Selling Power Blog

Has Social Media Changed Sales Management? Not Really.

Today’s post is by Jason Jordan, a founding partner of Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm focused on training sales reps and sales managers. Jason is a recognized thought leader in the domain of business-to-business sales and co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code.

 

I sometimes do random things. Occasionally I’ll take my wife’s dog for a hike on the nearby mountain trails (which buys me goodwill with both the dog and wife). Now and then I’ll buy my daughter sushi from the gourmet deli (though she rarely eats it). I just bought a bunch of vintage t-shirts of 1980s rock bands (though I’m not sure where I can wear them). And, recently, I decided to investigate the impact of social media on sales management.

I awoke one morning with random, obsessive thoughts about social media. Actually, it was more of a random insecurity. At Vantage Point, we’ve spent the past decade trying to elevate the performance of frontline sales management. In all that time, I’d never really thought about social media’s influence on this role, even as “social selling” became a buzzword that I myself toss about (recall my penchant for random behavior). Had I somehow missed a meaningful innovation in sales management that was right in front of me? Had I not registered a change in management behavior because it wasn’t happening – or because I wasn’t paying attention?

That morning I decided to conduct some informal “research” into the issue. I searched our newsletter database and selected 5,000 sales managers…at random. I sent each of them a brief email asking only two questions:

1. Has social media had an impact on your role as a sales manager?
2. If so, how?

Informal as it was, my little research project served to greatly reduce my personal anxiety.

Foremost, a relatively low percentage of the sales managers even bothered to respond to my email – lower than we would expect for such a communication. To me this signaled that social media wasn’t an intensely hot topic for them; otherwise, it would have generated greater excitement.

More surprisingly, almost exactly half of the active respondents replied no to my first question. Given the pervasiveness of social media and its buzz in the sales blogosphere, I had been expecting to receive an avalanche of fervent yeses. Didn’t happen. Apparently, the wave of “social selling” has left most sales managers unaffected.

Then there was the half of the respondents who replied yes. In almost every case, the sales managers declared that social media had changed their role by enabling them to conduct research on their prospects, prepare for upcoming sales calls, stay up to date on customer news, or network to uncover new leads. In other words, social media had changed the way these sales managers sold, not the way they managed. Interesting.

The only legitimate sales management function that seemed to be improved by social media was recruiting and hiring new salespeople. For that purpose, social media is invaluable. LinkedIn is a free, real-time database of every salesperson in the world who has access to the Internet. Twitter and Instagram are windows into the personal lives (and indiscretions) of nearly as many people. For researching and recruiting your next team member, these are gifts of technology.

But only a small minority of managers cited this function – around 10 percent of the already small group of respondents. No one claimed that social media had made them a better sales coach. Or helped them build healthier sales pipelines. Or helped them create more accurate sales forecasts. Whatever you consider to be the central responsibilities of your sales management roles, social media appears to be a bit player in their lives.

In fairness to social media, I’ve seen several social media applications that could surely help with each of these legitimate management functions. And, as CRM and social media platforms become more integrated, emerging functionality will provide sales coaches with new insights into salesperson behaviors and performance. The social media story is still unfolding for sales managers, but we’re not there yet.

As it stands now, if your sales managers moonlight as sellers, then social media can help them manage their customer relationships more fully. But, if your sales managers actually manage, then social media is probably relegated to just a small corner of their desktops or mobile phones. My informal investigation revealed that its presence at the sales management level is tangential, and its impact to-date has been minimal – at least according to 5,000 random sales managers who received an unexpected email from me on a day I chose to do another random thing.

How to Use AI to Find Sales Talent and Motivate Teams

Today’s post is by Fabio Ronga, CEO of beqom. He drives the company strategy and makes sure everyone understands it and is equipped to contribute to it.

 

Next-generational tools are making it easier for businesses to hire and retain salespeople and motivate sales teams. Here are some ways sales managers can leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to create, keep, and incentivize teams to close the sale.

#1: Earn their trust.

