When salespeople were forced to switch from face-to-face selling to virtual selling, they were forced to learn a different medium of communication. What you used to be able to communicate with your face, body language, energy, etc. has to be squeezed into a small square on a computer screen. Your customer doesn’t have the context of face-to-face. It requires learning new skills. In this episode of Sales Reinvented, Julie Hansen shares how acting skills can benefit a salesperson and help them succeed in this virtual reality we now live in.
Julie has a background in acting. Most actors/actresses start their careers doing live theatre. You can see your audience and what lands—or doesn’t—and adjust accordingly. Virtual selling is similar to moving to on-camera work.
When Julie moved from live audiences to camera, she did what she did for theatre. But the director pointed out she wasn’t looking in the right place, she was out of frame, and was distracting. She learned she had to get new training to communicate in the new medium. Salespeople need to acknowledge that and learn new skills so they can communicate in a virtual environment.
Organizations learned that they can be more cost-effective doing sales calls virtually. Plus, McKinsey found in their research that more than three-quarters of B2B buyers prefer remote interaction versus face-to-face. You need to adapt to the new reality.
Most organizations throw tools and technology at their salesforce but haven’t realized that communication differences need to be addressed. How does the camera read behavior? What about your eye contact and facial expressions? Are you communicating what you need to?
You have to learn to connect one-on-one on camera because sales are all about building relationships. People buy from people they like and they feel confident with. So you have to learn to establish those relationships through a camera. That’s where the growth needs to be. If you can do that, you’ll rise to the top and stand out.
Julie believes that the qualities needed to succeed are the same, whether in person or virtually. You need to be credible, keep your word, be authentic, show empathy, be an active listener, etc. But those qualities are often lost in a virtual exchange, so you have to adjust the way you communicate them.
In a face-to-face conversation, if someone stared at your shoes the whole time, you’d feel like they weren’t interested. But it happens on video all the time. You may be looking at the customer’s image, screen, tools, etc. You need to understand that the quality of active listening requires you to behave differently. You have to know when to look at the camera directly. Your fave must communicate the emotions you think it is.
What tools, techniques, and strategies does Julie recommend to improve how you portray yourself on video? Listen to learn more!
Julie shared some amazing tips to help you improve your skills:
Julie got a call from an experienced enterprise sales rep who was a top biller before things moved virtually. He felt like he wasn’t connecting with his customers and that he had lost his superpower. When Julie worked with him on camera, it was obvious his personality wasn't coming across. He felt scripted and his discomfort was obvious.
She worked with him on improving his eye contact, body language, energy, and what his face was portraying. After working together, he went back to a customer where he had been shut out of a big deal. He put together a compelling and engaging personalized video that got him back in the running.
You have to admit that you don’t know what you don’t know and get the help you need to adapt to this new environment. Don’t sit and suffer in silence. Stand up for yourself and get the training that you need to succeed.
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According to Walker McKay, a salesperson’s actions, attitude, and approach can lead to digital improvements. What should those actions look like? What characteristics do you need to embrace? What approaches are successful? Walker McKay answers these questions—and more—in this episode of Sales Reinvented.
Digital selling is important because it’s nearly impossible to get face-to-face with people anymore. People are working from home and you can’t just show up at their “office.” So you have to find other ways to connect with people and hold conversations. Organizations need to create expected behaviors around digital selling regarding:
You have to start with the actions. What is the expected behavior? How many LinkedIn posts should somebody do? How many times should you reach out per week? Companies need to get comfortable that this is the way things are being done. So it’s time to build behaviors around getting appointments via text, phone, social media, and video.
Where should you go to find business? If it’s on LinkedIn, you can download your connections onto a spreadsheet. You can match it with your client list and make sure you’re connected with people you’re already doing business with.
Secondly, Walker would take that list and look for some low-hanging fruit you hadn’t talked to yet. How will you get in touch with them? You can send LinkedIn messages, DMs, text messages, phone calls, and emails. You need to touch people 6–7 times using different channels to get their attention. The goal is to set an appointment, right? Set a meeting over Zoom or a similar channel.
Old school B2B salespeople might be in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Even so, an openness to technology is key to their success. Secondly, salespeople need to have a strong why behind their success. You have goals you want to accomplish and achieve in life. Are you disciplined enough to reach out to people, send messages, and keep track of it? It is discipline and a desire to win being put into place.
Are you posting things on different channels? Walker has found posting a video or a how-to on social channels to be effective. If you’re selling insurance, you might post “5 Ways to Make Sure You Get the Right Insurance.” You have to be able to write well and teach people with your posts. If you’re seen as a teacher, people will come to you for help and you’ll become the professional in your space.
Walker is always looking for sales experts to be guests on his podcast. He was using LinkedIn to reach out to people but wasn’t getting a great response. He was reaching out to 5 people a day. But he connected with someone named Casey Jones. She didn’t respond. 3 days later, he messaged her again and they started a conversation. Turns out, they had a great connection. She was one of his best podcast guests and they’ve since collaborated on three different business deals.
There is a network outside of you through the digital world that is much bigger and better than what you could have face-to-face. Work to build your network and ask for what you want. There’s a tremendous world of business out there.
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A digital sales strategy can include social selling, video communication, and great content as a mechanism to communicate with a prospect. Whether selling digitally or in person, Liz Heiman believes that every successful seller models the 4Cs of selling. What are these characteristics? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to learn more!
Liz emphasizes that good selling is good selling whether it’s digital or in-person. You can’t get away with bad habits anymore because digital noise has become so loud. Just “checking in” isn’t effective. You need to be heard through the noise. If you’re going to be a good seller, you need to understand who you’re selling to and what matters to them. Then you need to have a valid business reason for interacting with them. Be relevant and intentional with your selling in the digital world. That starts with putting in place better basic selling skills.
Most of Liz’s clients deal with complex B2B sales (with multiple people involved). So her digital strategy starts with an account-based approach. She works with sales and marketing to reach out to the people who influence buying decisions within a company. It takes a targeted approach with clear messaging and predefined actions that each team takes.
Secondly, Liz recommends checking in on buyers with intention. She has her sales team—the moment they finish the last action—identify what the next action and message will be. That goes into their CRM so when they make the next interaction they remember what they’re supposed to do.
If you have a CRM, take careful notes and list your next action. Use the tool to help you be effective. When Liz makes a call to a prospect, she looks at their last conversation. Secondly, Liz believes sending a video is imperative. If you can’t pop your head in, sending a quick video is a great way to do it.
Liz believes it’s the same skills that any seller should have: the “Four Cs of selling.” You need to care about and be compassionate for your customers. You also need to be creative and curious. These skills will help you be effective. If you’re curious, you’ll do research, take notes, and look for pain points. You’ll hear what your customers are telling you and acknowledge and engage with what they’re dealing with.
If you can’t get their attention with one strategy, you’ll get creative and try another. If your solution doesn’t work, how can you find one that does? Those are the things that matter, digital or not. You have to work harder to develop the human connection.
What tools, techniques, and strategies can you use to improve your communication? What are Liz’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts? Listen to learn more!
Liz tells people to use video but she hates video. But a year and a half ago, she decided to send her follow-up notes as a video. She had a client that hadn’t been responding, so she sent a video. One of the prospects had been in the process of firing someone. She asked if he was able to make a decision.
He wrote back and said, “You must have the most amazing CRM that you can remember what we talked about last time.” She cared enough to remember what they talked about and reach out to see if they needed her help. When you care about people and listen to them, it works. Reach out to customers in a way that’s easy, convenient, and helpful for them.
