … KiteDesk vs SalesLoft vs Outreach vs ToutApp.

*Separate Fees / Package

N/A – SalesLoft, Outreach, and ToutApp do not include lead generation (FIND) capabilities.

Here are also some additional links to independent reviews on each …

• KiteDesk – GetApp, G2 Crowd (FIND), G2 Crowd (FLOW)
• SalesLoft – G2 Crowd
• Outreach – GetApp, G2 Crowd
• ToutApp – GetApp, G2 Crowd

Sean Burke, the CEO of KiteDesk. was asked … “What makes KiteDesk unique?”

“The dream of nearly every Business-to-Business Sales VP is having a sales team that delivers predictable revenue. As you can imagine this is extremely difficult.  At KiteDesk, we help them with the most important piece – predictable pipeline. From sourcing leads to routing them to the right reps and then having a workflow that’s consistent, you’re able to produce predictable pipeline each and every month. Sales Leaders can then focus their energy on “how they sell.”

Let’s talk a bit about what Sean had to say. Pay close attention to the term “predictable pipeline”. I’ve been in sales long enough to know how important, and how difficult, this is to achieve. I’ve seen more than my share of “wish lists”. Particularly with a team, there are three critical elements needed for predictability …

1. We need to make sure that the right rep is assigned to the correct opportunity.
2. Next, we must have an established sales process that is proven to deliver maximum consistent results.
3. Finally, we need to find a way to ensure that reps will consistently follow this process.

KiteDesk addresses all three of these elements.

As someone who grew up knocking on 30 doors a day, I must confess that I do like that KiteDesk stretches my comfort zones. Now semi-retired, KiteDesk’s advanced features would not apply to my limited needs but, I’m betting that they might apply to yours particularly if you are running an inside (outbound or inbound) sales team.

Ultimately, KiteDesk is designed to solve both an old and a new question. Despite what you may hear, cold calling and prospecting are not dead. Rather, they have evolved. Outbound selling, particularly email based, is faced with a problem. There is too much of it and little of it is personalized yet, personalized emails have a 6 times better chance of even being opened.

Now, if your emails are being sent by a bulk mailer to this person and maybe 10,000 others … your client is likely to be able to identify that and … delete. This is why sending from your existing email provider, you to this one person, is such an important aspect of personalization. But, personalization takes time and success with prospecting is still tied to numbers. Per CMO Eric Quanstrom .. KiteDesk takes personalization to scale.

Who’s KiteDesk best suited for? Get KiteDesk if you:

• Want to have your sales development in one easy to use interface (potentially consolidate many tools),
• Want affordable yet incredibly powerful solution,
• Want to be able to create a workflow that just works
• Manage multiple SDRs easily from lead lists through to Opportunity creation.

KiteDesk starts at $75 per user per month (billed annually) for FIND only which includes 300 leads per month (contact KiteDesk for lead up-charge details). FLOW is $125 per user per month (billed annually) and it includes FIND. 

Onboarding, including software training, best practices, and configuring KiteDesk to meet your organization’s specific needs in terms of cadence, flow, templates, naming … everything … is available for an incredibly low cost of only $100 per user. Obviously, they want you to know how to use it.  

If you have more questions, please visit KiteDesk at http://kitedesk.com  

The post KiteDesk – All In One Lead Generation, Routing, and Management appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

I try to watch and emulate others and you probably do the same. There is a lot of confusion, particularly with B2B, regarding how to implement social selling. Our hope is that these folks will inspire those of you are still on the fence and our goal is to share with you some of the best proven selling practices that you might wish to emulate!

Today we are joined by Tom Laine of HC Services Oy. Tom takes the mystery out of social selling by consistently demonstrating key elements including …

• Authenticity
• Personalization
• Uniqueness
• A desire to share, educate, and to promote others

Welcome, Tom!

Could you please tell our readers a little about you? 

Thank you Craig, a pleasure to be interviewed here, I’m an active reader of your blog myself. I’m currently living in Finland, running social media trainings across Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and Middle East. I’ve been an active social media user since 1999, and have taken turns working for global blue chips like Oracle and for SMEs, but all roles having something to do with social media ways of working. The last 10+ years my focus has been on social media recruitment and employer branding, and LinkedIn as such.

Learn how Tom Laine works social selling!
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How about telling them a little bit about your business? 