To recruit and retain top talent, you need to make sure employees know they’re fairly compensated for their work. Sales managers can leverage AI-driven data to benchmark compensation, identify flight-risk employees, and personalize bonuses and rewards based on an individual’s key motivators – whether cash bonuses or additional vacation time – without having to rely on “gut instinct.”

For example, sales managers 10 years ago might have responded to an employee’s resignation notice with a counter-offer. Today, by using AI and predictive analytics, employers can identify “flight risks” – before they become unhappy employees – based on a variety of factors (a dip in performance, low engagement, frequent tardiness or absenteeism) and take actionable steps to modify those behaviors with incentives such as a bonus, work-from-home benefits, or more vacation time.

Using AI-driven compensation technology can mitigate the risk of employee turnover, which costs businesses as much as 33 percent of a worker’s annual salary to replace them.

#2: Eliminate unconscious bias.  

Sales managers can take the guesswork out of rewards, bonuses, and compensation by leveraging AI to create fair and accurate compensation strategies based on education, experience, certifications, and more (but not age or gender).

This is not only key to retaining top talent, but significant when you consider how biases have defined and perpetuated career-debilitating constructs like the gender pay gap. The fact is, employee performance is inextricably linked to a company’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and transparency – with reports showing that the combination of employee engagement and gender diversity resulted in 46 to 58 percent higher financial performance for business units above the median on both engagement and gender diversity.

Finally, when it comes to employee satisfaction and retention, younger generations expect their employers to take a firm stance on issues like diversity and pay equity: Among workers ages 18 to 35, 75 percent expect employers to take a stand on equal rights, climate change, immigration, and constitutional rights.  

#3: Boost engagement.

This final step – motivation and engagement through incentivization – is pivotal to accurately reward the sales talent that managers have worked so hard to win. Business leaders and sales managers alike can improve the employee compensation experience – and, ultimately, boost engagement – by applying AI-driven tools like self-service payroll chatbots and natural language processing.

These tools are helpful in various scenarios – from empowering employees to gain a full understanding of how their sales performance impacts their salary, to enabling employees to receive compensation-related answers in real time, to improving HR responsiveness and reducing support costs. For sales teams specifically, this technology can also lead to optimized territory and quota allocations to maximize sales performance.

Providing employees with the tools and transparency to understand how their work is being compensated will not only motivate them to boost performance, but will also help solidify their loyalty to your company.

Improved sales performance is the result of a happier, more motivated, and aligned sales force. These core tenets – trust and transparency, investing in the issues that matter to employees, and fair rewards for hard-earned work – are key to keeping your salespeople motivated and dedicated employees for the long haul.

When Considering Sales Training, Think like a Judge

Today’s post is by Eric Esfahanian, chief revenue officer of Gryphon Networks.

 

Sales training is always one of the first things managers look to for increasing performance. But the number one reason managers are reluctant to invest in training is because they know that – four or five weeks after the trainer walks out of their classroom – salespeople go back to old habits. Studies show almost 80 percent of the value of training is lost within 90 days of its conclusion.

It is no longer enough to conduct sales training to establish the process framework for salespeople. To achieve optimal sales effectiveness, you must use the “rule of three”: technology and sales coaching in addition to training will work together to make training actually valuable in the long term and drive results.

Sales Coach or Judge?

Let’s first look at the impact of good sales coaching. According to the AA-ISP, managers spend less than 20 percent of their time on coaching – even though Selling Power reports effective sales coaching can improve win rates by as much as 25 percent.

The stats are in on the importance of establishing process and supporting them with coaching:

• Almost 75 percent of sales organizations waste resources (CSO Insights, 2014) due to random and informal coaching approaches. Only one-quarter leverage a formal and dynamic coaching process.
• Overall quota attainment for companies with informal coaching processes is 84.7 percent – while companies that have implemented a formal coaching process see 91.2 percent of overall quota attainment (CSO Insights, 2014).

Sales coaching is all about interpretation. Interpreting the processes is no different from a judge interpreting the law and individual behaviors/motivations to take impartial and decisive action.