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Salespeople are still struggling to adapt to all of the changes that the Covid pandemic has brought about. Virtual selling is still largely at play, with some in-person interaction still sprinkled in. Tom Pisello believes that to adapt, you need to become laser-focused on helping prospects become aware of and solve their problems. To do that, you have to identify your own struggles to become more effective. Tom shares insight into this process in this episode of @SalesReinvented!
Sellers are frustrated with how much longer purchasing decisions are taking and how many people are involved in the process. It can be difficult for them to manage. But Tom emphasizes that if you look for what buyers are saying their challenges are, it can be a turning point. When the Rain Group surveyed buyers on what they thought of sellers in the digital environment, four gaps that were recognized:
How do you present your sellers with discovery guides and interactive presentations? Can you provide your sellers with an interactive diagnostic assessment or a problem/solution guide to use with customers? You have to provide an interactive value assessment tool so sellers can collect data from the customer and do the number crunching to make a business case.
Make sure you’re implementing conversational intelligence tools so you don’t have to have your head down to take notes. You need a good video presence and the ability to listen more than they talk. So learn how to maintain eye contact on video calls.
When you do talk, you need to ask good in-depth discovery questions that help buyers be introspective. A good seller is armed with good content and tools. They’re leveraging dynamic presentations and assessment tools to add value, insight, and guidance.
Tom recommends that content enablement groups work to examine PDFs, videos, guides, etc, that are being provided to their salespeople and think about retooling them. Can you make them interactive? Can you click on elements? Customers don’t have the patience to sit through a deck. You have to be able to pivot the conversation to what the customer wants to talk about and have content to support it.
Tom loves doing diagnostic assessments to assess a company’s maturity and where they are in the journey. You can map out improvements that they’d like to make and give intelligent recommendations. You can benchmark them against peers.
What about business value assessments? What challenges are they facing? What is it costing them? What’s the value potential of implementing a solution? What evidence can you share that you can deliver on this? The right tools can make a difference.
What are Tom’s virtual selling dos and don’ts? Listen to learn more!
Tom once had 16 people in a company’s buying committee in a virtual meeting. With a crowd that large, you want to be mindful of who is paying attention. What does everyone care about? The customer was early in their decision-making process. So instead of talking about the solution, Tom mapped a day in the life of their customer’s customer and how they helped to overcome their problems. They went into how they could help address the friction this prospect was dealing with in their selling process.
As they walked through the pieces of their sales process with the customer, he got almost everyone on the call to participate. Tom made sure he got input from everyone to make sure everyone was engaged. They took notes on what was important. When they went into the solutions part of the call, they tied back to specific people and pain points.
Tom notes that people can be afraid to speak up in front of their CEO and other executives, so you have to be conscious of the political dynamics within the environment. You can overcome that by calling on specific people to contribute to the conversation and be heard. Above all, spend time walking through discovery with the group and make sure everyone is engaged in the pain-point portion. Be aware of the dynamics that occur and be ready with strategies to engage everyone.
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Digital selling encompasses a variety of different communication channels. Whether it’s via social media, texting, email, or video, a great digital seller has to be agile and willing to use whatever medium their prospects and customers prefer. Why is that so important? Lori Richardson shares her thoughts in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
You have to be able to prospect digitally. You need to do value proposition work. You need to be able to connect well with people. Then you need to build your communication skills and tools to have ongoing conversations to build trust with your buyer. You must help them with services you offer—or don’t. You want to help them in any way you can, even if it means referring a prospect to someone else.
Lori believes there are some key sales competencies that aren’t based on personality that must be mastered. These traits help people sell more:
These things are critical to successful selling.
Do you have a solid methodology and process in place? Are you engaging in tasks that lead to closing sales opportunities? There are thousands of tools available for marketing and sales success. Lori emphasizes you must master social selling and video, know how to follow prospects and clients on social media, and learn how to use fundamental tools like Sales Navigator.
What are Lori’s digital selling tips?
Lori helped a company that had found her virtually and reached out through texting. By returning their texts, Lori answered enough questions that they felt comfortable having a phone conversation. The phone conversation led to Lori offering them some services. That turned into a solid six-figure deal. It all started with texting. They turned out to be a great client that Lori still works with today.
If someone emails or calls, Lori responds immediately. If you get back to people quicker, you have the highest chance of closing business. Even if you just schedule a time to talk further, people are blown away. Likewise, if texting is your client's preferred mode of communication, by all means, text them.
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Gartner’s research has shown that buyers complete 57–80% of their buying journey digitally well before they even talk to a salesperson. That’s why—according to Subhanjan Sarkar—you have to find a way to engage with your buyers before they become a lead. How do you accomplish that? Subhanjan shares some thoughts in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Gartner’s research shows that about 17% of a buyer’s journey is spent between multiple vendors. You may only have 2–3% of their entire journey dedicated to you. So you need to find a way into the 57–80% of the journey that the buyer experiences independently. That’s why digital selling is critical.
You must build your position as a thought leader to do that. Buyers don’t want to buy from vendors who only compete on price. Pricing cannot be a tool that everyone uses. To differentiate yourself, you have to understand your buyer. You can learn what a buyer is doing long before you meet them.
Subhanjan recommends mapping a buyer’s universe and start interacting early using technology and adding in a physical meeting when necessary. He recommends that you start gathering and learning about your industry verticals and create a thought leadership position in the industry.
If you aren’t a good fit for a client, send them toward a competitor—don’t create a dissatisfied customer. If you direct them to a better fit they’ll remember you and become a fan because you cared more about solving their problem than getting a sale. Next time they have a problem, they’ll come to you first.
What are the five attributes of a great digital seller? Listen to hear Subhanjan’s thoughts!
Subhanjan believes that one of the most critical strategies a salesperson needs to embrace is early engagement. You can’t just start with a lead. By the time you get a lead, 80% of their journey is over, right? But what if you've already engaged with this lead somewhere online because you’re a thought leader in the industry?
He also emphasizes that you need to be able to start a conversation and continue it without friction. You can share information and bounce ideas off of each other. That will prove extremely valuable.
Lastly, you must master the specific tech tools that your company uses. He points out that everyone uses spreadsheets yet everyone is awful at them, even after 40 years. Salesforce, Hubspot, etc. are complex things you have to invest time in to master. Do this with whatever tools are necessary for your trade.
A very large company in India wanted to build a vendor relationship management system (VRM). They had multiple vendors engaged. One particular vendor started the conversation by saying, “You don’t have to buy from me—have you thought of applying design thinking to the process?” The company didn’t know what design thinking was, so he offered to run a design thinking workshop for the leadership team.
He put on a one-day virtual workshop with an expert from MIT. They learned about digital thinking and applied it to the software they were creating for managing vendors. At the end of the day, the buyers got a better spec sheet for their VRM. They came back and took consultative input from this rep and ended up buying from him. The other vendors had no clue what was going on. This is living proof that a genuine interest in the customer’s benefit is key.
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Kendra believes the way we sell has changed forever. Now, we have a whole new way we can work with people that we can layer onto traditional selling. You don’t have to get on a plane or drive to meet a prospective customer—you can still connect with people digitally. Digital selling allows you to meet with more people and connect with them in bite-size pieces.
Plus, if you’re going to be successful with selling, you need to try new things. Kendra points out that you should have been selling digitally before the pandemic hit. The pandemic should have just accelerated your current strategy.
They can be trained on a CRM, how to use LinkedIn, etc. but people most often get tripped up on video. Why? Because you are front and center. You can’t look down and take notes and it’s difficult to look someone in the eyes. Salespeople have to master connecting and engaging through video.