I’ve been running social media training sessions across Europe and Middle East, and slowly expanding my reach to Asia and the U.S. This all started when I sold my social media recruitment agency to a local market leader back in 2011. I wasn’t allowed to do active recruitment myself for 18 months, so I started training others, and that’s the road I’m still on. I have other similarly very focused trainers working with me, so I can concentrate only on things I find interesting, and that of course allows me to also dig much deeper into the services and ways of working.

How did you get started in selling and when did you begin adding social selling to your business? 

I founded my first social media startup back in 1999. Even if it didn’t become a success, the social media ways of working have stuck with me ever since. I got my first LinkedIn invitation in the spring of 2004, and the service struck me big time – it had so many features that I had been wishing for, so I started using it hyper-actively. Soon after that I moved to Denmark, where I had to establish my professional presence from the scratch, so I thought I could do that with the help of LinkedIn, where I already had some Danish contacts. To my surprise, I was soon contacted by a Norwegian company who wanted to use my services.

I started getting job offers, consultation requests, and whatnot. I realized that my personal profile, my brand, was being found well within LinkedIn, so I started taking it seriously. I started building a certain type of profile that highlighted my skills and services I was offering, I investigated LinkedIn’s search algorithm to enhance my being found, started networking actively, using LinkedIn groups to find business leads and to promote my services, etc.

I found a lot of interesting opportunities, and have since then used LinkedIn as my main tool for selling both my own services as well as using it to promote the companies I’ve worked for. I’ve used LinkedIn for sales, marketing, PR, recruitment, and more. Even the last company I sold was based on the buyer finding me at LinkedIn. So you could say that I’ve used social selling methods since 2004 more or less.

What are your social selling goals, objectives, and strategies? 

For years I didn’t have actual strategy or defined objectives for using LinkedIn and other tools to find leads or to enrich my CRM data, but since 2011 when I started running the trainings full-time, I had to start setting goals and objectives, and to measure my actions. These days most of my new customers come from LinkedIn and word of mouth, both supporting each other. For the last 4 years in a row I’ve run over 100+ training sessions and consultations per year, which has meant that sticking to routines has been quite impossible.

I haven’t had a need to actively sell, but building a personal brand has been at the very core of my business. Now that I’ve decided to expand the business to new markets, setting goals and objectives and building routines has once again come to play. These days the main objective is to expand to Asian markets, and slowly start building the presence in the U.S. This means that I have set clear action plans how to reach the Asian audiences and how to research the potential in the U.S. market.

Do you have regular routines? 

I’ve set a clear goal to write a new blog post at least once a week. I’ve defined a couple of platforms for publishing those posts, LinkedIn being one of them. I’m at least 4-5 times a week going through my LinkedIn messages, invitations, profile visits, and any meaningful engagements the blog posts have received. Especially the profile visits are a unique way of catching warm leads and to easily strike a conversation with someone interesting.

I also check my FB notifications 3-5 times a week, check my Twitter account for messages and mentions twice a week, and try to check out a number of saved searches in Twitter while at it. I check my Pinterest and SlideShare accounts regularly in addition to having notifications and alerts coming to my inbox when something requiring my attention happens. I also have some old Google alerts for web mentions, and research Google Analytics for significant changes in website visits, where people are coming from, etc.

How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?

The funny thing is, I use very little traditional sales methodologies, as most of my leads and direct client contacts come from word of mouth and LinkedIn. I can’t remember the last time I did a traditional sales push. I guess you could say things have happened a bit too easy and I’m a bit too much dependent on client actions, but since the business is very much leaning on my personal brand, I only have myself to blame if things go quiet. Of course I have a CRM that I use and during the last few years I’ve actively collected mailing lists and all, but I haven’t used those much – yet.

How do you manage to stand out from the noise?

I’ve been building the brand for a really long time and with quite clear focus, and as such I don’t see much competition. I’ve chosen a niche that’s pretty small, but it’s a niche that can be found anywhere and everywhere globally. We’ve also managed to build a nice up-sell pipeline for other trainings besides my own. The other trainers have chosen similarly small niches that they plan to conquer. So far, so good.

Could you please share with us a few of your favorite social selling tools?

My favorite tool by far is LinkedIn, no doubt about it. I use a couple of different LinkedIn premium services, the Sales Navigator and Talent Finder, but even more importantly, I spend time with the service and always try to find new ways of working and workarounds. In addition to LinkedIn, I use Hootsuite for publishing and saved searches, Facebook groups for sharing content, Twitter for finding leads and distributing content, and Pinterest for any visual content. I do have several other social media profiles, too, but haven’t found that much business opportunities in them. I’ve also used listening and analysis tools like Meltwater and Liana, but didn’t find those useful enough to pay for.

