Selling Power Blog

How to Use Mind Mapping to Get Unstuck in Sales and Life

Today’s post is by Jamie Crosbie, CEO and founder of ProActivate. Jamie is a certified peak performance mindset trainer. Contact her at [email protected] or 214/720-9922 to learn more about how her training can help your sales team reach peak performance levels.  

 

We all have those moments. Moments like when someone is explaining something to you – and you see their mouth moving and hear words coming out – but you don’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about. Or you have a really, really good idea (at least you think it is), but you can’t quite flesh it out or even understand why you think it’s a good idea. You need to find a way to comprehend it and get un-stuck so you can execute on it and succeed.

There are ways to approach it. You can quietly ponder it or talk it through with someone else who “gets” you. You can sleep on it hoping for enlightenment in the morning. You can keep re-reading those notes you took. After a while, though, if you haven’t been able to think it out, talk it out, or the notes still don’t make sense – and the bright light of inspiration failed to show up the next day – it’s time for a different technique.

Enter Mind Mapping, an increasingly popular and helpful technique for sorting through thoughts and the subcomponents of them in a way that turns traditional, one-dimensional note taking into two-dimensional visuals.

Mind Mapping is a technique developed and promoted by British author and consultant Tony Buzan. Following his highly popular 1970s BBC series Use Your Head, he released several books on logical thinking and memory mnemonics, including The Mind Map Book. The mapping technique has been challenged over the years as pseudoscience lacking real evidence of value. However, studies of the technique have shown that concept mapping is more effective than “reading text passages, attending lectures, and participating in class discussions.” The Mind Mapping concept is useful for brainstorming as an individual or with a group, studying and memorizing, consolidating data from diverse sources, thinking through difficult concepts, and creating a readily-understandable summary of more extensive notes and information sources.

Mind maps rapidly display the structure of a concept by showing its various components and subcomponents in a single visual that fits on one page of paper – or a single white board if your concept is particularly grandiose.

Example:

Starting in a circle at the center with a statement of the highest-level statement of the concept, you then branch out to components of that concept. From there you branch out to the subcomponents – going for as many levels of breakout as you need to represent your idea fully. The visual result is more compact than more traditional note-taking. It allows rapid delivery of the concept to others who may be stakeholders or contributors to the concept in its execution. And it facilitates taking a large concept and breaking it into manageable, bite-sized bits that can be more easily translated into tasks and milestones – while, at the same time, reducing the possibility that something important will be completely overlooked.

A good Mind Map allows you to understand the relative importance of each of a concept’s individual parts as well as the dependencies of one component on another. That, in turn, allows you to prioritize the order of tasks in a more meaningful and productive way.

Fortunately, there are many sources online showing the Mind Mapping technique and coaching people in how to approach it. Don’t let yourself sit behind a mental log-jam.  Do yourself a favor and learn how to take a difficult idea, break it down, and paint a picture of it. Over time it will become more and more intuitive to you. Then you’ll become a shining asset of productivity and originality.

Boost Your Selling Power through Kindness

Today’s post is by Jill Lublin, an international speaker on the topics of radical influence, publicity, networking, kindness, and referrals. She is the author of four bestselling books, including Get Noticed...Get Referrals and co-author of Guerrilla Publicity and Networking Magic. Her latest book is The Profit of Kindness. Visit publicitycrashcourse.com/freegift and jilllublin.com.

 

Once upon a time, there were salespeople who started the purchasing process and heavily influenced the decision-making of consumers. But times have changed. Today, according to a research by HubSpot, 62 percent of consumers will use a search engine for information regarding a product or service while only 29 percent will connect with sales representatives.

Though no longer the first step of the process, salespeople still play an important part – now, in the consideration stage. The same study states that 43 percent of customers will reach out to sales representatives when they are ready to avail themselves of the product or service.

Such role change creates the necessity to amend your selling approach as well. From the stereotypical profit mindset – that is sometimes bordering on deceptive – you must shift toward a client-centric strategy that earns customers’ trust and loyalty. Here are some ways you can turn your selling practice from cutthroat to kind.

