First up, social selling, or digital selling, or remote selling or virtual selling works.
This is not a theory, or something that somebody has made up, we have clients that are creating pipeline and closing deals through social, even today. Even during a pandemic, even during lock down.
If you don’t have a project backed by a methodology then you are not pulling all the levers you can right now to generate pipeline. And in this market, you need to pull all the levers you can.
In this blog, I will take you through the research on how the world has changed, what you as a business can do right now and an example of how just one person is killing it on social right now.
Just think ..... if one person is "killing it" and how about we scaled across your sales team.
Not posting on social and hoping, but a methodology that get all of your sales people, self sufficient in lead generation ..... during Covid19.
A bold statement, sure, but this is what we do, day, after, day, after day, after day.
Some context ...
We Have Transformed In Work and Play on Social Through The Pandemic
I've written before about how B2B (Business to Business) sales and marketing is like the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote. You remember the cartoon characters, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner?
We always laugh, as the Wile E. Coyote character, runs off the edge of a cliff. For a second, before he realises there is no more ground beneath him, his legs still pumping away as if he's still on ground.
In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.
But what does this mean for your sales and marketing?
Simon Kemp research states
4.57 billion people around the world now use the internet, accounting for close to 60 percent of the world’s total population.
The internet and Social media isn't a fad and it's not going away, in fact usage is accelerating, and now a tipping point has been reached.
Simon points out that there are now more people on social media than not on social media.
Covid_19 Is Forcing Transformation of B2B sales and Marketing
B2B Sales and Marketing is distressed. The old marketing methods, and its ability to work gets less and less with everyday. Covid19 has forced the buyers to be active on social and they don't want to play the old games anymore. If I was given a $1 for everybody that tells me cold calling no longer works ....
What As a Business Should You Do?
Your Business need to look to move your sales team from selling and marketing on an analogue prospective to selling digitally. In effect lifting the sales teams territory and putting it online.
What Does Digital Selling Look Like?
You need a Linkedin profile, this is now part of the standard sales kitbag. It needs to be buyer centric, so written for the modern digital buyer.
You need a network, so as we said, lift your territory online.
You also need content, what do I mean by that?
Here is an example of content. Not time consuming and if you do it the right way (we can teach and coach you) then you should be able to get results like this.
Eric Doyle, he's a partner of ours.
Most of you I'm sure can connect with Eric being out with his son on the beach.
He posted a piece of content, it currently has 165 likes and 37 comments and has been viewed 18,292 times.
So what?
A great post but behind that is a lead generation methodology
It's created for him 124 leads.
28 outbound connections.
13 new inbound connections.
6 meetings (1 CEO, 1 COO, 2 MDs, 2 FDs)
1 Proposal
All from 10 minutes of work, all for free!
This is Great Tim, But My Sales team are All Over Social!
I realise that your sales team say they are "all over social", I realise that you may have completed a LinkedIn course in the past, this maybe the case but Covid_19 has accelerated this change and these things are not good enough.
Covid 19 also means there is less business around, so you will need to look at competitive advantage and remote selling will offer you this.
I have no idea what sector you work in and I have no idea of we can help you. But we are helping clients in Manufacturing, Professional Services, Retail, Automotive (Retail), Hi-Tech, Telecommunications, etc etc. Anywhere where there is a B2B salesforce or B2C where there is a considered purchase.
If you want more information about how we turned social selling from being an art into a science contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team. We are a global company so whether you are in the United States, Canada, UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Nordics, Singapore, Hong Kong, Portugal, South America we have somebody local who can help you.