How do you track your results?

I follow the metrics almost on a daily basis, sometimes even several times a day when I’m expecting something to happen. If I see something working better than average, I boost it with wider distribution or sometimes even with paid advertising, and if something doesn’t perform well enough, I try to analyze why so. The main metrics for me are blog post views and engagement, LinkedIn profile views, and Google Analytics. And of course you can also notice well performing content by the number of potential customers contacting.

What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing salespeople as it pertains to social selling?

I think we’ve only briefly touched social selling so far, there’s so much more we could get out of it. And out of social media in general. I believe social selling to be a paradigm shift, not from sales point of view, but buying point of view! I think customers are just about to realize how much information is out there for anyone to find and analyze. And as customers become more aware of the possibilities, it requires a very different approach from marketing point of view. We need to create more and better content, less direct sales effort, but an attitude to help and support customers in their search for information. It’s a different mindset altogether. We have to accept that customers have more information than ever to find and more solutions to consider. Sales and marketing have to be really well aligned to succeed.

What about their biggest mistake that salespeople make when trying to implement social selling?

I think there are so many possibilities, not just one path to follow, but a possibility to build a toolbox to suit individual needs. To me, the biggest mistake would be to think this is just a short term phenomenon that will go away when the next hype kicks in. Actually, social selling has always been there, it’s really nothing new, but we just have better tools and greater audiences out there than ever. And of course the playground is bigger, too, with more players. But social selling starts with understanding that it’s all about people. It’s H2H, human to human, sales. Less driven by corporations, more about people creating and sharing content, people being more trustworthy than organizations, employees being more trustworthy than the CEO. Every employee is a sort of sales person, not just those with certain job title.

What is your “social selling superpower”?

Must be hyper-active active LinkedIn use

How can our readers get in touch with you to learn more?

I’m always happy to network with people, send me a LinkedIn connection request to my main profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomlaine, check my website at www.tomlaine.com, or send email at tom.laine@somehow.fi. Don’t mind new Twitter followers either @lainetom

Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!

I’d like to hear how Guy Kawasaki works it!

The post How I Work It – Social Selling with Tom Laine appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

There is also a lot of confusion and many thanks to Virpi Oinonen at Business Illustrator for creating this InfoComic that shows us the difference in an amazingly graphic, and humorous, manner! If you wish, please feel free to download this infographic for your own use!

A picture sure does tell a thousand words and Virpi has done exactly that! Thank you, Virpi!

The post Old School Sales vs. Modern Sales [InfoComic] appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

The fact is, time is your biggest enemy in sales or, for that matter, any other vocation. While it is finite, it’s not that we don’t have the time necessary to do the job. The problem is that our time is either being wasted or it is being sucked away by the wrong tasks and focuses.

It’s not all of our fault. We come from the factory pre-programmed to not necessarily meet these challenges very well. The good news is that we can rewire ourselves to correct these manufacturing defects. With “More sales | Less Time – Surprisingly Simple Strategies for Today’s Crazy-Busy Sellers”, Jill Konrath goes extensively into how this can be done. To say that she has done her research is an understatement.

If things weren’t bad enough, as Jill puts it … “We live in the age of distraction”. Much of this has been driven by technology tools along with their binging and flashing notifications, our multiple open tabs, and anything else that might compete for our immediate attention. I call it shiny bauble syndrome.

This book was born out of Jill’s personal need to take control of her own time and to increase her efficiencies. It is a story of Jill’s self-evaluation, attempts at correction and improvement, and of her successes and failures (requiring more adjustments) along the way. The book is …

• Part science of the brain and psychological studies

• Part advice from productivity experts and authors

• Part harnessing technology apps to avoid technology distractions

• Reprogramming how we address these challenges for maximum effectiveness

I appreciated the way that Jill took me step-by-step through her process and I felt very comforted by the fact that even a selling superstar feels the same pain that the rest of us do. I also picked up some great tips for some apps (the time-saving not time-sucking kind) to investigate!

Whereas the first three quarters of the book is devoted to taming the time and focus beast, the Part 6, “Accelerate Sales”, delves into how to use these newly recovered resources in order to truly up your selling game. In this section, Jill addresses …

• Triggers – How to identify and leverage customer events that might very well create opportunities for you!

