Mon, 12 June 2023
It’s never been more important to make the most of your outbound leads. Hopefully you already have a clear ICP and you personalize your outreach, but how do you turn your hard work into measurable results? In this episode, your host Donald Kelly and guest Ari Brinson get into a great conversation about how Brinson’s team was able to boost meeting numbers through effective personalization. Boosting Conversion Rates for Outbound Leads
Show Me You Know Me (Sam McKenna method)
Tips for Adding Personalization that Works
“Now, more than ever, the economic environment that we’re in is exposing that a lot of times [sales] is a long-term play, not a short-term play. And with quality in and outbound [leads], I think those complement each other rather than are inverses of each other.” – Ari Brinson Resources Sponsorship Offers 1. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Fri, 9 June 2023
It’s time to start seeking the wisdom of our industry leaders to build pipeline. In this episode, your host Donald Kelly talks with Radhika Shukla about her years of experience bringing teams to success in sales. Her approach is equal parts methodical, data-driven, and human-centric. Listen in as she shares the proven methods she uses with her team to find new leads and convert them into happy repeat customers. Start the Planning Process Early
7-Step Method for Lead Qualifying
Prospecting to Triple Your Pipeline
“You have to focus on understanding your target market, your industry trends, the complete scenario. It’s very important to understand your customer’s business, but also the customer’s customer – how they go to market and how they sell their products and services to their customers. That deep understanding, often people miss.” – Radhika Shukla Resources Sponsorship Offers
Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
2. These deeper insights empower sales reps and teams to adopt the habits of top performers, which leads to better outcomes - like more pipelines, higher win rates, and larger deals. 3. We call this Deep Sales. And we’ve built the first deep sales platform with the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse. 2. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Mon, 5 June 2023
Salespeople and leaders alike have access to great tech to simplify and streamline their processes. Tech, however, isn’t everything – if a seller isn’t spending much time selling, they’re still not going to hit quotas. In this episode, your host Donald Kelly talks with Tiffani Bova about shaping the employee experience to drive success. The Connection Between Employees and Growth
The Employee Journey
Getting Promoted vs. Showing Leadership
“We do not have a technology problem. We have a people and process problem.” – Tiffani Bova Resources The Experience Mindset by Tiffani Bova on Amazon https://www.tiffanibova.com/experiencemindset/ Sponsorship Offers 1. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Fri, 2 June 2023
Whether you’re tired of receiving the same “pitches” all over LinkedIn or you’re a self-professed introvert like our guest Ben Lai, you know there’s a way to use LinkedIn to sell without selling out. Today on the Sales Evangelist podcast, Ben and host Donald Kelly tackle bringing humanity back to social media. Connection Requests: Being Other-Centric
Meeting Requests: Personal AND Commercial
Follow Up:
“If you’re out there to genuinely help people, you’re going to come across that way in the wording and in all of your mannerisms, whereas someone who is annoyingly persistent is predominantly self-centric. They’re only thinking about closing the sale.” – Ben Lai Resources SalesEthos.au - individual or team sales coaching Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Mon, 29 May 2023
Quick Social Selling Hacks You Can Mimic to Start Conversations with Your Next Three Clients | Tony Restell - 1673
Social selling can be successful IF you know where to start. Many sellers waste time chasing celebrity status thinking that’s the only way to generate leads, not knowing there are options that can consistently get them to their sales targets. In today’s episode of the Sales Evangelist podcast, Donald Kelly talks with Tony Restell, the founder of Social-Hire, one of the leading social media marketing agencies in the UK. They discuss how to reach out to your target audience and convert that audience into opportunities. Two Roads to Success for B2B Social Sellers
Writing Effective Connection Requests
How to Convert Your Audience into Opportunities
“What we like to focus on is much more predictable and scalable [than attempting to be a LinkedIn celebrity], and it comes down to the consistency of effort. I guess that comes from my door-to-door sales background many years ago, where it was drilled into us that it’s all about the numbers and it’s all about improving your conversion rates between the numbers. If you do enough of the right things and you improve over time, you’re going to get a known outcome from that. And LinkedIn is no different for sales professionals.” – Tony Restell Resources Social-Hire.com – book a consultation call! Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Fri, 26 May 2023
Why Automation is Key in Giving Revenue Teams a Crucial Edge Over Competitors | Kate Ahlering - 1672