Kendra also emphasizes that writing has never been a more critical skill than it is now. You have to be able to write emails, text messages, and social media posts. Emotional intelligence is also critical. Can you sense another person’s feelings when you’re limited with body language?
Kendra believes that continued communication is important from a strategy perspective. Whether it’s recapping a conversation via email, video, or text—you need to stay in touch frequently. In the past, salespeople didn’t always do this and could get away with it. But things are more competitive now than ever before. If you’re going to differentiate yourself, frequent communication via a variety of tools is important.
Kendra’s digital selling dos and don’ts are stellar:
When Kendra first started in sales, she had too many clients to cover on her own. Kendra had 300 installed accounts. She didn’t have time for everything she had to do and still hit her quota. She couldn’t go out and meet with every single client and collect orders, which felt like the most important part of the process. You need that face-to-face interaction and connection.
But why couldn’t she get some of the information from a fax (which at the time was new technology)? She’d simply start to accept orders from clients via fax. Ever since, she consistently looks at her process and asks, “What can I do that’s different from everyone else? How can I be the leading edge and stand out?”
Kendra got an award for taking orders over a fax machine because no one had done it before. All because she took initiative and focused on being on the leading edge of technology.
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Darryl admits that digital selling is hard because there’s a lot of noise out there. The sales industry has a propensity toward reusing what’s been done before—the same emails, same LinkedIn sequences, the same ad layout, etc. and it becomes noise. So what do you need to do to improve? Hear Darryl’s thoughts in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Who are you targeting? It can’t just be “anyone in high tech.” You have to be granular. Having 10+ granular customer profiles is fine. Then you develop your personas within those profiles. Darryl is the CRO of VanillaSoft and they target people who are the head of sales, head of marketing, head of operations, head of finance, and the head of IT. If you don’t know their world, you can’t create hyper-personalized messaging or content that resonates with them. Salespeople drop the ball by being too generic. You need to be specific to catch more fish.
Darryl’s digital strategy starts with account-based marketing and selling. You identify your ICPs and personas and build lists. This can give you 50 unique lists with a specific message. Then you need to advertise where they live (Google, LinkedIn, industry forums, etc.). When they come to your website, you want to be able to track their IP to see where they’re coming from. You present content on the website related to that persona. It’s about building a collection of signals.
Then, you put programs in place to nurture and grow the leads. It takes 9–12 touches before someone responds. So you want to use a combination of social, email, SMS, and even a phone call to get them to engage. Make sure you have a sales enablement platform in place so you can see when they’ve opened the content, if they’ve shared it, if they’ve watched a video. All of these things are signals that help you have a hyper-personalized engagement attempt to get someone to a conversation.
A great salesperson logs into their CRM and looks for signs of engagement or conversion. If there is a signal, they use their digital tools to identify their top targets and get them in cadences to engage with them.
Secondly, they must schedule time to go to forums, discussion groups, or wherever conversations are taking place and engage without pitching. It’s about establishing your own brand and thought leadership. Darryl emphasizes that you must also plan engagement so that everything is hyper-personalized to a prospect’s personas and signals.
You can’t send people a generic template email or social touch. You can’t look for shortcuts and means to spam people because it’s a “numbers game.” If you aren’t converting, it doesn’t matter what your numbers are. People buy from people and if you don’t make it relational and relevant to them, they won’t trust you or find you credible. The buyer will walk away. You’ll have spent a boatload of money with no ROI because you tried to scale and take shortcuts.
Engage in your community and contribute to conversations without the expectation of receiving anything in return. It’s a long game to build your reputation and street cred. But Darryl emphasizes that it’s amazing the volume of deals that come to you when people like and trust you. It’s the lowest acquisition cost and highest conversion rate.
When Darryl started at VanillaSoft in 2017 he had zero social media presence. LinkedIn was simply a vehicle for his resume. He recognized that he didn’t have a lot of budget, so he couldn’t compete on a digital spend strategy. So he took the route of LinkedIn. He saw traction within 6 months when he had a crowd around a trade show booth.
One year later, after continuously sharing content on LinkedIn, that same trade show booth was packed. People knew his name. This was happening around the world. Everyone came to the booth looking for him. That’s when he learned branded content and contribution to conversations was a powerful driver.
VanillaSoft got a ton of business they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Nothing else had changed at the company. The only change was a personal brand presence geared toward building a network.
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Digital sales are about leveraging yourself, your service, your products, and the available digital platforms to build relationships. Social selling is where you get to socialize, connect, and have conversations. Liz Wendling emphasizes that social channels are connected to real people in the real world having real conversations. You have to humanize the connection so they feel you’re there to help. One of the ways Liz connects with potential clients is through her “Verbal 2x4.” Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to learn more about her social selling strategy!
Liz sees room for improvement in both empathy and understanding as well as flexibility and advocacy. Selling isn’t about pushing your products but listening to your potential customers to understand what they need. Only then can you solve their problems. You also have to be flexible with the changing marketplace. Potential clients want to work hand-in-hand with someone who wants to help and believes they can do so.
Liz’s strategy is perfect because it works for her. She makes sure her message hits someone with a “verbal 2x4.” She wants to get their attention to move them toward a conversation. What can you do to get someone’s attention? What can you do that lands with an impact?
Authenticity, flexibility, and dedication are necessary attributes for any seller. Liz emphasizes you must be flexible in your process, authentic in your approach, and dedicated to follow-up and follow-through. You have to be able to have conversations (and resurrect the dead ones). Many people give up on themselves far too early in the process and blame it on the customer because “they don’t know what they want.” Be flexible and shift the message or conversation to re-engage potential clients.
Liz implores salespeople to stop apologizing and being self-serving with messages. What does that mean? Liz gets far too many messages saying, “I’m so sorry to bother you…” or “I know you’re busy, so I’ll be brief.” It not only puts the salesperson in the less-than position but does nothing to build confidence in the person you’re reaching out to. Get rid of apology language.
Secondly, don’t make it all about you. Make it all about your customer. Don’t say things like, “I’d love to get on your calendar” or “I’d love 30 minutes of your time.” You’re telling someone what YOU want instead of inviting them into a conversation that they want to be a part of.
What are Liz’s top three digital selling dos and don’ts? Listen to learn more!
Liz teaches her clients to prospect on LinkedIn with a “verbal 2x4.” Liz focuses on the pain, problem, challenge, issue, or dilemma that her target market is muddling through. One area she focuses on with her consulting practice is family law attorneys. They’re spending a fortune to get leads. But they often fall short in sales conversations and conversions—so they’re losing a lot of money.
Liz’s message hits home: “Many of the firms I work with are struggling with this, they’re spending a fortune on that, but here’s what the end result is.” Then she’ll ask for a conversation. They often respond with, “Are you a fly on the wall? How do you know this?”
They think their attorneys are bad at closing, not fully realizing that they’re actually bad at opening. Instead of her pushing for a conversation, they’re the ones asking to get on her calendar. The outcome is always a great conversation. If you have a message that lessens the noise, you can have real honest conversations from an authentic place.
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According to Fred Copestake, social selling is using the platforms and technology available to you to create a personal brand and start conversations. Digital selling is using technology to continue conversations. The use of video (synchronous or asynchronous) is a piece of the puzzle that’s often neglected. Hear why Fred thinks that’s a huge mistake in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Fred’s digital selling blueprint is built around video. What do you need to do on video? What’s the purpose? To communicate or achieve a goal, right? Salespeople need to be equipped with the time and skills to utilize video with their prospects and customers. The use of video in digital sales is what will keep them engaged and move the sales process forward.