• Developing time-saving systems – Create and deploy templates (and other things) to really cut down on repetitive work tasks.

• Cleaning up your pipeline – Move deals forward or move them out. Your pipeline is not supposed to be a wish list.

• How to accelerate your own development through careful self-evaluation and coaching.

• Making customer decisions simpler – Help them to arrive at a decision!

• Get bigger sales – Are you setting your client size objective too low?

In the appendix, you will find how to lead a highly productive sales team, admonishments and resources for continued learning, and a list of really great books that you will no doubt wish to investigate!

“More Sales | Less Time” is, despite its great detail and complexities, an easy read. Each section comes with a recap (including a PDF download), chapters include goals and an exercise for you to implement on your own, and it is also chocked full of references to additional resources such as other great reads on the subject matter.

So, if you are really serious about making more sales in less time, I would encourage you to first buy the book and then make a strong commitment to yourself to follow through with Jill’s suggested steps. They will take quite a bit of effort on your part, and you will fail forward during the process but, the rewards will be worth it and Jill has already done much of the heavy lifting for you!

The post “More Sales | Less Time” [Book Review] appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

Personal growth associated with developing selling skills isn’t about reinventing the personal you, the self you know and may very well prefer. It is about developing some selling-related behaviors to be applied when circumstances challenge. The bricks and mortar, habitual behaviors:

Extreme Selling Competence Leaves Competitors in the Dust
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Acquired by happenstance, through prior experience … or

Cultivated, as planned by intent, through focused training

Every academic learning study has illustrated equivalent results: focused attention improves retention, accuracy, and clarity in just about any subject: writing, math, science … In college it was hours of study.

The process hasn’t changed. What you learn can be a result of targeted training, or simply the product of experience. One, deliberate; the other, by chance.

A salesman’s characteristics, like those required of a quarterback, are a mixture of courage, toughness, instincts, preparation, resourcefulness, and a few other less tangible variables.

Selling skills, of the exceptional variety, are cultivated – behaviors applied specifically to the salesman’s role – activities essential to developing formidable personal effectiveness:

Creating a dynamic personal story – A written narrative: objectives, and how you will achieve them.

Managing your time – The conscious application of time usage.

Understanding game fundamentals – Selling skills development relies on a process equivalent to learning any sport. For baseball, the basics: hitting, throwing, and catching the ball. With selling: acquiring an understanding of human psychology, constructing a formalized sale-process format, developing habits and behaviors needed to execute the sale process, and how to close a sale.

Adopting a dominant image – You will be perceived in some manner. Through conscious intent, or through habits controlling your behaviors, you project an image. The better is, by intent, how you will present yourself. This is the acquired image formed around a role incorporating some new behaviors.

Becoming an authority on your product and its market – You are surrounded by resources: read voraciously, research the Internet, get to know knowledgeable people on the subject. 

An extreme ability to engage – Selling is about the other person: their needs, their reaction to you, what you have to say, and how you say it. You can be an interesting conversationalist by simply asking questions. Not probing inquiries, just an effort to draw the other person out.

To some, this particular skill seems to come more easily. If you are not among the gifted, practice it until a new habit is formed.

Accepting mistakes’ value – Selling strategies are perfected through trial and error. Mistakes are vital to knowledge developed through experience.

Seeing yourself as already successful – Individuals who succeed are equipped with an I-can-do-this mindset. The attitude implies substance, even when competence is still-to-come.

Identifying the most pressing current personal need to address – The answer may identify a half-dozen self-improvement opportunities; focus on one. Get the first one where it needs to be, then attack the rest, one at a time.

Understanding pursuit of unreasonable goals, or rushing the process, will more probably result in reduced effectiveness – A natural desire will be to hit it into the light tower, but competence developed through experience comes first. Determine to be better in September than you were in March.

Resisting collapse into self-doubt when competence isn’t progressing as you feel it should – Big aspirations are useful but, need tempering. You will hear about others’ successes. Ignore them. They only prove what can be done. Avoid comparing your status with someone else’s, or some imagined idea of how things ought to be. Persistent individuals have time on their side; the impatient are more inclined to lose their nerve.

To be human is to be born with a drive to accomplish. Aristotle described a life-growth-achievement principle as inherent to every human being. He observed “Human beings have a natural desire and capacity to know, and should use their abilities to their fullest potential through exercise of their realized capacities.” When an individual achieves something worthwhile the success gratifies, creating a sense of worth.