The Sales “Justice System”

Which brings us back to training. Though not training or coaching is never an option, it must be augmented with technology that enforces the learned principles and processes every day automatically.  

To establish a sales management program that is sustainable, your training, coaching, and technology-driven accountability system needs to work like the American judicial system.  

Sales training is the “rules and regulations.” Technology – specifically, call activity tracking and attainment tools – should act as the daily “enforcement” of the team’s rules. What good is the law if there are no police to enforce the law? Finally, sales coaching makes a manager the “judge” to analyze and interpret both the law as well as behaviors and motivations of the people (your reps).  

All three are essential, and none can exist without the others. Coaching and training without technology makes as little sense as creating laws but having no police to enforce them – and having no ability to interpret or put them into context.

Good training programs set the foundation of activity. Technology ensures the principles from training are maintained on a day-to-day basis. Sales coaching will verify and optimize training principles for real-world selling in context.  

When working together as an integrated system, you will not only improve effectiveness, but establish a blueprint for continuous improvement that is proven and measurable in any situation.

Visit Gryphon at https://gryphonnetworks.com.

Three Mistakes That Can Sabotage Your Sales Process

Today’s post is by Eric Morse, CEO and founder of Sales Result, Inc. (SRi), a boutique sales consulting firm. With a passion for sales, Eric has been a “change agent” delivering real sales results for his clients.

 

So, you’ve established a sales process – congratulations! But is it actually getting successful results?

We recently worked with a company where the leadership team was convinced it had the right sales process. Before finalizing the process, the company leaders held several meetings with the sales team to brainstorm, gather feedback, and gain buy-in that the sales process made sense for the company.

They were shocked to find out that, even after all the meetings, each sales rep was using his or her own version of the sales process. Further, everyone had different ideas about who was responsible for what, and the activities reps chose to focus on didn’t move leads forward through the sales process. The result? Poor forecasting, no predictability, and high loss rates.

Sales process missteps like these are not uncommon. At Sales Result, we find that addressing the following three mistakes can lead to a repeatable, winning sales process.

Mistake #1: Not mapping the sales process to the buyer’s journey.

Today, any good sales process needs to map to the customer’s buying journey. According to Forrester, “62% [of B2B buyers] say they can now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content.” Therefore, when outlining your sales process, involve the marketing department to ensure the front end of the buyer’s journey is effectively addressed. Also, hold regular sales and marketing meetings to ensure the two departments are working in cohesion.

Likewise, it’s important to re-evaluate the sales focus to make sure reps are adding strategic business value to prospects. Otherwise, sales reps risk boring prospects by regurgitating information prospects already know.

Mistake #2: Skipping steps or key activities within sales process stages.

No sales process should miss key activities and steps that move sales forward. If it does, sales reps are likely to get stuck or waste time on activities that don’t have significant impact in driving leads to close.

To ensure your sales process includes the right activities and steps, analyze the existing customer’s buying journey. Think about the following questions:

• What problems was the buyer trying to solve? Why did they consider you? Why now?
• What kind of questions did the sales rep ask that lead to a good conversation?
• What did the sales rep say that the buyers responded well to?
• What activities or collateral helped move the lead through the sales process?

Once you’ve identified the activities that moved previous sales to close, clearly explain and define them in your sales process. To keep all sales reps accountable for performing each activity, tie KPIs to these activities and periodically listen to calls and go on ride-alongs to make sure sales reps are following the process.

Mistake #3: Lack of training on steps, activities, and tools in the sales process.

Even if the sales process is perfectly mapped to the buyer’s journey and is focused on the right activities, consistent results are unlikely if sales reps are not trained and enabled to properly execute each step and activity.

Conducting regular training sessions and developing sales tools and relevant marketing collateral will be important to enable the sales team. Start by identifying key skill gaps to lead training around and develop sales tools and frameworks that would make it easier to perform key activities.

Many of our clients find that sales playbooks that define what you sell, who you sell to, and how you sell it mapped to the sales process help reps become more effective at moving the sale forward and closing deals.

Conclusion: The Benefits of a Great Sales Process

By eliminating these mistakes, sales organizations can expect to increase their forecasting accuracy, regain connection with prospects, and repeatedly beat the competition. However, the sales process is only one of 12 key elements we’ve identified as critical to building successful sales organizations. To find out what these elements are, download our free eBook, The 12 Elements of a Winning Sales Foundation.  

The Most Frustrating Leadership Challenge: Change

Today’s post is by Jeff Seeley, CEO of sales training company Carew International, Inc., and a popular keynote and motivational speaker. Find him on Twitter @jeffreybseeley and on LinkedIn.

 

I recently saw a McKinsey blog on changing mindsets and behavior, one “nudge” at a time, and it got me thinking about the level of reluctance to trying new things and strategies in the field of professional sales.

Change and the Power of Habit

I have had the privilege of working with Gerhard Gschwandtner on Peak Performance Mindset™ and examining how the power of negativity and habit have created cultures of underperformance. Old habits die hard – especially when we reinforce those old habits ourselves.

The McKinsey article notes an example of having someone hold a warm mug to make the person you are interacting with friendlier. I think of the television show, The Big Bang Theory, and the quirky, emotionally-challenged, and insensitive Sheldon, who always offers someone a hot beverage when they are in distress. Little did I understand that I was getting a basic psychology lesson from a sitcom.

As we assimilate this to leadership in sales, it is clear that leaders are in a constant struggle to promote and facilitate among their teams an endless parade of process and mindset changes: CRM engagement, new products and services, shifting strategic objectives (market share vs. profitability), competitive environment, desired sales role (trusted advisor vs. challenger vs. consultative), optimizing team dynamics, improved sales strategies, pipeline management, prospecting, social selling, etc., etc.

What’s the Best Coaching Strategy to Tackle Change?

Is a constructive “nudging” coaching strategy to change behavior feasible when the challenge of adaptation is so formidable? First, the list of changes coming at our sales team is exhaustive and never ending. Second, from a sales team member’s perspective of, “doing as I have always done is easier,” maybe the proposed changes don’t seem all that compelling.

I believe the answer for leaders is to resist loading all these initiatives on our sales teams at once and, instead, decide which single thing is most important and might also relate to other initiatives and facilitate other positive changes.

For example, finding one aspect of the CRM that is valuable to a sales professional and encouraging its use may then lead to additional CRM adaptation – pipeline creation or improved management. Incremental nudging will facilitate change over time.

Each small item or benefit you identify can change the team mindset to one of positivity and openness. If changing one small behavior results in one benefit realized, the recognition of positive change begins to build upon itself to create an anticipation of positive changes. Most importantly, individual changes accumulate and lead to significant and sweeping change.

Conclusion: Take Change One Step at a Time

Sales leaders can’t expect to change their sales teams’ entire situation at once (and that is so often the expectation), but we can change one behavior – and build on that to create a culture that embraces change and development.

How to Crush These Five Stubborn Barriers to Setting High-value Meetings

Today’s post is by Deidre Moore, director of demand generation at TimeTrade, where she devises new ways to save the world from bad meetings while making the process for setting appointments easier and more productive for all.

 

What exactly is a “high-value” meeting?

For many sales professionals, this label is most commonly defined by the size and strategic value of the company involved, while others will focus on the titles and roles of the people attending – specifically C-level decision makers.  

While both definitions are valid, I’d like to suggest another definition: A high-value meeting is any meeting that moves a deal or a relationship forward – and ideally accelerates it – regardless of the company or the roles of the people involved.

How do we overcome the barriers to setting more of these high-value meetings? Try these five tips.

Barrier #1: Not getting past gatekeepers.

The gatekeeper’s job is to protect the boss’s calendar. In this case, politeness and empathy can go a long way: Acknowledge the gatekeeper is simply doing his or her job, and ask for some friendly guidance on the best way to reach the boss.

Another option is to be direct: “I’m calling for [Name], please. I’ll hold.” At that point, the gatekeeper may just put you through.

You can also simply try other channels, including email and social engagement, to connect. Sometimes the best way to get around gatekeepers is to do just that: go around them.  

Barrier #2: Asking for too much, too soon.  

Salespeople often create unnecessary barriers to setting high-value meetings by asking for too much, too soon.

If a prospect has just downloaded an eBook from your Website, for example, don’t immediately ask for a meeting. Instead, create value. For example, you could quickly follow up with a “thank you” email in which you acknowledge his or her busy schedule and summarize some of the key takeaways from the eBook to save time. Once a dialogue has been started, now you have permission to ask more questions, uncover needs, and, ideally, get the meeting.

Barrier #3: Not understanding the other party’s role, persona, or priorities.  

Reps today must be problem solvers, not pitch machines. The best way to solve problems is to understand the motivations, requirements, and priorities of the prospect – and place those first above those of the salesperson.  

Once those dynamics are well understood, it’s about tailoring your solution’s features and benefits to address that prospect’s specific concerns. For example, ease of use is a benefit that may be extremely important to an everyday end user; but, if you’re C-level executive, your bigger concerns are likely focused on team productivity and efficiency, shortening the sales cycle, and ROI.

Here are three quick questions that can help you get into the mindset of the buyer and frame a more compelling conversation: 

1. “Why buy anything?”
2. “Why buy your solution?”
3. “Why buy now?”

If you can answer these questions, and tailor your messages accordingly, you’re much more likely to get the appointment.

Barrier #4: Not having clear, shared goals for the meeting.

A clear, shared set of meeting goals helps both salespeople and prospects understand, “What’s in it for me?” Be explicit about your specific objectives for the meeting, and get agreement on the agenda and desired outcomes in advance.

For example, you can say, “Ms. Customer, during the meeting our goal is to show you our solution in action. During that demo, we also want to ensure this is applicable to your business and addresses your specific requirements, which I understand to be [X]. Did I get those right?”

The best reps use sales demos as an active part of their discovery process, which, in turn, helps create a dialogue that leads to more – and more successful – meetings down the road.

Barrier #5: Making it too difficult to request or schedule a meeting at a specific point of need.

Make it as easy as possible for prospects to meet with you. B2B buying is an increasingly complex process, and often involves multiple stakeholders. This forces reps to spend hours each week just managing calendars. Solutions like TimeTrade give each of these stakeholders the power to engage proactively, on their timeline, with real-time access to view your availability and book an appointment – complete with virtual conferencing details. Many of our customers have even taken the step to replace the Request a Demo or Contact Us forms on their Website with a Click-to-Schedule link, speeding the cycle from inbound request to confirmed meeting with impressive results.

Get the Meeting, Get the Sale

It’s no secret that, if you can’t get the meeting, you can’t get the sale. And, in a SaaS-dominated world, if you can’t also keep customers engaged, happy, and connected to your brand for their entire lifecycle, then you can’t sustain that relationship – and the associated revenue – and build loyalty for the long term. While it’s critical to get those all-important first meetings, the reality is that a healthy customer relationship is about all the meetings, both pre- and post-sale. Use these tips to make sure you secure more high-value meetings so you can win more deals.

Interested in how other sales innovators are overcoming these barriers and setting more high-value meetings? Check out our Resource Library, or schedule your own appointment to learn more.

Your Chance to Win a Sales Video Award

Do you know salespeople who are currently using video to increase their sales? If so, we want to know about it.

Here’s a golden opportunity to (maybe) win a prize while (definitely) raising awareness about the power of video to engage prospects and customers – and inspire your fellow salespeople in the process! Selling Power, BombBomb, and the Sales 3.0 Conference are officially teaming up to find the most compelling video success stories. We will honor the winning entries at the Sales 3.0 Conference on October 25 and 26 in Las Vegas.

Here’s how the contest works. The awards team will select three finalists in each of the five categories outlined below. All 15 finalists will win:

• A free ticket for the Sales 3.0 Conference in Las Vegas (valued at $995)
• 50 percent off a second ticket to the Sales 3.0 Conference in Las Vegas
• Recognition in person at the Sales 3.0 Conference, in front of hundreds of B2B sales leaders and industry experts

Make your nomination for the 2018 Sales Video Awards here. Yes, you can nominate more than one video. And, yes, you can nominate your own video. The video can be used in any channel – YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BombBomb, your Website, or anywhere else. We just need a link to it; or, you can put the file in a Dropbox or Google Drive and share that link.

Whether it’s a simple Webcam or smartphone video or it’s a scripted, produced, and edited video, the 15 finalists will be named based on measurable results and outcomes.

Here’s a helpful contest timeline:

• September 21: Nomination period ends
• September 7-25: Judging period
• September 25-26: Finalists contacted and invited to Sales 3.0 Conference
• October 25-26: Winners announced live at Sales 3.0 Conference

2018 Sales Video Awards: Categories

We’re seeking nominations of videos that match up reasonably well with the following categories.

Category #1: Prospecting, Branding, or Personal Pitch

What we want to see: Videos that have helped salespeople create opportunities, differentiate from competitors, and gain traction on cold calls.

Category #2: Appointment Setting and/or Follow-up

What we want to see: Videos that have helped salespeople move opportunities forward and warm up their leads.

Category #3: Customer Education and Information Sharing

What we want to see: Videos of demos, features, releases, updates, and proofs of concept.

Category #4: Building Relationships

What we want to see: Videos that help you strengthen connections or stay in touch with prospects or customers, including thank-yous, birthday wishes, professional anniversaries, or commemorations of special occasions.

Category #5: Internal Training, Motivation, and Culture

What we want to see: Videos that feature product/program/package introductions, recruiting and onboarding insights, educational messages for an internal audience, or messages of personal recognition/empowerment.

To nominate a video, go to https://info.bombbomb.com/salesvideoawards.

How to Hire and Retain Your Best Salespeople

Today’s post is by Ben Gold, president of QuickBridge.

 

 

Hiring the right employees is central to the success of a business. Regardless of products or service features and benefits, without the right team, your growth will not be maximized. But remember: Hiring always presents a degree of risk. When the goal is hiring a sales representative, the stakes are especially high.

Challenges Hiring Top Sales Talent

When it comes to hiring the right employees, especially salespeople, it can be extremely challenging – particularly for small business, which make up more than 99.5 percent of employer firms in the U.S., according to the Small Business Administration.

There are several industries that require and benefit from a strong sales team, including real estate broker agencies, advertising firms, and manufacturing companies. Salespeople are hired to help a business grow by increasing its sales and revenue. Unfortunately, hiring any good employee is becoming exceedingly difficult. According to business owners polled by CareerBuilder, the typical job opening in 2017 remained unfilled for 12 weeks or longer. The reason? They were unable to find the right person.

Even when businesses find and hire high-performing salespeople, there’s no guarantee they will stay on board. According to a recent report from the ADP Research Institute, an average of 5 percent of workers leave their jobs within a given month. So how can you hire the right salespeople and retain them? Consider the tips below.

Tip #1: Identify important traits.  

Minimize turnover and increase employee productivity by hiring salespeople with the right traits. Sales departments need employees who possess good oral and written communication skills – which help them effectively handle meetings, phone calls, and emails with current and potential customers. The best salespeople believe in their company’s products and services and are passionate and determined. A great salesperson can connect with a wide range of personalities and is aware of your customers’ needs and objectives.

Tip #2: Assess their past sales performance or experience.

Unless you are hiring someone with no prior sales experience, focus on their previous sales performance. Look for indications that the candidate excels at what he or she does, as evidenced by awards, certificates, or honorary titles. While previous industry experience is usually a requirement, it’s important to determine what kind of experience is relevant to the role for which you are hiring. Hiring good salespeople requires certainty that the person you are hiring can fulfill the requirements of the specific sales role in question. 

Tip #3: Boost engagement and motivation.  

Once you have established your strategy for hiring good salespeople, plan to keep new employees motivated to increase retention. According to a poll by Robert Half, the average full-time employee disengages for roughly two hours during the typical workday. How can you keep your sales employees engaged and motivated? Benefits are big. Nearly 40 percent of respondents pointed to perks – such as food or on-site exercise amenities – as motivational sources. Other ways to encourage employees include offering positive reinforcements and financial incentives.

Tip #4: Help new salespeople achieve their goals.  

Clear and attainable goals allow your sales employees to strive for greatness and measure their progress along the way. Encourage your salespeople with support and incentives. Keep in mind, though: Your idea of progress and that of your employees may be different. Take note of what your employees do well, where they have shown growth, and what their end goals are – which may be to maintain their current positions. In other words, if they are content in their current roles and performing well, don’t assume they’d like to develop into a position that carries more responsibility, such as management.

Hiring good salespeople is just the first step. Retention efforts are just as vital, so ensure you have the necessary cash flow to make payroll on time – or select the company benefit packages your employees want.

Four Ways to Get Video Right for Social Selling

Today’s post is by Matt Singer, CEO of Videolicious, the leading employee video creation solution that leverages patented, automatic video editing technology to make business-quality video creation possible for every employee. Prior to Videolicious, Singer sold hundreds of thousands of products through the TV shopping channel QVC.

 

When LinkedIn revealed that video posts now get three times the engagement of text posts on their platform, it sent shockwaves through the social selling community. Knowing that video provides such a significant engagement advantage means creating more video – and creating video with the best possible quality – is critical to making social selling initiatives effective.

In hindsight, it makes sense: If part of the goal of social selling is building the brand of your reps and helping them forge more personal connections online, how could someone truly get to know your reps simply by reading the articles they post or the text comments they make?

Video showcasing your sales team’s voice, emotional energy, domain intelligence, and passion enables prospective customers to emotionally connect in the same way they might in person at a conference or on-site pitch.

Here are four strategies for making the most of the tremendous opportunity of video social selling.

#1: Choose video topics that showcase your reps’ consultative selling chops.

The most successful salespeople can provide value throughout a sales process by not just selling, but also educating customers on how to understand a product’s positioning in a space, the value created, and how to deploy. Thus, when it comes to picking topics for social selling videos that are either shared to the general feed or via an InMail, every rep can either draw upon their own high-level experience advising customers or they can pull from messaging developed by marketing.

Given the complexity of many B2B products, reps can share a variety of learnings, topical analysis of impact, different use case education, and value stories. The goal here is not a direct pitch but an offer to educate based on the specialized expertise your reps have developed. Reps who can master this type of video creation can signal to prospects that engaging with them will be valuable, informative, and worth their time – which is a priceless competitive advantage.

#2: Leverage product marketing footage wherever possible.

The early days of LinkedIn video featured clip after clip of just raw shots of reps’ faces for minutes on end. No video with any professional level of quality showcases a single shot of anyone’s face – it’s simply too raw and monotonous to be visually engaging.

Fortunately, most companies today professionally produce video on a one-to-many basis for their marketing campaigns. These videos feature product demos, screen flows, and value proposition representations (e.g., people in a room working efficiently and happily together for HCM products). These are high-value assets that should be incorporated into social selling videos whenever possible. Companies spend tens of thousands – or even hundreds of thousands – of dollars creating this content. LinkedIn is a great forum to personalize it with a rep’s consultative presentation, using the product marketing footage as “b-roll” (overlaid on top of the shot of the rep to highlight and illustrate concepts in key moments).

#3: Personability is the key opportunity of the video format.

Video’s unmatched power is to give people the chance to experience a rep’s persona prior to engaging. That means it’s incredibly important for the salesperson to come across as personable and likeable on camera.

Many sales professionals are likeable by trade, but the camera can cause people to freeze up with fear. Thus, training reps to develop their on-camera presentation can pay big dividends. It’s not rocket science, but it is a specialized technique just like acting or public speaking. Locking eyes with the lens; smiling at the camera; thinking happy, warm, high-energy thoughts during delivery – these are some of the tricks of the trade that make videos showcases of great personalities.

Being nervous on camera can make the rep appear disengaged, which can be disastrous for social selling. This is the blessing and the curse of video: It shows people’s true colors, but this facet is not any different from handling an in-person sales pitch successfully – the skill is well within reach of any professional salesperson.

#4: Go broad and targeted with videos in the feed and InMails.

There are two main channels for video in social selling – videos for the feed that build a salesperson’s brand, and videos for one-to-one engagement for LinkedIn messaging or InMails. Both can pay dividends in social selling.

While feed videos can amplify a company’s positioning, domain expertise, and thought leadership, the one-to-one videos allow reps to demonstrate their specific understanding of the challenges prospects face. It’s very hard to write a short InMail message that proves a rep’s understanding of a prospect’s business and explains how their company can help. But a video can give a salesperson the right amount of time to show they understand the prospect’s products, market, and challenges.

The key is to still reduce that elevator pitch video into 90 seconds or less for optimal engagement while maximizing all the components above – the consultative chops, product marketing footage, and personability. Get this combination right and the 3x engaging that video can bring will pay off with higher response rates, more meetings, and more closed deals.

Why Cloning Your Sales Superstars Is a Big Mistake

Today’s post is by Tracey Wik, president and managing director of GrowthPlay’s talent and organization effectiveness practice. Hear Tracey present “Secrets to Scaling Your Sales Force,” at the Sales 3.0 Conference in Las Vegas on October 25-26.

 

“Janet is my best seller and, if I had an entire team filled with people like her, I’d be sitting on a beach with an umbrella drink in my hand. If I’m going to scale this business, I just need you to help me find more people like Janet.”

This is what my client, a sales executive at a global medical device company, told me at our first meeting. We were working with her to redesign her sales organization and create tools for her sales managers. If things continued business-as-usual, she was most likely going to miss her targets. My client’s solution? “Interview Janet. Take what she says and turn it into a playbook everyone can use.”

I wish I could tell you this was the first time a client was focusing on cloning a sales superstar. I hear a version of this statement far too often. Conventional wisdom says that the shortest pathway to scaling a sales organization is to do the following:

1. Study the selling techniques of your “A” players (i.e., top 20 percent)
2. Identify the techniques they use to persuade customers to buy
3. Train the rest of the sales force to use those winning techniques

In reality, this is a terrible plan. Here’s why.

Sales Superstars Often Exhaust Resources

Most sales execs recognize that their top reps are expert at bending and stretching their companies’ processes to take care of customers…and, as a result, they are often difficult to manage. So, in reality, sales managers are paying the sales superstars twice: once in allowing them greater resources than the others, and then again with much higher compensation when they consume the resources necessary to win sales.

In fact, you’re probably familiar with the management challenges posed by sales superstars. There’s the top seller who carelessly advises other, less skilled reps to get on the phone with clients too early in the sales cycle. The superstar who somehow manages to have four customer-support individuals (who are supposed to share work among the entire sales force) working only on his projects. The leaderboard-winner who closes huge deals on a handshake and no specific plan for how to accomplish the work – leaving others to “figure out the details.”

Why It Makes Better Sense to Invest in Your Middle Performers

You’ll get much better results if, instead of trying to get everyone to act like your number one sales star, you invest in your mid-range performers. Think about it. If you actually managed to train your mid-range performers to do what your top seller is doing to be successful, you’d have to massively increase the number of support personnel, thereby adding to the cost of sales!

If you want to improve sales performance by leaning on mid-range performers, I recommend this three-step approach:

1. Understand the market you are in or want to target. Investigate what those customers value and how they make purchasing decisions.
   
   
2. Build a go-to-market strategy that includes matching seller roles, activities, and behaviors to specific customer segments.
   
   
3. Organize those activities to create your company’s own specific sales process. Spell out the critical activities that advance sales and close deals – and that you want everyone to replicate.

Once you have the above framework in place, you can decide what your middle performers need to learn to increase their sales.

Don’t fall for the fatal flaw in the logic behind cloning. Chances are that it won’t work in the first place – and you might regret it even if it does.