Fred recommends Vidyard all the time as an asynchronous video option. It’s free and easy to use. If you’re talking synchronous video, you’ll need Zoom, Teams, etc. Then you need to figure out where and how to apply it. Where can it be used in the process? With prospecting? After-meeting follow-ups? To send a proposal?
What is the video trying to achieve? Fred emphasizes that you must be succinct and punchy. You can get a lot across if your video is well-constructed. Another expert tip? Fred recommends investing in a great microphone to make sure you’re recording great audio. If people can’t hear you, they check out and lose concentration. The perceived credibility of the speaker also lowers if they can’t hear you.
Fred shares some great dos and don’ts:
Fred decided to embrace sending video emails, especially because it’s something that he preaches. He was trying to get a guest on his podcast to talk about virtual selling. In fact, he was sending a video to Tyler Lessard, one of THE experts on digital selling. So he recorded a video using Vidyard.
Fred tried to be clever in his video and hid behind his chair, saying, “People are scared, please come on, share all of these great tips…” He sent the video without reviewing it. Turns out, he sent the video without sound. He sent a silent video of him cowering behind a chair. He prepped for the video, reflected best practices—making it relevant and personal—but forgot to double-check before he sent it. Tyler did end up on his podcast, Fred jokingly saying it was likely out of pity more than anything else.
It’s all about preparation and follow-through. He thought about what he was going to say, how he was going to say it, and the purpose behind it (what he wanted to achieve). It was punchy and short and interesting. Give yourself a moment to prepare—and execute—well.
The world is virtual—that’s not going to change. So Joanne Black emphasizes that we must learn to sell in this virtual world. That means organizations need to give their salespeople the right tools to sell virtually. How do you look into the camera? How do you have a conversation and build relationships? These are the things salespeople can do in person but struggle with digitally. If that’s you, listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented for some tips and tricks from Joanne Black.
Joanne believes you need to have a written strategy that is clearly communicated. How does it apply to each person in your organization? How can you give them the skills to carry out the process? Joanne believes KPIs need to be attached to a social strategy and outreach. Managers tend to shoot from the hip and it leaves salespeople confused. Joanne has been virtual for years and has taken courses on how to sell virtually. She believes you must train and coach your salespeople, allow them to practice, and help them get results.
Joanne notes that the attributes are very similar to in-person selling. You need to build relationships and play the long game. Some people believe that it’s tough to develop relationships with digital selling but Joanne disagrees. If you are well-trained and know how to look into the camera and have a conversation, you will build those relationships. Most people sell complex solutions which means you likely won’t close in one or two calls. You have to think about how to meet the buyers that are essential to closing the deal.
You have to learn how to use digital and social selling tools such as LinkedIn. People go on LinkedIn and pitch, send automated requests, and spew garbage. The best practice is to look at shared connections and read people’s recommendations. You can refer to people’s education, work history, and things they’ve written to reference in a conversation. People forget to be just as social as they would be in person. What are the rules of engagement?
Joanne saw a post on LinkedIn from a head of sales all about referrals. People were commenting all over it and there was a lot of interaction (15–20 were chatting). Joanne added her voice to the conversation and it continued to develop. She decided to write to the head of sales and asked if he wanted to do a webinar about referrals and invite the people who had commented.
He didn’t respond to that question. Instead, he asked her to come in and chat with his group. She had made an offer with no strings attached and it turned into business for her. If someone posts something within your area of expertise, don’t be afraid to share a best practice. It’s about being open and sharing as much as you can.
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Graham Hawkins despises the phrase “social selling” because he believes you’re not selling—you’re solving problems. Modern selling should include leveraging data, tools, and platforms to give the buyer the experience they expect and deserve. Organizations need to acknowledge that the buyer has changed the way they behave and sales professionals must adapt. How can you create a “wow” experience for your buyer at every touchpoint? He shares his process in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Graham’s digital sales strategy is focused on education—solving, not selling. Brute force sales aren’t necessary anymore. The buyer will never be just a number. The goal now is to educate the buyer and solve their business problems.
When you educate, you build rapport, trust, and credibility. Once you’ve done that, Graham recommends that you use the digital platforms and tools to get the information you need to give the buyer a delightful experience at every touchpoint. Your focus should be how you can create an enjoyable experience that’s not pushy, pitching, persuading, manipulating, closing, or objection-handling.
In Graham’s book, “The Future of the Sales Profession,” the key tenant is about specialization. Buyers expect four things from salespeople:
How do you make sure you’re seen as a specialist with a high level of credibility? You need to be a resource to help them solve their business problems.
Graham firmly believes that anyone in sales needs to invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a starting point. If you’ve identified your ideal customer and buyer personas, Sales Navigator can map an organization and show you who the key players are.
Tools like Bombora and 6sense can actually show you who might be looking at certain topics in real-time. Seismic and Outreach can help you facilitate the delivery of educational content. Amplify your efforts with technology.
Buyers are being bombarded by salespeople resorting to old tactics. If you’re being bombarded every single day, focus on differentiation. How do you become memorable?
What are Graham’s top three digital sales dos and don’ts? Listen to learn more!
Graham’s largest client is Lloyd’s Bank in the UK. How did he win their business? Graham had engaged with Rob Michael from Aon on LinkedIn which led to him leading a workshop at Aon. He took a selfie with the group at the end and shared it on LinkedIn. He’s not afraid to show the world what he does. Plus, those photos usually get engagement. One of Rob’s friends who worked at Lloyds Bank (Wayne) liked the photo
So Graham sent a connection request to Wayne. He initiated the engagement and Wayne responded by asking to hear more about what Graham does. That’s how their conversation got started. He built credibility over 3+ months by tagging him in posts and sharing value. Eventually, Wayne reached out to connect with him in London.
After 2.5 years of working with them, Lloyd’s announced a new CEO. Graham reached out to him immediately and introduced himself and shared that he’d worked with them for a couple of years. The next day, the CEO looked at his profile and accepted Graham’s invitation. The moral of the story? Sales are all about the long game.
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Paula White jokes that digital selling was the red-headed step-child for a long time—but it was true. Because of the pandemic, we’ve learned that things can be done via the phone and technology. For salespeople to excel in this digital sales world, Paula would suggest implementing the right technology immediately. To do this, organizations need to understand what salespeople need to succeed in a remote digital sales world. Part of it? Simply remembering that you can still pick up the phone.
If Paula was to build a blueprint for digital selling, it would start with training salespeople how to pick up cues over the phone. Then she’d go into assessing someone’s competencies and whether or not they can sell digitally. But salespeople who naturally have certain attributes may excel.
Paula believes the first attribute you need to have is active listening. You have to be able to hear and understand when a person is bored, isn’t paying attention, or isn’t interested in a product. You must understand their cues. You must actively listen for door opening signals. You need to be able to pick up on that to close the sale. Secondly, you need to be able to work remotely and not be afraid of using the phone.
Paula recommends using gamification to bring competition to your teams. The best strategy is to get on the phone. Paula has always implemented a “10x10” rule i.e. making sure that your 10 calls happen before 10 am. The goal is 30–35 calls a day to reach your customers. The bottom line? A salesperson’s income comes from closing sales.
It’s easy—pick up the phone. Secondly, only sell on a need or want. What does Paula mean by that? People buy on emotion and justify it logically, so you need to find out what someone's needs or wants are. If you’re speaking to a CEO, are their needs or wants financial? Will the product make an end user’s life easier? If you’re speaking to a manager, how will it help both the end user and the financials? Pinpoint who you’re speaking with to understand their needs and wants.