The personal-development process is a quest, one that starts with beginner’s luck, then proceeds to punish the participant relentlessly until one of two conditions emerge: a considerably evolved individual who has become stronger for the experience; or an individual who gave into weakness, and quit.

Fortunately, unlike professional athletics or quantum physics, succeeding at selling doesn’t require having been an accident of nature. What you don’t know you can learn if you have an understanding of how to learn, and a willingness to act. Selling, like succeeding at anything, is a consequence of mastering the subject’s nuances. Emphasis is placed on acquiring behaviors critical to personal effectiveness.

The post Other Things Equal, Extreme Selling Competence Leaves Competitors in the Dust appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

I try to watch and emulate others and you probably do the same. There is a lot of confusion, particularly with B2B, regarding how to implement social selling. Our hope is that these folks will inspire those of you are still on the fence and our goal is to share with you some of the best proven selling practices that you might wish to emulate!

Today we are joined by Scott MacGregor with SomethingNew. Scott takes the mystery out of social selling by consistently demonstrating key elements including …

• Authenticity
• Personalization
• Uniqueness
• A desire to share, educate, and to promote others

Welcome, Scott!

Could you please tell our readers a little about you? 

I grew up as the poor kid in an affluent town which made me hyper competitive and extremely motivated.  I knew very early on sales was going to be my profession once the delusion of a professional sports career had become clear. I’m a passionate student of sales and marketing who believes in building long term relationships by trying to always be a resource.  I relate almost everything back to my competitive athletic background and really think that business and sports are joined at the hip in nearly every way.

Learn how Scott MacGregor does social selling!
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How about telling them a little bit about your business?

SomethingNew was born out of my frustration with the recruiting world as a VP of Sales & Marketing for many years.  We set out to solve the problems I faced and build a better mousetrap and through allot of planning an amazing team and a little luck have been blessed with a ton of success pretty quickly.  Our first year in business we won the American Business Award for “innovation” followed by being named the “talent acquisition” mentors to the companies in the NYU incubator but, most importantly, we have received an overwhelming outpouring of incredible support from our clients and candidates.  Our approach is completely unique and I think it is what the market wants and needs so our story is resonating.

How did you get started in selling and when did you begin adding social selling to your business?

I worked in my dad’s gas station from age 10 so I was up-selling a gas fill up to an oil change along with buying and selling baseball cards etc.  I started my first professional sales job 1 week after graduating selling office equipment by door to door cold calling.  I think I was doing a form of social selling before there were platforms like LinkedIn.  I was sending handwritten congratulations cards to people who were in our local paper as “People on the Move” and cutting out articles from newspapers and magazines and mailing them to prospects and clients from my first job on.  As one of the first million people on LinkedIn in 2004 I was definitely an early adopter.  When I first saw LinkedIn I couldn’t believe how valuable it was.  I think I did my first LinkedIn training for my sales team a decade ago when LI was only a few years old.

What are your social selling goals, objectives, and strategies?

The goal or objective is simply to build real relationships and to leverage technology to scale that without losing sight of the fact that I want true relationships not just connections.  I use LinkedIn because it’s where all of our clients and candidates are and I use Twitter and Instagram to a lesser extent.

Do you have regular routines?

Every morning I recognize birthdays, work anniversaries, job changes on LinkedIn with personalized messages as well as liking, commenting and sharing peoples posts on all platforms.  I also post things every day that I think people will find useful and interesting.  Most people think I spend much more time doing this stuff but the reality is that even with nearly 8,000 LinkedIn connections I probably spend less than an hour doing all of the aforementioned.  I also typically will connect with people I find inspiring or interesting every day with a personalized message.  I’ve never once sent out a generic connection request. 

How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?

I think they’re the kind of the same. Social is just a way to automate and scale your sales methodology.

How do you manage to stand out from the noise?

Everything is personal and tailored to each person who I am trying to build a relationship with.  Also, I’m very consistent in using the tools to build relationships.  I don’t think I’ve missed a day in 12 years using LI in particular.

Could you please share with us a few of your favorite social selling tools?

LinkedIn to me is the granddaddy of them all because nearly 100% of our clients and candidates use it.  Instagram is great for humanizing our brand.

How do you track your results?

If good things are happening, from relationships to revenue, I know we’re getting results.