Offer Service First before Selling

With a goal in mind, people will act heading to such an end. When you think of your quota, your motivations, messages, and actions will be geared toward making your customers buy from you. This is what leads people to think salespeople are pushy and annoying. But, when you think of what you can offer your clients, that’s when you ask the right questions and exhibit concern.

Before selling, then, place yourself in your clients’ shoes. They may already have something in mind – but inquire further to understand their actual needs. Then think how your product or service could provide for such needs, in a manner that is more beneficial to your customers than when they obtain it from others – or don’t make a purchase at all.

Offer Services beyond Sales

Sometimes, as your conversation goes, you realize that what the client truly needs is something you cannot deliver. A typical salesperson would still recommend his/her own product or service. This is often what results in a perception of deception. A kind salesperson, however, will direct the client to the right path. If you genuinely care for your customers, you would not be afraid of suggesting even the products or services of your competitor. This might seem counter-intuitive – borderline crazy – but this is how you earn the trust of clients and even prospects. Neil Alcala and his company DirectPay have been doing this, assisting even non-customers, for the past 20 years, and that goodwill has led to processing of $3.25 billion and counting for their clients.

Contribute beyond Your Products and Services

One of the findings of The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer is that 80 percent of global consumers agree that business must play a role in addressing societal issues. Research conducted by Cone Communications, on the other hand, found that 90 percent of consumers would switch to a brand that is connected to social and environmental causes.

With this increase in consumer awareness – and consumer expectations of social responsibility – people in the sales industry must act accordingly. As you ensure customer loyalty, attract new customers  by being involved in activities that support charities and nonprofit organizations. Devise a strategy where proceeds from your products or services would directly contribute to your community. From small random acts of kindness within your neighborhood to scholarships for underprivileged students to programs for the early detection of cancer – these will not go unnoticed and will surely create free advertising for your products or services.

You do not have to be aggressive or irritating to gain customers. Yet, kindness in selling should go hand-in-hand with kindness in the form of creating quality and sustainable products and services. Kindness indeed goes a long way. As Gallup has proven in one of its studies, customers who are fully engaged – that is, emotionally connected customers – “represent a 23 percent premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer.”

When Your Large Account is Really a Market: Beyond Account-based Sales Development

Today’s post is by Barbara Weaver Smith, founder and CEO of The Whale Hunters, where she teaches B2B companies how to grow fast by doing business with much bigger customers. Barbara is co-author of Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company and author of Whale Hunting with Global Accounts.

 

Recently, Jon Miller of Engagio discussed account-based sales development (ABSD) as the new sales development model. He stated that ABSD “targets the entire buying team as a team, not as isolated individuals. It’s built on relevance and value for each individual on the team.”

I applaud Jon’s work and recommend it. But I challenge you to think: When does your “account” become a “market”? When sales and marketing collaborate to reach a buying team, that’s a wonderful start for a deal – especially an enterprise software deal. But even a big, big deal doesn’t begin to approach the complexity of an enterprise account.

Let’s look at a few “accounts” my SMB clients (B2B companies with $10 million to $200 million annual revenue) have landed. The pharma manufacturer Novartis, #175 on the Fortune Global 500, holds a corporate family of 457 companies. Three major business units have separate names – Novartis, Sandoz, and Alcon – although, recently, they’ve instituted centralized purchasing and construction and moved product lines between companies. A company selling to Novartis would be misinformed if their team is doing account-based sales on a deal with Alcon, unaware of product line reassignments.

How about Procter & Gamble, #34 on the 2016 Fortune 1000, whose corporate footprint includes 1,076 companies – that’s discrete companies, not retail outlets. P&G has five separate market segments for their branded consumer goods, and they manufacture at 129 facilities in 29 states and 40 countries. Whether you sell tools or training, cubicles or signs, digital marketing or security services, Procter & Gamble is more like a market than an account.

One more – Kroger, a big grocery chain, right? Wrong! Kroger, #17 on the Fortune 1000, includes 9,427 companies in its family – that includes 2,778 grocery retail stores, 784 convenience stores, and 323 fine jewelry stores. They carry more than 1,400 private labels under more than 25 different store names, including fuel centers, supermarkets, warehouse stores, marketplace stores, and multi-department stores. They operate 38 food production plants. Do you sell construction services, refrigeration, logistics, online collaboration tools, point-of-purchase displays, engineering validation, or consulting? If so, treat Kroger like a market, not a deal or even an account.