Paula emphasizes that you shouldn’t fake a connection. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. People feel like they’re hidden behind a screen or phone, so don’t forget to bring the human element. Don't try to oversell or you’ll lose the sale. Don’t lose the competition aspect of selling. If you go into the history of sales, you always made a sale with a handshake—it meant something. We don’t have that anymore. So you’re pushing to be in the top 4%. If you don’t have the competitive edge to win ethically, truthfully, and honestly, sales will be a challenge for you. Keeping that in mind makes you better every day.
Many years ago, Paula called a customer and spoke to him around April/May. She asked for his business and he said, “Give me a call back the first week in July.” So she did. He answered the phone and he asked where she was from. She answered, “Ohio.” His response? “You don’t read the paper very much, do you?” Turns out, he had gone out of business.
He was an EMS flight pilot carrying passengers to the hospital. His only plane had gone down. When she hung up, her heart sank. So she sent him a simple condolence card. He called six months later and she got all of his business, simply because of her act of kindness. She learned to do her pre-call planning—and that everyone is human. It’s only with kindness that you can grow.
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Salespeople haven’t gotten many if any face-to-face meetings in the last year. They don’t get to take their clients to ballgames to build rapport. The result of COVID quarantines and working from home accelerated the trend toward digitalization 5–6 years ahead of where we’d be without the unexpected catalyst.
Video has been huge—both synchronous and asynchronous—for the last 18 months. But what is a “sleeper” tactic that Kurt Shaver believes will be strategically implemented as part of the sales process? How does he believe you should leverage LinkedIn? Learn more in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
What is Kurt’s ideal sales strategy?
What are the attributes that Kurt believes make a salesperson excel in digital sales? Keep listening to find out!
The first activity that Kurt categorizes as outbound prospecting is looking at LinkedIn as a database. Who can you target? What’s your outreach? Can you get an introduction? Can you approach them with a certain buyer persona? He advises that you take advantage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Zant, Outreach, Sales Lock, VanillaSoft, etc.
As an individual seller building a network, you have to share relevant content on social networks about your company, industry, and yourself. You must build a reputation as a subject matter expert and go-to resource. People will come to you as a credible resource. Video is a huge area where you can use tools like OneMob, Hippo Video, Vidyard, etc.
What strategies should you adopt? What should you avoid?
Kurt runs a program called “Selling with LinkedIn” where they help sales teams transform their LinkedIn profiles. They always start with the headline. You want it to be a customer-oriented benefit statement. It can’t just be “account executive” or “sales engineer.” You want to say “I help manufacturing engineers streamline processes to drive productivity.”
They helped a client in a recruiting and staffing business do that. Before the training, his headline was “account executive.” In the workshop, he changed it to “I help fast-growth technology companies source and retain top programming talent.” What was the result? A VP of HR at a fast-growth technology company who couldn’t source and retain talent saw that headline.
She reached out to him and he got into the sales cycle with her. Two months later, he closed a six-figure recruiting retainer deal with this company. It all started because he invested 5 minutes to reengineer his headline. He called out the types of customers he works with and the outcomes he hopes to achieve for them.
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If organizations didn’t have a social selling strategy pre-COVID, they certainly do now. But many salespeople struggle to bridge the gap from selling face-to-face to selling digitally. But is it really that different? According to Diane Helbig, it shouldn’t be. Social selling is still all about building relationships. The approach to building relationships simply starts differently. Learn all about it in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Diane notes that we better have a digital selling strategy. No one knows what will happen next. Selling digitally simply increases your capacity for doing outreach. Before the pandemic, people just thought they’d work locally. Now, they’ve added digital selling into their toolbox. Because of this, organizations need to pay attention to how they interact in the digital space.
People think it’s different than face-to-face—but it isn’t. The prospect wants the same engagement, discovery is the same, outreach is relatively the same. Even the conversations you engage in should be the same. Digital selling shouldn’t be more salesy. Too many people change their processes in a digital format and don’t see the same success.
Diane believes a social selling strategy needs to start with relationship-building online. It helps you consistently build and nurture relationships with people in your sphere. It allows you to be in contact with people you want sales conversations with.
So Diane would spend time connecting and engaging with people and getting them on the phone, a Zoom call, and move the relationship forward. You can use LinkedIn to research your target market to see how you’re connected to your target market to get an introduction. These things go hand-in-hand and help you get a warm introduction.
Something everyone should be using is an appointment scheduling software like Calendly. Block out time on your calendar when you know people will fill it. Don’t go back and forth with someone to try and get an appointment. Use your calendar because it’s your friend. There’s real value in looking at your calendar and choosing slots where you will engage in digital selling activity. It can be connecting with people, engaging with their content, etc. Use your calendar as your way to stay structured and consistent.
What are Diane’s digital selling dos and don’ts? Listen to learn more!
Diane had a friend who sold customized gift baskets. She was great at what she did. Diane had built a business relationship with her and trusted and respected her. She went through Diane’s LinkedIn connections and found 5 people she wanted to be introduced to. They tried to do the LinkedIn connection process but no one responded.
So Diane emailed every single one of them and told her friend’s story. Every single one said they’d take her call. She did business with ⅘ of them because she got the conversation. She was discerning about who she asked to be introduced to, did her homework, and asked Diane for an introduction. Because there was a level of trust between everyone, the conversation happened. She did the rest.
Diane learned that it’s important to know the people that you’re connected to. There is value in the quality of the relationships. Secondly, take it upon yourself to do the research and make the request. Instead of waiting for someone to be referred to you, go out there and take action consistently—with a strategy.
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Jamie Shanks believes all businesses have come to recognize that customer acquisition has forever changed. You no longer need to deploy endless amounts of people into the field. You can do 8-figure deals from the comfort of your own home. So sellers need to learn new skillsets to aid customers in their journey, knowing they will never be face-to-face like they were before. One of those necessary skills that must be embraced is signal intelligence. Jamie shares more in this episode of Sales Reinvented. Don’t miss it!
According to Topo, 50% of sellers don’t meet their sales quota. 83.4% of those sellers had poor time management skills. Account selection and prioritization was the single biggest determining factor to great or poor time management. Jamie would focus on teaching teams signal intelligence. What does that mean?
Not all accounts are created equal. You should prioritize accounts based on buyer intent, relationship roadmaps, and time-based signals like maturity and job changes. These compelling events or triggers are the reasons doors get opened, whether a new account or into the core customer you want to upsell or cross-sell. You need to recognize the signals and turn them into something prescriptive.
What are the attributes of a salesperson who’s willing and able to embrace digital selling and succeed? Listen to hear Jamie’s thoughts!
One of the signal categories has a sales play called “the sphere of influence.” James says to take a sheet of paper and draw a logo in the middle of a happy customer. Draw a circle around it and spiderwebs that come off it. Ask yourself: Who cares about this story? Who would this resonate with? You’ll realize that you have advocates that are being recruited to other businesses. Where is the talent going? Focus on those companies.
Do referral road-mapping. Work with your customer success team to find out who your happy customers are. Drop into those people’s LinkedIn profiles to see who they know and have access to. One customer can give you a map of 5–10 prospective customers that are within one degree of separation from your happy customer.
Jamie implores salespeople to learn the skills of mining, indexing, and gathering intelligence from tools like LinkedIn. Once you’re able to extract key insights and turn them into conversations, engagements, and opportunities, you can amplify your efforts by paying for something like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It allows you to tag, save, and organize your total addressable marketing in a prescriptive way.
Don't expect that the new normal will revert to the old playbook. Unless your company took a 50% hit in revenue because you couldn't sell in person, any good CFO will re-deploy those funds to increase the yield per seller, acquire more sellers, etc. The world is reverting to normal but face-to-face meetings aren't coming back.