What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing salespeople as it pertains to social selling?

They don’t use it to build relationships. They use it to sell.

What about their biggest mistake that salespeople make when trying to implement social selling?

They use it to sell instead of build relationships.  For example, I get 10-20 connection requests every day and sometimes a lot more.  99% of them are generic, which is inexcusable, and most of the times when I do connect I immediately get a three paragraph “sales pitch”.  It’s a complete turn off.

What is your “social selling superpower”? 

I don’t try to monetize relationships. I just try to build relationships with extraordinary people by being a resource to them.  Magic happens when you have a real servants mentality and give with no expectation for a monetary return.

How can our readers get in touch with you to learn more?

Connect with me with a personalized connection request on LinkedIn, e-mail me, write me or call me.  All of that info is on my profile or can be found with minimal effort.

Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!

I’d like to hear how Mark Birch works it!

The post How I Work It – Social Selling with Scott MacGregor appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.

1. Who are your customers?

Make sure to learn this! Your first step is creating a customer profile. Here are some questions you should ask when researching your target customer:

• What type of companies will benefit most from your product?
• What is their business model?
• To which sectors or industries do they belong?
• What kind of ecosystem are they part of?
• How big are these companies?
• Where are they located?
• What tools or technologies are they using or have used in the past?

Knowing all of this helps to set initial search criteria for finding concrete (and right!) companies to target.

2. Define what connects you to your target customer

Here’s how. Remember that you’re selling to people, not companies. That’s right, even in B2B. Your next step is to define what are the needs, problems, goals, challenges, and pain points of these people. How else will you know whether your product or service could help them and their businesses? When doing your homework, be sure to check out:

• How do your target customers solve their problems?
• What kind of tools are they using?
• Are they satisfied with these solutions?
• Can your solution help them solve their problem/reach their goals?
• Is your solution more attractive than their current one?

At this point, you’ll know how to approach your target customers, how to attract their attention, and how to persuade them to continue the conversation. This is necessary in order  to successfully convert your prospects into your leads.

3. How will you get in touch with your leads?

If you want to close more deals (and who doesn’t?), you need to treat leads coming from different sources differently.

For example, potential clients who come to you via referrals are like your friends. If you do your best in helping them, they’re bound to spread the word about you to their buddies. Since you’ve been recommended to them by somebody they trust, by default it’s easier to convince them to buy from you. But, don’t think the deal is in your pocket – put some effort into proving to then that the recommendation was right and that you’re really worth working with.

When it comes to leads that come through inbound channels – get in touch with them as soon as you can. If they found you, it means they are close to make their final decision. Be the first one to reach them back and convince that you’re the right choice. When dealing with them you can start pitching right away. No need for long intros – they’ve read about you and know what you’re doing.

When dealing with leads that you get via outbound channels – it’s the opposite. You need to focus on building the relationship first with them. Try not to be pushy with your offer in the beginning. Make sure they are ready to listen to you. Then show them client testimonials, case studies, and reviews. Building trust is your top priority here.

4. Check out your competition

To understand the needs of your target customers, ask prospects about the vendors they’ve worked with previously, or do research by yourself. That’s how you’ll get a better idea about the requirements and preferences of your target customers.

But that’s not everything. You’ll also get invaluable knowledge about how your offer compares to your competitors. This way you learn your competitive advantage. Use it in your pitch to make it more convincing.

5. Pay attention to these red flags

When dealing with prospects, you should pay close attention to how they respond to your offer. If they’re reluctant and don’t give you a definite answer, you might spend a lot of time and in the end get “no”. Don’t let it happen. Try to be direct and clarify the source of their reluctance.

Does it mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’? Maybe it’s simply ‘not now’? BANT technique helps a lot here. You can read more about it in one of our blog posts. It stands for Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe. By gathering data through this BANT technique you can figure out what’s the real reason of your lead’s reluctance and plan your further actions accordingly.

Key Takeaways

1. Create your customer profile – find concrete companies that match your criteria
2. Define what connects you to your target customer –  use it to attract their attention and start a conversation
3. Keep in mind how you get in touch with your leads – use this info to approach them differently
4. Learn your competitive advantage – become even more persuasive
5. Use BANT to qualify leads – stop wasting your time, focus on high value opportunities

The post 5 Things You Should Know About Your Target Customer to Close Deals Successfully appeared first on Social Sales Training & Strategies.