When faced with new challenges, your ability to adapt will determine whether you succeed. In the past 12-18 months, the market has undergone a massive shift. In today’s episode, you’re going to get the facts you need to respond. Your host Donald Kelly sits down with Kate Ahlering (CRO at Calendly) to talk about how automation can save you time and energy so you can apply your focus to the moments that matter. Challenges In the Current Market
Speed of Sales Cycle
Getting the Right Meetings Booked
Expansion Using Automation
“If you haven’t already, take a look at your customer life cycle map. What are the points in time that you really want to engage your customer? What are those high value conversations? What are those inflection points that are so critical? And [ensure] that you have the right amount and the right blend of personalization and automation to ensure that those moments happen.” – Kate Ahlering Resources https://calendly.com/ – Get started with a FREE trial Connect with Kate Ahlering on LinkedIn The Brevet Group: 21 Mind-blowing Sales Stats - check out this website for helpful stats Ahlering refers to How CI Assante Wealth Management Achieved 323% ROI with Calendly - Case Study HackerOne Realizes 169% ROI by Powering Customer Success with Calendly - Case Study Sponsorship Offers 1. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse. 2. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.
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Fri, 12 May 2023
New reps and veteran sellers alike are looking for the missing piece in their sales game – look no further. In this electrifying interview, your host Donald Kelly speaks with Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chet Holmes International, about how her finger-on-the-pulse approach connects with the foundational elements of her father’s work (The Ultimate Sales Machine) to bring us into the future of selling. What is a Dream 100?
Identify YOUR Dream 100
3 Dream 100 DON’Ts
“My father was a fifth-degree blackbelt. He realized that there are only so many ways that you kick or you punch, and it’s just a matter of practicing these things over, and over, and over again. He’s famous for the saying, ‘Mastery isn’t about doing 4,000 different things, it’s about doing 12 things 4,000 times.” – Amanda Holmes Resources http://ultimatesalesmachine.com (Chapter 4 of the book is free!) Reach out to Amanda directly @amanditaholmes on Instagram Sponsorship Offers
Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach wastes the buyer and seller's time at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data.
Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/tse. 2. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation. I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Mon, 8 May 2023
If you’re still trying to build pipeline by loading up your “spam cannon,” you’re living in the past. In today’s episode, your host Donald Kelly opens up a conversation with Drew Sechrist, the CEO and co-founder of Connect the Dots (a FREE program that helps you leverage your connections – see the Resources below for a tip to skip the waiting list). Sechrist shares the history of how he got his start as a seller at Salesforce, becoming a top seller, and learning the skills that helped him revolutionize his strategy. How Relationships Helped a Young Rep Become the Top Seller
Taking Sales Beyond LinkedIn
The Problem With Cold E-mails
“Just think about it: somebody comes up to you on the street that you don’t know and they’re proposing something to you, it’s like ‘Whoa, whoa, I don’t know you. I’ve got places to go.’ But if your friend comes up to you on the street and says, ‘Hey Donald, I think I’ve got something for you,’ you’re going to give that person a minute to hear them out… Your brand suffers a little bit if you make a request of somebody’s time and it’s not considered to be valuable.” – Drew Sechrist Resources E-mail drew@ctd.ai and let him know you heard about CTD on The Sales Evangelist Podcast, and you will be bumped to the top of the waiting list for FREE access to this program! Sponsorship Offers
I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill. |
Fri, 6 September 2019
From account selection to sales plays, Jamie Shanks helps sales professionals understand and adopt best practices for the modern, social sellers. Jamie is the CEO of Sales For Life, which is the de-facto standard in modernizing account-based sales motion. The company specializes in social or digital selling. It evaluates how you sell today and infuses modern digital sales activities into your process. Account-based selling Account-based selling refers to focusing on a set number of accounts, whether it’s organized by territory or strategic value. Instead of relying on inbound leads or channel leads, you must go outbound. Jamie named his book Spear Selling based on a sales analogy of fishing: inbound efforts are a little like fishing with a net because you can’t choose the fish that land in your net. When you fish with a spear, you swim in the deep water and choose the whales you’re going to hunt. Typically, companies focus on account-based motion because they need to increase their average annual contract value (ACV) or lifetime value (LTV). Adopting an account-based approach Companies often get the very first step wrong, which is account