Jamie has a customer in the UX design/software business scaling rapidly and raising hundreds of millions of dollars. They’ve started to embrace the power of signal intelligence. They’re advanced digital sellers that are mining at a global scale. A sales professional found out that one of their customers—a top 10 global bank—went to Tinder and put in an RFP for a UX design. This was one of their happy and active customers that sought an RFP from another vendor.
So they paused and turned on their signal intelligence and recognized that a department who was looking into this solution decided to select a vendor that he was accustomed to (not realizing that Jamie’s customer was their customer). Jamie’s customer realized that there were past advocates from other customers who were newly appointed inside this bank. While they weren’t the direct buyer, they were part of a buying committee—people who could influence the action taken.
His customer assembled those happy advocates and gave them a playbook to reach out to the decision-maker to share who they’ve used and why they had to go with this particular company. They ended up pausing the RFP, reverting back, and awarding it to Jamie’s customer. It was a $300,000 deal. If they hadn’t thought through the categories of signal intelligence (buying intent, product usage, competitive intelligence, relationship road-mapping, and time). They might’ve just walked away but they realized they had options.
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Brynne Tillman believes that digital selling is vitally important today more than ever. She believes that things will never go back to the way they were before—especially with prospecting in the first conversation. Going to conferences, knocking on doors, and going to trade shows will come back. But Brynne believes many companies will still do all of the top-of-the-funnel activities digitally. With the sales world bent on digital strategies, what does Brynne embrace to be the most effective? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to find out!
Because people are searching digitally, you have to make sure that you are creating a first impression that’s strong enough that they’ll keep digging into your solution to their problem. According to Corporate Visions, “74% of buyers choose the sales rep who is first to add value and insight.” The only way to do this is to show up digitally. You need to be the vendor that’s the first to add value and insight.
You’ve got to position your professional brand as a thought leader and subject matter expert. Brynne’s strategy is focused on selling on LinkedIn. Your profile needs to shift from a resume to a resource. People are choosing the sales rep that provides value and insight—so make your profile a resource.
Secondly, you want to engage in social listening. What does Byrnne mean by that? Make sure that you know what your buyers care about. You can read through their profile, look at their client recommendations, read the content that they share, and even check out the hashtags that they use.
You also need the right content strategy. You have to create good content and engage on that content. All three of these must resonate and create curiosity in your buyer. It needs to teach them something new that gets them to think differently about how they’re doing things today. Brynne emphasizes that “A salesperson’s #1 competitor is the status quo.” If you want to have conversations around your solution, you must be compelling. They must see that what they’re doing isn’t optimal.
You also have to nurture your existing connections. Brynne likes to call it conducting “CPR” on current connections. It’s identifying clients, prospects, and referral partners. You can do this by searching first-degree connections on LinkedIn. Who are the people you should be talking to that you’ve been ignoring? Brynne had a client that did this exercise and found an old client and within weeks closed a $1.5 million deal. Her commission paid for her daughter’s college education.
You also need to do warm market prospecting. There’s an epidemic of cold-calling on LinkedIn (i.e. “connect and pitch” and “bait and switch”). When you’ve identified prospects, you want to search your connections to identify who they know that you want to meet. You can leverage those relationships to get warm referrals to start new conversations.
What are the attributes of a great digital seller? What are her favorite tools to use? Listen to hear Brynne’s thoughts!
There are a few things that Brynne emphasizes you must do—and a few things you should NOT do. What are they?
Eight years ago, Brynne recognized that a client was connected to one of her top prospects, Rob Curley of TD Bank. Brynne had been trying to connect with him for over a year without a response. So she went to her client and asked how they knew each other. They were in a group for parents of children with diabetes. Brynne asked if he could make an introduction. Within twenty minutes, she was given an address for a 10 am meeting the next Monday morning. Brynne would have canceled a trip to Disney World for that meeting.
She showed up and walked in and he said, “Okay, go.” She asked why she got the meeting. He said he would do anything for his buddy. So she said, “If I can show you how your commercial lenders can get in the door the same way…” He looked at his calendar, picked a date three weeks out, and said “By the way, how much?” It was the fastest Sale Brynne ever made. He’s still her client eight years later. It shows how powerful LinkedIn is as a sales tool.
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In this episode of Sales Reinvented, Bob Apollo points out that for a long period of time—because of COVID—digital selling represented the only means of engagement with a potential client. He notes that it’s hard to predict where the balance will lie going forward. We likely won’t revert to the world before COVID but we’ll see a blend between face-to-face and digital selling. So how do you succeed in a world where digital rules? Listen to this episode to learn more!
Bob believes one of the great things about the last 12–18 months—where most of the customer dialogue has happened digitally—is that we’ve had an opportunity to record and analyze the dialogue. Bob has observed that enlightened sales organizations have invested in intelligent analysis of their salespeople’s calls. It opened a window to see how the shape and structure of a conversation unfolds. This helps make the salesperson aware of their interactions with their customers and what they can improve. It can be a great coaching asset.
Bob believes that there are certain competencies and skills that are important. There are a lot of salespeople who used to just “wing it” during a customer conversation. They didn’t prepare or clarify their role—and they got away with it. In the digital world, preparation and structure are key to the success of your sales conversation. An agenda, timeframe, and conditional next steps are all important.
What are the attributes of a great digital seller? Bob shares a few characteristics he looks for, so keep listening!
Firstly, Bob points out that you have to make sure your salespeople are working from a professional home environment. You can’t rely on a dodgy webcam, poor quality microphone, or poor internet connection. Sales organizations have made a modest investment in making sure their salespeople have digital tools that work in an environment where they can be productive.
There’s also a great benefit of using conversational intelligence and analytics tools. Social media—particularly LinkedIn—is a powerful ally for the salesperson when it comes to doing research. It gives a salesperson something relevant to say to the customer. Anything that allows and encourages a salesperson to do thoughtful research is a good thing. Research should be a platform for better conversations and better outreach. You have to go into a meeting with a clear sense of what you want to accomplish while recognizing that you still need to validate your planning in real conversation with the real customer.
One of the techniques that Bob believes has been used for quite some time is “upfront commits.” In the early part of a significant dialogue—after you’ve agreed on goals, priorities, and an agenda—you want to say something like: “Would it be reasonable if we achieve the objectives that we agreed on that our next steps would be…” You talk about where you want things to go next. It’s simple, yet powerful. It helps you achieve a meaningful advance and is a great way to keep the momentum going. Listen to the whole episode to hear Bob’s top three digital selling dos and don’ts!
Bob believes that some of the best salespeople are not the ones that have the largest number of deals in their pipeline. The successful are the ones that have chosen to focus on a more qualified pipeline. They have the discipline to not pursue every attractive opportunity. A lot of good selling comes down to hard work rather than brilliance.
Bob notes that it also partly comes down to personal confidence. Effective salespeople are confident and they will discard an opportunity when they know it’s not worth chasing. Their less confident colleagues lack that self-assurance to disqualify a weak opportunity. They’re fearful their management will question their pipeline. The bottom line? You need to be confident in your own judgment. A lack of confidence causes you to engage in useless activity that doesn’t drive the needle. It’s not about the number of calls you make, demos you've booked, and activity level. Activity doesn’t always lead to progress.
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According to Patti Pokorchak, social “selling” should really be called social “prospecting.” Any good salesperson knows you can’t walk up to someone at a face-to-face networking event and immediately pitch them your wares. You have to build a connection and a relationship. Selling digitally should be the same way. Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to hear Patti’s thoughts on successful social prospecting.
Patti’s business partner likes to say, “All roads lead to your website.” Patti believes the most important part of your website is your lead magnet. You need to be able to capture someone’s email address. Secondly, you have to engage with people daily. She points out that you can’t pretend that you’re active on social media if you’re just throwing up a link to your blog post. Being active means having a dialogue with people.
If you comment on large influencer’s posts, you’ll get eyeballs on your answers. Patti gets most of her connection requests and clients through engaging in this way versus engaging on her own posts. She spends at least 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn adding value and engaging on people’s posts. Showing your expertise on someone else’s content helps you become a thought leader. She recommends that you do a weekly blog post, share it, and engage.
Patti notes that social media can be overwhelming. Her advice? Pick one platform. In the B2B environment, the go-to is LinkedIn. Spend your time on that network and get really good at social prospecting. Patti believes that Twitter is a great place to listen and learn, but not great for gaining business. Pick a market that fits your market. If you’re selling to women in the consumer market? Try Instagram or Pinterest. You don’t have to be on all platforms.
Patti recommends that you find ways to always be learning. The Sales Experts Channel has almost 1,000 videos that you can watch. YouTube is full of great content. Follow people that you think are doing social well.
What does Patti believe is the key to success? She shares some things you should—and shouldn’t—do.
Patti now owns a hobby farm and garden center. When she started it, she knew nothing about farming and didn't know anyone. But after five years, she’s built a thriving business. Over those five years, she’s been collecting emails and had about 1500 people on her list (of avid gardeners). Patti wanted to celebrate her five years in business. Her garden center is seasonal, so she decided to open on 5/5 at 5 pm and ran $5 specials.
She didn’t think many people would show up at 5 pm on a Friday—but she was mistaken. She had people waiting outside the garden gate. 50 people showed up in the five hours she was open. She was stuffing money in her pockets. She notes that you cannot underestimate the demand for something people want. A focused email list can go a long way with your target market. Email marketing is a great way to provide value and connect with your customers.
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Steve Bensen believes that digital selling is important because it’s how buyers are buying. And your best leads—the people most likely to purchase from you—look for answers about your company online. They’re doing searches in Google, researching you, reading reviews, and looking at competitors. You need ads in the right places and content that will satisfy what they’re looking for. You need to provide the answers to their questions while also providing information about your company and what you can do for them. How did Steve achieve that with his business with a focus on digital marketing? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to find out!
You have to go where your customers are looking for you. Some companies may have a heavy presence on social media. Others may need to focus on writing articles or creating video content. You have to think about, “Where are my customers trying to find out more about this space?”
Steve used to write an article or blog every night before he went to bed. He had a list of ideas that he added to when he thought of something. Your blog, writing for other blogs, and even just being quoted in other publications is huge. Long-form rich content that answers people’s questions is key. Those are assets that continue to yield leads.
Badger Maps makes a mapping tool for field salespeople. Who’s looking for that? Maybe a VP of sales or sales operations. Where are those personas looking online? What questions are they asking? What articles are they interested in reading? Make that content so they’ll find you.
Steve notes that it isn’t the same blueprint for everyone. Steve looks at the top 10 places to create content and general awareness and then builds a strategy for each. What characteristics make for a great salesperson? Listen to hear Steve’s thoughts.
For digital selling specifically, Steve recommends outsourcing Google ads because it’s so difficult to do well. But Steve emphasizes that content creation and content marketing should be done in-house (whether by someone full-time or part-time). The creation of content—that is valuable and relevant—to feed the SEO machine is best done by someone who specializes in that. But some things are so expertise-driven that they must be outsourced.
What does Steve believe is key to digital marketing success?
Steve loves creating LinkedIn videos. LinkedIn has a learning platform that allows you to create videos that are made available for anyone to watch. It’s one of Steve’s favorite digital marketing strategies. Steve created a video for them geared toward field salespeople. It allowed Steve to create a lot of reach—180,000 people have watched the video and done the training. It was something a lot of people have gotten value from.
People reach out to Steve and engage all the time because of that one piece of content. He created something of value for the niche that purchases his product. Plus, it’s on a platform with extensive reach. Steve emphasizes the importance of creating valuable content and getting it in places your user can find it. If you do that, the word will get out about what you do. To hear more of his thoughts on digital marketing, listen to the whole episode!
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Digital selling is omnichannel—anything that you can use online. It can be digital assets, PDFs, web pages, interactive quizzes, communities, and more. But when you sell digitally, you have to make a conscious effort to understand and engage with your buyer in ways and places they prefer. That’s why agility and flexibility are essential to the process. Carole Mahoney shares her thoughts on the digital sales process in this episode of Sales Reinvented. Don’t miss it!
In 1993 when the internet was first being launched, Carole realized that it would change everything—including the way people communicate and form relationships. That’s how organizations need to think of digital selling today. It’s been ignored for so long because face-to-face was an option, and thought to be more effective. But the way people buy has been changing since the internet was born. Businesses need to catch up!
They need to be in tune with what is going on with their buyer when they’re engaging in these channels. Carole notes that they often make rash decisions to put everything online without thinking about buyer experience. You must learn from your buyers: how do they prefer to engage online? You don’t want to develop things that annoy or distract from what they’re trying to do.
Carole emphasizes that you have to start with conversations with prospects, buyers, and current customers to collaborate. Selling is something you do with others—not to others. If you want to build a strategy, it needs to start with one-to-one conversations. You need to learn about their pain points and frustrations and what to solve.
How do they go about making confident decisions? How do they prefer to engage? In what ways? Some people hate email. Others can’t get off of it. How do your unique buyers want to communicate? Everyone has a different way to prefer to communicate online. You use that information to design a sales process that’s in alignment with how people buy.
What attributes do salespeople need to have to succeed with digital selling? Listen to learn more!
Carole recommends that all sales teams use Gryphon Networks. Most people just do call reviews and look at what’s already happened—things you can’t have an impact on. But things like role play and real-time coaching with your salespeople can be a game-changer. Gryphon has an AI that can be trained to give the seller coaching prompts at the moment. It can enhance the digital conversation sellers are having.
Carole also recommends finding out where your team places in core competencies. She uses an assessment that can help you focus where your team needs further training and development. If you’d like to assess your team for free and see how they compare to the competition in your industry, check out the Sales Force Evaluation.
What are Carole’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts? You’ll have to listen to find out!
Carole recently held a webinar series for Revenue Collective. Normally, she’d get a list of the people that signed up for the webinar and she’d personally reach out to them. But Carole didn’t get a list. So in her presentation, she shared some links for tools and techniques that were downloadable from her website that people could use immediately. She also made sure her LinkedIn profile was easy to find. What happened?
Several people from the same company looked at her LinkedIn profile and other downloaded tools. She noted who they were, and reached out to one of them. She sent an email asking about what they downloaded and asked a specific question about it. In the end, it resulted in valuable conversations and Carole will be working with them soon. It was a 45–60 day sales cycle with a Vidyard video and emails—how they wanted to interact.
The moral of the story? She had to adapt. She had to find a way to connect with people and provide them valuable resources. She had to find out who was interested in learning more and how to have a conversation. She had to use her website and digital assets to find those people and make it easier to engage. It goes to show that you can have a playbook, run the plays, and do the drills. But when you get on the field, you have to adapt. If you can’t adapt, the play will fail, and you’ll lose the game.
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Tony Hughes points out that we live in a digital-first world. 2020 was a catalyst for accelerating what people are describing as the 4th industrial revolution. He emphasizes that “There’s timeless principles of selling that we need to adapt as we modernize the way that we engage clients.” One of the big trends is that companies are shifting resources from field selling to using the tech stack to sell digitally. So how can you drive change in a digital world? How do you excel with digital selling? Tony Hughes shares his take in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Most buyer’s journeys begin in their trusted online network. They seek social proof for the things that they’re looking at purchasing. Tony was talking to a group of 18 CEOs about modernizing the way they sell. One was the CEO in Australia for a North American company that sells into the pharmacy industry. The two highest-performing territories in North America didn’t have salespeople in them for four months out of the year. This company had been convinced that they needed to maintain mindshare with pharmacists. When they interviewed the pharmacists and business owners they found some interesting things.
Firstly, the pharmacists noted that when the reps called on them, it took them away from serving customers. Secondly, they thought the information being shared with them was just marketing material that they’d rather get in an email or snail mail. The only thing the buyer valued is that they were getting a great price. So this company decided to run some testing in Australia, removing their reps completely. The business has never been stronger. Tony’s point? The belief that bots can never replace you is nonsense.
Tony believes that any blueprint has to begin with understanding your ideal customer profile. You need to think about their:
Companies with a growth mindset are the most likely to purchase.
Then you need to look at the buyer personas—those that say “yes” or form a consensus. You then build the conversation narrative. Once you do that, you need to map the buyer’s journey and go and be where they are. It will certainly include social media, but it will be in other places as well. You move away from the “us” narrative because no one wants to hear it. You need to lead with a narrative about how they can drive improved results in their role. If you do all of that well, they’ll want to understand why you would be the best solution for them.
What three attributes does Tony believe lead to greatness? Listen to find out!
Tony recommends that you look at the tech stack that you’ve got. How can you use what you already have? Would your boss say you’re a good user of CRM? Do you capture meeting notes, build a dashboard, and identify the next best actions to take?
Secondly, use the sales intelligence tools available to you, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can also build searches that monitor for trigger events within your customer base as well as your ICPs and buyer personas within the marketplace.
Can you do pragmatic research? Are you using sales intelligence tools that get you emails and phone numbers? Tony believes the fastest path—and highest probability to a new sale—is when you can provide relevance and context through a trusted relationship and a trigger event. Listen to learn what Tony does with this.
Listen to find out what Tony’s top digital selling dos and don’ts are—some might surprise you!
A great friend of Tony’s is a CEO who just took a role with a new company. As they were talking over breakfast, Tony offered to introduce someone who would be a good fit as a client. When Tony’s friend posted a LinkedIn update about his new role, he liked it, commented, and shared it. He tagged the name of the person he thought would be a good client and said “You two should get together.” This person responded within five minutes and messaged Tony’s friend.
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When you’re selling on LinkedIn—or any other social platform—you’re creating conversations. Maybe you’ve made a connection, had a Zoom call, and take the relationship to a trade show, conference, etc. With virtual selling, you may do the entire sales cycle online. The B2B buyer is at a point where they prefer this. So salespeople need to be primed on social selling skills and able to take it to the next level. You have to learn the best way of engaging with customers if you continue to sell virtually. Viveka von Rosen shares some great tips in this episode of Sales Reinvented!
Digital selling isn’t going away. Viveka emphasizes that you must move beyond “Let’s get on LinkedIn'' and “Let’s shoot a couple videos” to teach sellers how to be charismatic online. They need to learn how to move past images and insert their voice. You can do video cover stories that play where your cover photo would normally go. You can record voice introduction videos. Your profile needs to come to life. But your sellers need to know how to use those features. Viveka points out that your competitors will understand the necessity and are becoming savvy.
Before you reach out and engage with people to fill your pipeline, you need to make sure you look good. Many companies in the social selling space need help. Anyone customer-facing needs a good strong brand. From there, they need to be taught how to engage—not connect. You need to learn how to build face-to-name and top-of-mind awareness so when they are invited to connect they’re more likely to say “yes.”
Then you need to prove value before you try to take the person home. People somehow think they can get on LinkedIn, connect with someone, and start selling their wares. LinkedIn is about creating strong conversations and building know, like, and trust. You nurture those relationships by sharing valuable content. You need to put this all together in an easily repeatable cadence.
What are the attributes + characteristics necessary to succeed? Listen to hear Viveka’s thoughts!
Viveka always recommends that you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Unfortunately, she points out that a lot of salespeople don’t understand the best ways of using the tool. She also recommends a good CRM—whether it’s Salesforce, Hubspot, or Nimble—that works. Viveka is a huge fan of selling with video. They use OneMob but there are many great email video tools out there. Using video in messages, emails, and texts gives people a great sense of who you are. There are strategies that you can put in place to be more charismatic online. With a little practice, you can use it well and be effective. Listen to hear Viveka’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts!
When Viveka started training salespeople how to sell on LinkedIn (in 2009), most people didn't even know what it was. They didn’t understand the value in it. She had flown to New York to speak to a law firm. She can still see them staring at her with their arms crossed, brows furrowed, questioning the validity of selling on LinkedIn. She started to explain the features and watched their eyes glaze over. She finally just told herself to stop talking. She switched gears and asked them how they would buy a car. They all said that they would do research first.
So she asked them to Google their names. The first thing that came up was the company website. But halfway down the results page would be LinkedIn. So she pointed out that a potential client will look at their profile to make sure they’re a good fit. So she asked them to click on their profile. What they saw was the most bare-boned pathetic example of a profile. She could immediately see their walls come down. Everyone started to listen.
The moral of the story? You need to get your buyer to experience the point of pain that you solve, to physically experience it. That will move you toward the sale more than anything else.
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Ryan Kugler believes you have to embrace both digital selling and old-school ways of selling, such as sending emails and making cold calls. How does he find success with both strategies? Why does he believe persistence pays off? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented for a completely different take on digital and social selling.
Ryan has found that email is the easiest way to connect with someone—as long as you do it right. He always asks a question in the subject line so the prospect wants to open your email. Then you give them the answer to the question you asked in the subject line. It can be a few simple sentences, then you pitch your product. He’s also a huge fan of jumping on the phone.
Ryan notes that social networking depends on what product or service you’re pitching. If it’s to a consumer, Ryan recommends Instagram or Facebook. If you’re in the B2B space, LinkedIn is the way to go. Ryan has three businesses, none of which are consumer-based, so he doesn’t spend a lot of time on Instagram or Facebook.
What are the attributes of a great salesperson? Listen to hear Ryan’s thoughts.
Ryan believes something as simple as listening to great podcasts and being able to hear others’ experiences is extremely helpful. Secondly, you need to educate yourself on sales and find a way to motivate yourself. You have to have the intention to sell.
If you are a true salesperson, you want to read books about sales, find a coach, a mentor, or something that motivates you to wake up every day and do it. It’s all about investing in personal development. After that, it’s a numbers game: get your name out there. Make sure your product or service is something that people want.
What rules does Ryan follow to find success with digital sales? He shares some thoughts:
Ryan points out that sales involve prospecting, right? You need a base of customers to call. Ryan has a customer he’s been calling for 15 years (leaving messages and sending emails). This person would see his email or hear his name somehow. In March of 2020, COVID hit. This person finally called him back and said “I need this right now.” That phone call led to the biggest sale he’d ever made—it was the same amount of sales he’d done for 25 years. The moral of the story? Don’t give up. The persistence will pay off eventually, even if it takes 20 years.
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Bill McCormick believes that relationships are the most important difference between digital selling and social selling. To Bill, digital selling encompasses all mediums. It’s email, SMS, chat, direct messages, phone calls, video, etc. It’s larger numbers and more impersonal outreach. Social selling is social. It’s about establishing a relationship and a connection with a person and moving that relationship along until there’s an opportunity for a sales conversation. Hear his complete thoughts on digital and social selling in this episode of Sales reinvented!
Things can change in a moment. