A sales leader said to me the other day
"We hired three people and they sold nothing, that cost our business a lot of money"
So where did it all go wrong?
The company sells in the B2B and B2C space, selling complex deals at a high level.
These sales people all had track records of doing this in the past, but didn't sell anything.
The sales leader explained to me that
"They went to their "black book" of contacts and the suppliers said "yes, we already have three suppliers that do this"."
Now we could leave the blog there, buts let's break that down.
If we look at modern selling, a modern seller has three things in their kit bag.
1. A buyer centric profile, this is their shop window to the world. So rather than having a LinkedIn profile that is a CV, or looks like just another salesperson. The Linkedin profile, describes who they are, a story of their life, what they stand for and what they expertise is. Think of it like this, you are at a customer meeting, you are meeting them for the first time and there is a "round robin" where everybody introduces themselves. What you say, is what should be on your LinkedIn profile.
Your Linkedin profile is your shop window to the world.
2. Next you need a network, it needs to be as wide and varied as you can get it. You need to be constantly growing it. The network that helped you 20, 10, 5 years ago is great, but you need a network and territory you can sell to today and this quarter.
I understand you used to have a "back book" this is pre-covid thinking, you now need a digital territory.
3. You need content. Think about that first customer meeting again, how do you prove your expertise? You do this with content. Not brochures, nobody is interested in them. Articles like this, that prove I have expertise in this area.
Note, I have no told you about DLA Ignite, it is not until this point where I tell you that our social selling and influence course will support your sales teams. But apart from that, there is no pitch and you will walk away from this with a nugget of information. Then things may happen, you might contact us and buy, you might remember me and refer me to somebody, or you may never buy.
Either way, your salespeople need to be doing this as part of their prospecting.
Related: Why Your Starting a New Position Post on LinkedIn, Isn’t Social Selling