Even Briggs & Stratton, the smallest company on the Fortune 1000 list, includes 76 companies, many international.

Here’s my advice if you want to do big, healthy, lifetime business with enterprise customers:

• Take them out of your normal lead generation flow. They are whales that require special treatment.
• Determine which enterprise companies could be good customers for you. Then, invest in deep research to fully understand their footprint, their businesses, their problems and opportunities, their strategic initiatives, and their key people.
• Engage sales, marketing, and your leadership team to build a complete marketing strategy before you approach them.
• Approach only one or two such companies at a time, so you can invest in proper resources to grow the market assertively.
• Focus on their strategic business outcomes, not on your products.

And click here for some advice on training your team.

Account-based selling may get you started, but – for lifetime customer value – treat an enterprise account like a new market.

Five Insights to Help Sales Teams Reach Revenue Targets

Today’s post is by Shawnna Sumaoang, director of Marketing at Highspot. Her background is in strategic development and the execution of marketing and communications programs in the technology industry. Shawnna’s current mission is to elevate the role of sales enablement to a critical business function charged with driving radical improvement in sales effectiveness.

 

Want to hit your revenue targets more reliably? It’s time to invest in sales enablement.

More than 100 years ago, True Temper tools rolled out the slogan, “The right tool for the right job.” Profound in its simplicity, this slogan has been adapted over the years to express the importance of using the right tool to get a job done.

When it comes to selling more, a modern sales enablement platform is absolutely a critical tool in the seller’s toolbox. With the right platform, your sales team will be able to access the right content at the right time in the buyer’s journey, making hitting revenue targets significantly easier (to both close and predict).

If you’re still using shared drives, legacy systems, and/or email – i.e., the wrong tools – to empower your sales team, it’s time to consider a structured, measurable approach to sales enablement. And there’s still time to make a measurable impact on 2017 numbers.

Don’t take my word for it, though – listen to your peers. Recently, Highspot released its annual “State of Sales Enablement” report, a compilation of survey results from nearly 600 sales, sales enablement, and marketing professionals conducted in December of 2016. The overwhelming feedback from these folks who are “in the trenches” pointed to the power of sales enablement processes and technology to help sales teams improve productivity and scale best practices.

Top findings include:   

1. The sales process is becoming more complex. A majority (64.5 percent) of respondents are experiencing more complex sales processes, and this is more pronounced among larger companies. However, companies with a dedicated sales enablement team are more than twice as likely to experience a sales process that’s becoming less complex. This isn’t surprising, as we have seen time and again that sales enablement helps streamline sales activities and accelerate desired outcomes. To help optimize the sales processes even further, we recommend aligning to the buyer’s journey instead of the seller’s expectations.
   
   
2. It’s more important than ever to align to the buyer’s journey. Companies with a sales enablement team are 52 percent more likely to have a sales process that’s tightly aligned with the buyer’s journey. Conversely, those without a sales enablement team are 67 percent more likely to have a sales process that’s only lightly aligned. The fact is, most sales processes are built around a seller’s perspective instead of a buyer’s perspective, and the two are quite different. Reframing your sales process around buyer expectations – managed through your sales enablement process – will provide even better top-line results.
   
   
3. Sales enablement helps align content to the buyer’s journey. As sales processes are re-framed around the buyer’s journey, so too must sales content be. Respondents with a dedicated sales enablement team were more likely to consider their sales content closely mapped to the buyer’s journey. These differences were especially notable in buyer’s persona (44 percent more likely) and sales stages (52 percent more likely).
   
   
4. Budgets are increasing based on tangible results. Companies with sales enablement personnel, processes, and technology are increasing their budget allocations – an indication that the high ROI expected by sales enablement is being achieved. Of respondents indicating a rising budget, more than 30 percent cited gains of greater than 11 percent year-over-year.
   
   
5. Sales enablement drives revenue. Companies with sales enablement tools reported revenue increases surpassing their peers. More than 75 percent of respondents from companies using sales enablement tools reported that their company’s sales had increased over the past 12 months.  Of these same respondents, nearly 35 percent reported sales increases greater than 25 percent. The correlation between sales enablement and increased revenue is a clear call to action for companies still determining whether or not to invest. Given strong results among sales teams of all sizes, we anticipate sales enablement remaining a key growth driver as companies continue to scale.

We’ve seen time and again that implementing the right platform can

• Help combat sales process complexity – a pervasive challenge with expensive repercussions.
• Help improve alignment among sales processes, content, and the buyer’s journey.
• Have a significant impact on sales conversion rates and revenue growth.

In other words, sales enablement can be a win/win for sales leadership and sales reps (and the organization on a whole).

Want to learn more? The 2017 State of Sales Enablement report is available for complimentary download.

How to Get Sales Reps in Front of More Customers with Geo Productivity Software

Today’s post is by John Stewart, CEO and co-founder of MapAnything. Download his company’s e-book Geo Productivity Software: A New Paradigm for Driving Field Sales Results.

 

Ask any field sales team about what they spend their time on, and you’ll get a variety of answers that have nothing to do with making the number. Typically, they’re spending time on

• Scheduling sales calls
• Rescheduling cancelled meetings
• Updating CRM
• Reporting on progress
• Travelling between meetings

Yet, last year – in a global survey of 2,300 sales professionals – Harvard Business Review found that 95 percent of sales professionals feel face-to-face meetings are key to long-term customer relationships. What’s more, 89 percent expressed that face-to-face meetings are essential for “sealing the deal.”

However, according to the 2016 Salesforce State of Sales Report, 22 percent of sales reps cite lack of time for face-to-face selling as a hindrance to meeting the number. Finding revenue is a face-to-face activity. So, how do salespeople find more time to be in front of customers?

Top-performing field sales reps are leveraging a new class of software designed to maximize selling time and minimize distractions like reporting, meetings with little potential for revenue, driving between sales calls, and wasting time driving in traffic or bad weather. The solution, Geo Productivity Software (GPS), optimizes field sales activities for results by using data to prioritize activities and minimize distractions.

Geo Productivity Software is integrated with CRM and becomes a natural part of the sales workflow. It uses pipeline data from within CRM to prioritize meetings based on the value of the prospect, the likelihood of closing a deal, and where the prospect is located. It can identify which high-value prospects are geographically close to one another and fill in time gaps with new prospects and leads. With this prioritization, GPS applies sophisticated navigation technology to plan optimal routes between meetings – minimizing travel time.

With Geo Productivity Software, sales reps are able to achieve the following results.

• Drive quota performance and revenue
• Increase productivity with more quality meetings per day
• Define territory plans for maximum revenue performance
• Improve customer loyalty via the right cadence of face-to-face meetings
• Simplify compliance and reporting within CRM
• Automatically update CRM to ensure accuracy and drive productivity with a simple mobile interface for more detailed entries.

With the experience of supporting 1,500 sales organizations – and more than five years of development – my team and I believe that GPS is a truly groundbreaking solution for field sales and service professionals.

GPS is taking hold across sales teams in consumer packaged goods, pharmaceutical and medical sales, financial services, and field service organizations. Any sales professional or leader who must optimize every hour to maximize results – or anyone who cares where revenue is – should pay attention to GPS for enhanced sales performance.

For more information, download this complimentary e-book: Geo Productivity Software: A New Paradigm for Driving Field Sales Results.

Fueling the Sales Funnel: A Three-Step Guide to Inbound Sales Success

Today’s post is by David Fullen, managing director of North America at TIE Kinetix.

 

Everything in life runs on some form of “fuel.” Humans need food to survive, cars need gasoline to run, and bonfires need wood to burn strong.

The sales funnel is no different: without a steady stream of actionable leads, the funnel will eventually dry out.

A full sales funnel is especially important in today’s marketplace, as the Information Age has allowed customers to independently research a product or service of their own accord with more depth and accuracy than ever before. With inbound leads serving as the main driver of revenue for most sales teams, the sales funnel must be consistently filled at the top with a strong lead generation program.

This holds especially true for vendors selling through partners, as that is where a large percentage of revenue is derived. Having a filled and healthy indirect sales funnel is key to sales success.