selection. Many companies use what Jamie calls wallet-share based thinking. When he was working with a company in the health and wellness space, an account exec pointed to Peloton as a company he was focused on connecting with. When questioned, the AE mentioned that one of the company leaders was a bike enthusiast who thought it might be a good fit. The truth is that the health company has no more strategic connection to Peloton than its competitors do. In fact, if they went through the data of relationships, they might discover that the competitors have greater social proximity to the account. That means you may devote 8 months trying to win this account to find that there’s a hurdle you didn’t account for. Getting the account selection process right is half the equation. Companies that ask their sales professionals to build a list of accounts will likely find that they stack ranked companies based on revenue, number of employees, and market share potential. They didn’t think about the fact that people buy from people and relationships matter. Sales is a game of relationships. If you could reverse-engineer your existing advocates and customers and identify which accounts have the highest social proximity, you’ll have an advantage that your competitors can’t take from you. Account-based models A centralized model looks at the equation and asks how certain sales resources like inside sales, BDRs, SDRs, and LDRs can mine the total addressable market. It maps green-flag accounts based on relationships, opportunities, and strengths. They could be referrals, partners to your existing customers, or others you’re connected to. Red-flag accounts are those where your competitors have relationships, strengths, and opportunities. The decentralized model seeks to identify those accounts that a company already has connections to. The idea is that the company can activate those accounts faster than the competitors can. Companies might go with the centralized model because it uses the $20-an-hour inside sellers to do the work instead of the more-expensive AEs. They might choose the decentralized model because they want everyone in the field to be able to unearth the total addressable market of their area. Each person is the CEO of his own territory. Account selection is a skill that everyone needs to master. Modern digital sellers The modern digital seller selects accounts based on relationships or social proximity and then plans those accounts using four pillars.
These sellers build a war room or a simple one-page document that outlines the compelling stories that they can share with their audiences. When they target the accounts, they’ll use digital technology like video or LinkedIn to share insights and monitor buying engagement. Use account segmentation to think about how much time you’ll spend on every account. Apply Pareto’s Law realizing that you’ll spend 80 percent of your time on 20 percent of your accounts which will yield 80 percent of your return. You won’t spend the same amount of time on every account. These sales concepts have existed forever, but you’ll accelerate your momentum because digital technology allows you to identify who cares, who you should focus on, and how you can move the deal through the cycle more quickly. Digital sales Social selling includes elements like LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook, but those aren’t the only elements. Modern digital sellers use any available technology to aid in the sales process. Companies that engage in digital account-based selling might go through the following steps:
If they use tools like LinkedIn to map the social networks of their customer base, they can determine whether anyone knows someone at those companies. Together with marketing, the account executives can storyboard to create a series of sales plays, which might include social media or digital tools. They can use LinkedIn to communicate with key executives and invite them to an event because they know that conversion is twice as high with physical meetings as with virtual ones. They are using digital tools to bring customers into the analog world. Sales play Sales plays are no different than football plays. The play seeks to achieve a certain result. The seller needs a first-down. Digital sellers might use video, emails, phone calls and other tools to tell the story of them versus their competitors. Your goal at an account is to activate the account. The activation cycle is the number of plays that you’ll run against that account. In that time, you’ll either qualify them or replace them. You cannot call into this account forever. The best account-based teams have a defined activation cycle. Let’s assume it’s 90 days. If you don’t activate within 90 days, you’ll replace it with an account that has a great relationship opportunity. Sales plays exist inside that cycle. You might have three to eight different stories you tell along that 90-day journey. Those sales plays or touchpoints are organized as cadences and sequences. If you want to win the biggest and best accounts in the world, most companies aren’t coming inbound. You have to tell compelling stories to push them off their status quo. Build a series Once you’ve identified your targets, you must build a series of plays and stories that make the person actually care.
What does the future hold for your customer? Think about the customer and develop a series of stories before you start hammering away at the phone. #StorySelling Get started using all of the available tools. Jamie calls LinkedIn Sales Navigator one of his favorite. There are 500 million people on that platform. He calls it the world's largest party. “TSE 1176: Specific Account-Based Sales Development Best Practices For The Modern, Social Sellers” episode resources Grab a copy of Jamie’s book, Spear Selling. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register! You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also share this with your friends and colleagues. |
Tue, 7 May 2019
You may believe that social selling won't work for your company or industry, but if you take advantage of the 4 pillars to leveraging LinkedIn for business development, you'll be surprised at how it can help you expand your reach. Brynne Tillman is the CEO and "LinkedIn Whisperer" of Social Sales Link and the author of The LinkedInSales Playbook and she has spent more than a decade coaching people to unlock the power of the platform. LinkedIn profileLinkedIn has its own social selling index so if you visit getmyssiscore.com you get your personal score, out of 100, that will rate your social selling acumen. Your LinkedIn profile is where that lies. Sellers make the mistake of using their LinkedIn profile as a resume when, in fact, it should be a resource. Corporate Visions reports that 74 percent of buyers choose the sales rep that provided value and insight early in the buyer journey. Your profile is their first impression of us, so do it right. ValueProspects don't care about your mission, your passion, or your years in business when they first visit your profile. That may matter down the road, but initially, they care about value. They care about how relevant you are. Write your summary almost like a blog post. What kind of value can you bring from the first time they read about you? Identify the challenges that your buyers are facing. Provide three to five insights that will make an immediate impact. Strive to make a "vendor agnostic" impact, meaning that you share insights they can use even if they never buy from you. Sellers often create this as a pitch and we tell them how to buy from us. What we should do instead is attract them to us. We want them to ask themselves how they can work with us. This level of value will increase your credibility and move you much more quickly through the sales cycle. ChallengesIf you sell office furniture, determine who your buyer is and what her biggest challenge is right now. Maybe many companies are expanding and the big challenge is the inability to trade in old furniture to get new stuff. Determine what helps you stand out and then educate your buyer. Teach your customer how to buy office furniture in a way that leans toward you as the solution, but provide insights that can help them make better decisions for the company as a whole. Take advantage of the 4 pillars to leveraging LinkedIn for business development in order to move your prospects toward doing business with you. Pillar 1: Establish your professional brandYour professional brand is your profile. By positioning your profile to provide insight and value to your buyers, you are gaining credibility and creating curiosity. You're getting them excited to take your phone call. If they can learn something just by visiting your profile, they imagine that a conversation with you will be even more valuable. Position yourself as the subject matter expert and thought leader. Pillar 2: Find the right peopleHow are you leveraging LinkedIn to find your buyers and your influencers? If it's true that there are 6.8 people who are involved in every large buying decision, how are we identifying all the right people within an organization? Instead of limiting our efforts to just the champion, who else do we want to touch? How are we finding these people and engaging them? The prospecting piece and the relationship building piece are the same. It's a combination of providing great value and leveraging our network to get introductions to our targeted prospects and buyers. Develop search strings which are literally the title of your buyers in whatever geographic location or industry you choose. Pillar 3: Engage with insightsHow are we sharing content, commenting, and engaging with content? How are we using hashtags to find the right content? Are we feeding our network with really valuable information that moves them closer to our solution? It's more than just liking or sharing. LinkedIn wants to see you engaging and sharing and commenting. Avoid "random acts of social." Anything we do without intention or purpose is rarely going to see success. Certainly, it won't succeed on a consistent basis. Pillar 4: Build relationshipsConnecting and forgetting is the equivalent of collecting business cards in a stack on the corner of your desk. How valuable is it? That's not a network. There's more value in truly connecting with a few people at a networking event and having meaningful conversations than there is in collecting a business card from everyone present. Bring that same thoughtfulness online. [Tweet "There's no reason to network differently online than you do in person. #SocialSelling"] Start a conversation. Learn about people. Ask questions. Get to know people a little bit. When you do, LinkedIn will be your most valuable networking tool. StrategyEstablish what your goals are for social selling. How will you measure success? If your goal is to have one new client a month, you need four proposals a month. In order to have four proposals, you need to have eight conversations. In order to have eight conversations, you need to have 16 introductions to your targeted buyers. That means I need four introductions to targeted buyers each week. I must look at my KPIs to see if my 16 is converging to become 8, and then whether my eight is becoming four. If I need four introductions per week, I probably need to ask for 20. That probably means I need five a day, which could mean five from one person or one from five people. I need a good network of referral sources and great relationships with my existing clients. Reaching outOnce you've identified those clients who can connect you to other people, you can start this way: Mr. Client, It has been a couple of years since we worked together. I hope you're still loving your furniture. I noticed that you're connected to a few people on LinkedIn that I'm trying to get in front of. Would you mind setting up a 15-minute call where I can read names with you and get your thoughts on whether they might be a good fit? Two things happen here. If your customer needs more furniture, this is a great way to re-engage without being salesy. You'll also talk through the list of connections to figure out a way forward. You can either ask for an introduction or ask for permission to name-drop. Building engagementYou must continually build engagement with your customers so that you maintain those connections even after the sale. If you're looking for new contacts, start with your second-degree connections because at least you have some people in common. It doesn't feel quite as cold that way and there are things you can do to warm them up before you actually reach out. Look at the profile. Click the "more" button on the profile and click the "follow" button. The person will get the notification that you followed him. Look at his recent activity. Read it. Engage with it. If there is something there, begin a conversation by engaging with the information he shared. Now you've engaged, followed, and the person keeps getting notifications about you. He'll likely be curious because your name keeps appearing. It's a little bit like flirting. Provide valueDon't jump in and pitch immediately. Provide value. Build relationships. Get a consistent stream of great content that helps your prospect understand the importance of choosing the right office furniture. Once you've developed a conversation, you can offer a pitch when appropriate. Don't just build a network that doesn't know you. Create content, but realize that it doesn't have to be a blog post. Consider native video, podcasting, and interviews. Don't just generate noise, though. Use the 4 pillars to leveraging LinkedIn for business development to make sure it's worth their click. "4 Pillars to Leveraging LinkedIn for Business Development" episode resourcesThe best way to connect with Brynne is on LinkedIn. Let her know that you found her on The Sales Evangelist podcast and she'll send additional resources. You can also grab a copy of The LinkedInSales Playbook. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. |
Mon, 6 May 2019
Sellers who interact with and provide value to prospects using social media must understand the characteristics that turn this into the kind of social selling your customers want. We're tackling this topic all month, and even if you aren't a big social media person, we're providing an actionable plan to help you get in front of your prospects. It isn't enough to "set it and forget it" or generate large amounts of content in hopes that people will click through to find you. It's thoughtful preparation that gives buyers what they want and need right now. Trying to closeI discovered the idea of using social media to sell when I was in college. I was seeking an internship with people who were in Chicago and our college professor told us that we needed a LinkedIn profile. He told us that we had to maintain that profile because that's where business professionals interacted. I thought it was a great idea because I was suddenly connected to millions of other professionals. I also thought it was great that I could pitch to all of those people. My professor knew a woman in Chicago so he introduced us with the intention that I would seek insights from her. In my mind, though, she was going to provide me with an internship or connect me with someone who had one. Instead of approaching it as an information-gathering phase, I was trying to close the deal. I think many of us make that mistake with social media. Instant accessSellers are often like kids in a candy store because social media gives them instant access to millions of potential customers. Why in the heck wouldn't we go ahead and pitch them all? Let's tell every single person what we're doing. And then social media turns into a pitch-fest. Because we can copy and share messages with groups of people quickly, we have access to millions of new prospects at our fingertips. Very quickly, though, prospects recognize that every seller is engaging in the same kind of social selling. Prospects are overwhelmed with the same messages from multiple sellers, so we have quickly realized that we can't continue using the same methods. Liking contentIn response, we settled on thoughtful interactions with people. We settled on the idea of liking everything they posted on social media and commenting on their content, sometimes arbitrarily. We didn't necessarily have a growth plan or a strategy. We just assumed that if we liked a bunch of their stuff now, when we eventually sent them a message, they would instantly want to work with us. The idea might have worked well initially, but again, sellers adopted the same strategy across the board and failed to stand out from one another. Curating contentNext, we moved to curating content. That meant sharing content that others were sharing, so if I found a good blog post about technology, I would share it with my prospects who were interested in that industry. Our strategy was to be top-of-mind because of our content. We engaged with different platforms and pumped content everywhere, which ultimately became a bunch of junk floating around on the Internet. Again, every competitor was doing the same. The platforms realized that the content was taking their users away to other sites and they took steps to prevent people from being diverted away. AlgorithmsSocial media platforms don't want you to send their users to other sites. As a result, you must adjust your social selling efforts so that you're linking to content on that same platform. LinkedIn wants its users to see the ads that its customers are paying to promote. If its users leave LinkedIn, they won't see the ads. The algorithm will penalize you for sharing content outside of LinkedIn. Sellers responded with LinkedIn articles, long-form posts, and videos. We moved to original content in our next iteration of social selling, and within the next year, we'll likely move to something different. Human interactionDespite all this change, there is one takeaway. Be a person. Be human and care about other people. The definition we shared from Hubspot is this: Social selling is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople will provide value by answering the prospect's questions and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is ready to buy. Do things in moderation. Use direct messages. Set a goal to connect with five new prospects each day on LinkedIn. Try something like this: Donald, It's always great to learn from sales leaders in the industry. Permission to connect? Once we're connected, they'll see the content I've curated over time. Aligned contentAn article on PostFunnel reported that marketers who align their content with specific points in the buyer's journey yielded 73 percent higher conversion rates. Think about that. If you're able to produce content based on where your buyers are in that particular phase, it will be relevant to them. Your buyers want posts that showcase your new products or services and they want to learn something along the way. Use social selling your customers want in order to help them throughout their journey. Speak to the three stages of the buyer's journey:
Sprout Social suggests weaving awareness- and consideration-stage content together. Those two stages are usually where people rely on social media. [Tweet "With social selling, open the door with entertainment and inspiration. Use memes or videos to grab attention. Then carry them the rest of the way with educational content. #SocialSelling"] Multiple approachesThis is one of the most effective ways to prospect. When you combine this with your other techniques like cold calling or emails or regular mail, you'll see great success. Apply this today. Identify five people to connect with in your industry. If you do that every day for a week, you'll have 25 new connections by the end of the week. Strive to create the social selling your customers want to increase your effectiveness and improve your outcomes. "Social Selling Your Customers Want" episode resourcesIf you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561)578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. |
Fri, 3 May 2019
Social selling is the new sales because it utilizes all the techniques and tools that we've always enjoyed as sellers in order to help us build better relationships. Although nothing will ever replace the face-to-face relationships that sellers have with their clients, social selling is a valuable tool. Today Carson Heady shares what he has learned over a 17-year sales career about prospecting and relationship building and how social selling helps with it. Social sellingSocial media can help you find the right person to talk to that can help you connect with the right people, get a meeting, and stay top of mind. It's a great compliment to the business relationships we should already be forming. Social selling isn't a replacement for the things we're already doing. It's the application of the tools that enable us to get insights or see what customers and their organizations are thinking, doing, and talking about. When I first started using social selling, I was guilty of blasting a bunch of messages on LinkedIn and pitching people there. I quickly realized that wasn't social selling. Social selling equates to brokering relationships but you're doing it online. It isn't sending mass emails to people sharing everything that you have to offer. ResultsSalespeople are interested in results, and Carson said that after studying reports about social selling, he has determined that it amounts to standing apart, being unique, and finding a way to differentiate. Social selling is a very targeted and specific effort to cast a wide wide net to reach maybe 30 people in a single organization in hopes that you'll land a single meeting. That effort resulted in one of the larger deals in Microsoft. RelationshipsCarson suggests following business journals and using Sales Navigator to help in your efforts. Following the trades to stay aware of new C-levels that join the organization. Last year, Carson was the first to the table when a new C-level joined a company he was connected to and now Microsoft is helping to drive change within that organization because of the relationship. The relationships drive the deals forward, and those relationships wouldn't exist without the strategic utilization of social selling. InnovateWe're all just trying to do something different. We're trying to get a response or a meeting by setting ourselves apart from the others who came before us and failed. We aren't just sitting on the phone reaching out to people. We have so much technology at our disposal that we have to be careful to be focused and tailor our efforts. If we don't, we'll likely suffer from diminishing returns. Our past approach of "spray and pray" doesn't work anymore. You have to embrace the probability of success. In the past, people were willing to send out hundreds of notes with the understanding that they wouldn't get a whole lot of reception. ConsistentIf you want to connect with a C-level at an organization, you don't just go after them. You've got to start a few levels below where you'd like to end up. Once you're able to talk to someone who is receptive, you can use that momentum internally to get in front of the right audience. But you must be consistent in your approach. Prospecting never ends. You must revisit those prospects. Not surprisingly, many clients don't reply immediately like you'd like them to. Be persistent and reach out to the same folks, but change your messaging. Offer a compelling reason for your prospects to respond. Be aware, too, that you may catch someone on an off day. The prospect may be sick or he may have missed the email. He may be busy. Be adaptable with your process. There are a lot of things that we believe are good philosophies as sellers, but when we try them for a bit they don't work the way they want to. So we discard them. We tweak things a bit and we adapt. ConciseSometimes we send long elaborate emails in hopes that we'll get a reply. Truthfully, sometimes we get the best responses from emails with only one sentence. People are busy and they don't have time to read a 3-paragraph message. If you're specific and you offer a single task, they can more likely respond. Emails are not intended to close the sale. It helps you grab attention. Don't try to sell an enterprise solution within a few sentences of an email. Trying to sell in an email amounts to skipping steps in the sales process. You're jumping straight into the second or third date without wining and dining the prospect. ConnectionWhen you're seeking to connect with multiple people in an organization, your approach will depend on what you're looking to accomplish. It will also depend on your unique connection to that person. If you're searching for a job, don't reach out with questions about a job or an opportunity within the organization. Instead, try this: "I saw that we have mutual synergies and I'm looking to parlay my experience into your industry. I'd love to sit down for 10 minutes to pick your brain and get some advice." Determine your unique connection to that client and then approach using that angle. [Tweet "If you work to provide support, lend service, and add value to the relationship, you have a much better probability of getting a reply to your outreach. #AddValue"] When Carson reached out to 30 people in a single organization, he got replies from about 11 of them. Of those responses, he got one response that pointed him to a certain person in the company. He pursued it and landed one of Microsoft's larger deals. Your chances of getting a reply are small to begin with. Make sure you put your best foot forward. Reach out to all of the people who have a vested interest in what you're doing. Needs analysisOur process exists for a reason. When it goes awry, and when we get overzealous, we skip steps and we put too much information out there initially. Sometimes your connection can just be to share an article and engage in a real conversation rather than always sending a message about "following up." You can also share or retweet the other person's content as a way to engage. There is no single bullet that fixes all. Be cognizant that there are a lot of tools that exist that will help you succeed. The sales process is vital, just like it's vital that we only use social selling to get a meeting. Stay top of mind so your connections continue to see you. If the prospect knows that he owes you some information, it may stimulate the conversation to continue. It's a non-threatening way to follow up. Relationships are everything. If you lead with the goal of adding value you never have to worry about your sales numbers. "Social Selling Is the New Selling" episode resourcesYou can connect with Carson on LinkedIn or Twitter, and you can grab a copy of his book, The Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. You can also check out his blog, The Life and Times of Carson V. Heady. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. |
Wed, 9 May 2018
I spent too much time thinking small: failing to try new things for fear that I wouldn’t be good at them. It wasn’t until friends in my Mastermind group challenged my thinking that I realized that being small doesn’t benefit anyone. Today on The Sales Evangelist, we’ll discuss how small-mindedness can hurt you, and how […] The post TSE 829: Sales From The Street-“Being Small Doesn’t Benefit You” appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Wed, 23 August 2017
Today’s episode is about getting social… the right way. Our guest today is Michael Manzur. He has some great insights into utilizing social media for selling. It’s about taking advantage of things that will help us work smarter, not harder. These are things that have worked for them, that might already be working for you […] The post TSE 644: Sales From The Street-“Get Social” appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 19 May 2017
Are you using Instagram for your business? If not, then this episode might inspire you to get also get started with it. Instagram is a social media platform that is growing in popularity. People love sending pictures and they love to connect. Maybe your business can also benefit from it. If not, then so be […] The post TSE 576: How I Grew My Company Using Instagram and My Smartphone appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 7 April 2017
Social selling has become one of the hottest topics today but a lot of people are not actually doing this right. My guest today, Ian Moyse, is going to give us some clarity and super valuable insights into social selling specifically around sales development. With about 25 years of experience in the sales leadership arena, […] The post TSE 546: Using Social Media the Right Way to Increase Sales appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Mon, 6 March 2017
It’s a common misconception among many entrepreneurs that marketing is sales and vice versa. But here’s a fact: Although sales and marketing are closely related as they are basically part of the same family and are similar in many ways, they’re still two different beasts. And I’m going to share with you today why it’s […] The post TSE 522: Salespeople are NOT Marketers appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Mon, 5 December 2016
78% of salespeople who use social media outsell their peers. Yeah, true. Social selling works. But you can’t just do it without first even understanding how it should be done. It’s all about building relationships and building value. Here are some strategies to make sure you don’t make the mistakes many people do when they’re […] The post TSE 457: Social Selling Mistakes You Should Avoid appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Thu, 1 December 2016
Today, we bring you a past snippet of one of our sessions over at TSE Hustler’s League where we focused on LinkedIn Sales Navigator so you can learn how you can improve your hustle as you do social selling. Through this strategy, LinkedIn takes you to a hyper whole new other category which allows you […] The post TSE 455: TSE Hustler’s League-“LinkedIn Sales Navigator” appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Sat, 2 July 2016
With so much information on the internet today, prospects have become more empowered than ever that if you as a seller do not also counter this by being as best prepared as you can be, they could only see you as nothing more than a sales agent rather than being seen as an industry expert […] The post TSE 351: Publish or Perish: Selling in the Age of Content Marketing appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Wed, 1 June 2016
How are you using social media to grow your sales? Are you even using social media to sell? But is it appropriate to sell on social media in the first place? I’m bringing in Marty McDonald as he shares great, meaty insights into using social media as part of your sales process and how it’s […] The post TSE 325: How To Improve Your Social Media Sales Skills appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 1 April 2016
We know it’s important to create great content, but what is the point of creating great content if no one can see it? Well, that problem is solved with a great tool called “Meet Edgar”. Today I have the opportunity of speaking with the founder, Laura Roeder. Laura began her entrepreneurial journey at the age of 22, […] The post TSE 283: Meet My Friend Edgar appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Fri, 15 January 2016
I read a recent article stating that only about 31% of salespeople are incorporating social media into their sales cycle. Okay, that’s just crazy unbelievable. I mean you practically have everything at the tips of your fingertips now. You’re crazy if you’re not taking advantage of it. Although it’s understandable since you probably don’t know […] The post TSE 249: How To Use Your Time Wisely While Social Selling appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |
Tue, 6 October 2015
Are you doing social selling? Are you confused on how to do it properly? Well, this episode with Jack Kosakowski will teach you how you can become a social seller. Jack is a Regional Sales Manager for Act-On Software. He is the Social Selling “e-BRANDgelist.” Jack is also a social sales advisor for Chillpuck.com. He […] The post TSE 201: How The Collision Of Marketing & Sales Creates Revenue In The New World Of Social Selling appeared first on The Sales Evangelist. |