The One Skill Your Salespeople Need to Master in This Digital World

Being about to walk your digital corridors (starting and having) digital conversations. 

The digital perfect storm

There has been a perfect storm of disruption in society and how we work. The internetsocial mediamobile and Covid-19 have all impacted us.

Want to buy something we reach for our mobiles and start searching on Google or on social media. It’s natural for us to do this in our personal lives and in our business lives too.

The same goes for our buyers.

Let me reiterate, if your buyers want to buy something, they go online and do research.

What that means to us as anybody that has a customer facing role

It does not matter if we are sales people, business developers, lawyersaccountantsmanagement consultants, leadership or engineersThe fact of the matter is if we know our buyers, clients, investors, etc are on social media, then we need to be as well.

But Tim, that's what marketing do

I'm sorry but the days of marketing holding onto to social and having responsibility for it for a business are over.

We know there has been a perfect storm, we know that our own activities have changed and so have our clients. We have to take control of our own social activity, why?

Because that's how life works today

When, Adam Gray and I started DLA Ignite, we were in talks with a large management consultancy. They explained to us, "the way business work is like this, we take the CEO to a game of golf, they sign the contract". I'm sure some business still happens like this, but it's getting less and less.

In a recent Salesforce survey, here.

76% of workers do not feel prepared for working in a digital first world.

So how do you get digital skills?

Just like your diversity training or your health and safety training you have to invest in making sure your teams have the skills to work the digital corridors. 

  • This does not happen by accident
  • This does not happen by you hoping it will happen
  • This does not happen by your analogue people training people to be digital
  • This does not happen with your team(s) watch a video or listening to a deck of powerpoints
  • This is not Linkedin training, this is about being social.

This happens by having a team trainers to come in and train and most importantly coach your teams in what digital means.

Coaching your team on social media - walking those digital corridors

To train and coach on what it means to have a personal brand and how to create one. After all, we know our buyers are out there, we know they are checking us out, we know they will make a decision if they should employ us or the firm by what we look like on social media.

You need people to train you on how to create networks, in your prospects and in your customers, so that you can influence these people. Creating digital influence for your firm. 

You need to be trained and coached on creating content, not corporate content that nobody engages with, but life content so that businesses can see you are the great firm with a great culture.

This isn't just about understanding how to use a social platform, this is about understanding what it means to be social. Trained and coached on how to be social on social. 

And finally, this is not about LinkedIn, what if your client isn't on LinkedIn but is on Instagram, or Twitter, how will you work the digital corridors if you can be social on those platforms?

Related: How Can I Motivate Our Employees to Post Content on Social Media?