So what can a company do to ensure it is not only driving new leads for their channel partners, but also helping convert them into sales? Read on to discover three steps you can take to accomplish just that.

1. Content, content, content 

Content has always been king, but, in today’s digital-first marketplace, it is increasingly important to create compelling, dynamic content across more channels than ever before. The type of content brands are creating has also evolved. It is not just about webinars and white papers – brands need to diversify their content programs to incorporate creative social and interactive content such as videos, infographics, shareable images, and so on. Companies that create high-quality marketing collateral – then distribute that content through channel partners to a wide range of viewers – will ultimately be the ones that generate the most inbound leads. With that said, high-quality content creation is just the beginning of a successful lead-gen program.

To ensure the best return on content investment, your messaging must be consistent across all partners and marketing platforms – easily shareable, timely, and aligned to the journey of the buyer. Even if your content is high quality, leads will not be generated if the content is disseminated at the wrong time, to the wrong audience, and with inconsistent brand messaging. One of the biggest challenges for vendors working with numerous resellers is to make sure the content does not get outdated, inconsistent, or corrupted during the journey. The distribution channels provided to partners also need to be well diversified. Email marketing, social media, events, and pay-per-click advertising should all be leveraged equally to ensure demand is consistently generated.

2. Optimize Lead Conversion

With a healthy content strategy established, the next step is to take those leads and convert them to sales in an efficient manner. An inefficient lead conversion program is every bit as detrimental to bottom-line revenue as an empty sales funnel, because it risks letting leads go cold and untouched for lengthy periods of time. Additionally, a manual lead conversion process only leaves you open to error – this is where CRM tools come in.

Using CRM to manage your leads and your partners’ leads is a crucial step in today’s marketplace, as the speed of the customer journey necessitates an automated process for managing high-volume leads on the fly. Having tools like a shopping cart or a sales resource center can not only help you close sales, it can allow you to focus on creating better content to generate more leads to fill the funnel. A shopping cart, for example, ensures that customers can buy directly from your partners’ Websites, close a deal immediately, or save potential purchases and keep shopping rather than abandon an item midway through browsing. Critical tools such as this ensure brands do not lose customers midway through the path to purchase.

3. Leverage Analytics Effectively

The final step in the process is a rather simple one, but it is also, unfortunately, the step many companies neglect – analytics. With today’s technology, there is simply no excuse for not having a rock-solid understanding of the in-depth metrics that drive your channel sales numbers. Metrics like demographic information, bounce rates, and conversion percentages are easily available from a wide range of analytics tools for partners of all sizes. If you do not accurately analyze your data, you cannot repeat what has worked – or improve upon what did not.

By giving you access to the who, what, where, why, and how many of your direct and indirect sales funnel, analytics tools can ultimately help you understand your leads and customers in a way that allows you to create more targeted content, which ultimately leads to more inbound requests and more bottom-line revenue for your business.

The formula to fueling your sales funnel can seem daunting in the digital era, but boils down to three key steps: align content to the buyer’s journey, deliver the right content at the right time through diverse channels, and automate that content. Do this successfully and you will be attracting and converting leads to dramatically improve your sales. Pair that with solid CRM and analytics tools and you will be able to repeat that process over and over again with minimal effort.

It's Time for Salespeople to View Social Media as the Telephone

Today’s post is by Mark Hunter, CSP, “The Sales Hunter.” Mark is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results and High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price.

 

Some people argue social media is the new way to prospect – and that the telephone is dead. Others argue that the telephone is still viable and there is no need to put too much emphasis on social media.

I’m tired of this bogus war pitting social media against the telephone. It’s time we start seeing both as allies. Sales is too big of a profession – with too much of an impact on the economy – to allow it to be side-tracked by petty arguments.

People on both sides of the argument are quick to throw out statistics that support their point of view and discredit the other. The problem I see is all of these stats are suspect, as nobody knows your exact selling situation. The only thing the statistics are good for is supporting what you want to believe.

Merging Social Media with Phone Calls

Let’s cut to the chase. It’s time we bring social media and the telephone together. My goal with social media is simple – take the online connections I develop from social media and move them to offline conversations on the telephone. If there’s a goal all of us should have, this is it.

