Walking down the busy airport concourse, a face worriedly stares at her smartphones. This dire looking leader of a major US business to business sales organisation is juggling a host of problems.
Sales quotas keep going up and the existing team doesn’t seem to have the right relationships to get the products and services in front of the decision makers.
Meanwhile, openings in the salesforce are hard to fill. Finding qualified candidates is not as much the issue as finding candidates who know the market and have the right relationships with prospects. The last guy hired for his rolodex was a total dud. Yeah, he knew the decision makers, but none of them wanted to do business with him.
A message pops in from the Marketing VP as she hops on the rental car shuttle. Marketing wants to help Sales better leverage social media and is asking for suggestions on content that will motivate buyers to action. All of these problems are spinning in front of the backdrop of a mandate from the CEO to ‘transform’ and ‘modernise’ the sales team.
Thinking strategically amidst this confusion is extremely difficult. This is because market forces and new technology are disrupting how sales and marketing has always been done. Not only are sales reps taking advantage of employers by nimbly moving from one company to the next, buyers are waiting longer in the buying process to engage sales people and are forming opinions online. Social Media is the 500 pound gorilla in the room that drives both of these trends and it can only be ignored at one’s own peril anymore. The big question is how to leverage it?
Plenty of vendors are at the ready to use your marketing and operations budget to make it happen. Large software companies suggest a new set of tools that integrate Social Media into your existing CRM and Lead Generation. Newer upstarts suggest a course in Social Media training for sales. There doesn’t appear to be a strategic underpinning to either though.
However, if competency in Social Media enables Social Selling, perhaps it is time to start with a baseline assessment. By evaluating how well your existing sales team is connected to their target market along with their social presence and social influence levels you can begin to find the gaps. Do your sales people follow and connect with executives at their prospects on a regular basis? Do they follow their customers’ brand and interact with them concerning your products and services?
It is relatively easy to compare and assess how well your sales teams are connected to their target market. If team members are not well connected, then it is time to seek training and assistance that addresses that specific gap. It probably isn’t a matter of the sales rep not being on LinkedIn or knowing how the tool works. Traditional Social Selling training can help with the tools, but something else is needed. The root of the problem may have to do with understanding how to connect to a specific market or how to gain that market’s attention online. These gaps require help from marketing. How can content generated by marketing and new sales skills around social selling move the needle?
The same principal applies for new sales hires. Examining who a sales candidate is connected to is a way of verifying the rolodex he or she claims to have. In addition, seeing how and how often the candidate interacts with target prospects is another way of judging the strength of the relationship. All of this is possible to discern by looking online at social channels and assessing a candidate’s level of influence.
Finally, simply creating a social selling salesforce will not be enough. I am often asked why a company should invest in a sales rep this way when it gives the salesperson an advantage he can simply take to the competition. Not to worry: Developing a social selling salesperson without providing relevant content that will make them successful will never be enough!
Marketing plays a key role in sales success using social media channels. By listening to the needs of the sales teams, a blog or content stream can be created that works hand in glove with their efforts with individual customers. Sales teams know what they need and rely on marketing to provide the nuanced messaging. This is not something a sales rep can export to the competition. Additionally, a blog offers an opportunity for marketing to easily measure the success of the content that is created and draw a specific ROI that includes sales dollars earned on each effort.
Finding a model that successfully interweaves sales teams’ competencies and content marketing is the key to true sales transformation and success. While this formula does not fit into a simple tool or training course, it does offer a tangible strategy that assesses the current state, applies corrective action and attempts to create a future that better fits today’s marketplace.
By Milan Ruzicka former VP at T-Mobile and Sander Biehn, CEO of Thought Horizon.
PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.
comments powered by Disqus