Social media is valuable and, yes, you can call it “social selling,” but the goal is simple – allow it to become meaningful enough to warrant a telephone conversation. Social media is great for creating connections, building awareness, and even uncovering some needs, but I doubt I’ll ever close a significant sale by blasting out a message to thousands. Social media is a means to the end; it is not an end to the selling process, as some salespeople believe it to be.

Just as we take online connections and move them offline to the telephone, we can do the same thing in reverse to those contacts we first reach via the telephone. If I am talking on the phone with a prospect, my goal is to extend the conversation to social media. Marrying the two allows me to learn more about you and, depending on your use of social media, can provide me with a second communication channel.

Let’s not go looking to forgo the telephone. I’m always going to use it as the primary communication tool. The advantage of social media is it gives me a backup channel should you become unreachable via the telephone.

The Value of Alignment: More Sales Conversations

Too many salespeople fail to bring the two channels together. Whether it be a mentality of only selling via “new school” strategies that embrace social media – or the desire to stick with “old school” and solely using the telephone, it’s only going to do one thing: hurt your ability to close more sales.

When we align the two, we’ll be able to accelerate the selling process. We will be in a better position to have more conversations.

Another reason we need to align the two tools? It’s simple – not everyone uses both.  If I allow myself to use only the telephone to prospect, I run the risk of not being able to reach some prospects who simply will never respond to the phone. Conversely, if I rely solely on social media, I’ll miss a much bigger segment of the population that does not engage at a business level on social media. When we align both and become comfortable using both, we’ll increase significantly our ability to reach more prospects.

Social media becomes more valuable to us when we use it with the telephone in the same way a tool that has been around for years – the telephone – takes on even more value when used with social media. The two are in competition with each other, yes, but the only competition they’re in is to help you close more sales.

A Powerful (and Simple) Tool to Help You Manage Sales Territories

Today’s post is by David Mattson, a best-selling author, sales and management thought leader, keynote speaker, and leader for sales training seminars around the world. As CEO and president of Sandler Training, Mattson oversees the corporate direction and strategy for the company’s global operations, including sales, marketing, consulting, alliances, and support. Check out his book, The Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders: 49 Timeless Management Principles and How to Apply Them.

 

Salespeople (and their managers) often ask me to share a single tactic that is easy to understand, easy to implement, and can rapidly improve both team and individual performance. One great answer to this challenge is the KARE profiling system. This is a comparatively new Sandler tool that’s been generating a lot of positive responses from sales teams in many industries.

KARE profiling is a powerful strategy component in territory management. It tags each of your prospects and clients with one of four designations:

• “K” for current clients you want to keep.
• “A” for accounts you don’t have, but wish you could attain.
• “R” for customers you used to have and now would like to recapture.
• “E” for current accounts where you wish your “wallet share” could expand.

Simplicity is the key to the effectiveness of this system. The four categories can be complemented by any criteria relevant to the team and/or the market served. There are really only two additional principles to follow here:

1. Every “live” opportunity with whom you actually want to work has to go somewhere on this KARE model.
2. No opportunity can occupy two slots of the KARE quadrant. You have to pick one.

The four KARE designations allow sales teams to more effectively segment and prioritize their targets. They also provide a critical set of common terminologies about core selling objectives for both managers and salespeople. What’s more, they establish a much-needed base of understanding and clarity in team selling environments.

In addition, the KARE process serves as an invaluable sales management tool. Managers can work directly with individual team members to identify specific accounts that fit in each quadrant. They can then work with salespeople one on one, or in teams, to identify the strategies to be implemented in each of the quadrants.

If you wish, entire teams or territories can be structured using KARE as a base. One strategy might be to focus certain salespeople on particular profiles—for instance, with one group focused on A (Attain) accounts and another on E (Expand) accounts. Alternatively, the focus might be to blend – into each team or territory – a mix of all profiles in order to keep salespeople and teams nimble and capable of serving all profiles.

Regardless of such decisions about territory or team focus based on KARE, each member of the sales team should have a cookbook – a reliable, repeatable, written process – that lays out exactly how much time and what kind of activity should be spent in each quadrant he or she is responsible for developing. This ensures a well-rounded, focused, and balanced approach to territory management.

The key to making KARE a success is to make conscious choices. Following the path of least resistance – or investing time, effort, and energy in the activities and conversations that feel most familiar – is not in anyone’s best interest. The worst outcome would be for salespeople who are responsible for all four groups to focus 100 percent of their attention on, say, Keep – and nothing at all on Attain, Recapture, or Expand. Identify a target percentage of time to spend on each of the four KARE areas!

For more ideas on improving sales efficiency, see my book The Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders: 49 Timeless Management Principles and How to Apply Them.

Three Ways Salespeople at SAP Are Winning with Social Selling

Today’s post is by Michael Labate, Kirsten Boileau, and Phil Lurie, global co-leads of Social Selling at SAP.

 

SAP has trained more than 7,500 sales and marketing employees in social selling in order to leverage modern selling behaviors and tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Twitter, and Grapevine6 to generate leads, build pipeline, and win business. The results have been well worth the investment.

Social selling is required to stay competitive in a vastly changing world where people everywhere are connected digitally. There have been significant shifts in B2B buying behavior – social selling allows SAP marketers and sales executives to gain real-time insights of their buyers to help build trust and credibility at the moment customers begin their buying journey.

SAP’s Social Selling Journey

At SAP, social selling began with a pilot in 2012 – with 50 licenses of LinkedIn Sales Navigator – and has since grown to more than 15,000 licenses worldwide. People embraced social selling behaviors and best practices they acquired during training to

• Develop their personal brand
• Listen to their customers and prospects
• Find the right people
• Engage and share insights and relevant content
  

Here are three key ways we use social selling to win with customers at SAP.

#1: Listening

Listening to buyers allows our team to identify optimal engagement points so they can share the right content with the right person, at the right time, as well as join group buyers’ discussions. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is particularly helpful at the listening stage. For example, users can identify and follow leads and accounts; conduct enhanced account planning; and listen for opportunities to learn about problems buyers are facing.

#2: Engaging and Connecting

Starting with the initial connection point, marketing and sales executives engage buyers via social media, e.g., through an InMail on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, an introduction request, a connection request, or a direct message on Twitter, WeChat, or Xing.

Once connected, we leverage technologies to enhance the interaction: for example, by sending personalized videos (this could be a video business card introduction, a demo video of a solution, or a quick “thank you” video following a meeting).

The team’s social selling activity is further supplemented internally and externally by SAP’s Jam Social Collaboration tool, which allows employees to elicit sales expertise, serve up timely and relevant content to the customer, and provide a forum for two-way communication and customer engagement. Other social selling tools at SAP, such as Grapevine6, help transform the way marketing and sales teams share relevant, engaging, and educational content to help build credibility with their audience.

#3: Establishing Trust and Credibility

Social selling moves away from “waiting for the phone” to ring. Instead, our team now listens, learns, and engages with buyers in ways that build trust and credibility much earlier in the buying journey.

Results: A Big Increase in Pipeline and Revenue

After launching social selling, researching and mapping accounts became much more efficient while pipeline lifted, particularly for those account executives with higher Social Selling Index (SSI) scores. By 2015, one of our selling pilots (of a team trained on the new social selling behaviors and how to apply those behaviors to LinkedIn Sales Navigator) had resulted in 700% more pipeline than a team not given the same training on social selling behaviors.

Because we set up a thorough reporting system to track the link between social selling behaviors and pipeline, we know that SAP’s global social selling program was associated with over a billion euros in pipeline by the end of 2016.

Ensuring Success

At SAP success means a top-down and bottom-up adoption of our social selling program, retention through recognition and rewards, as well as integration of appropriate performance tracking. Through our global communication channels, we promote the social selling philosophy at SAP – attracting thousands of attendees to our periodic “Social Selling All Hands” calls where experts share tips and tricks and regional leads celebrate success. In 2017 we’re putting key indices in place across the globe to help people benchmark their social selling performance and impact, and we look forward to seeing increased benefits from our investment in social selling.

To learn more about how social selling plays a big role in sales enablement at SAP, connect with Michael, Kirsten, and Phil on LinkedIn.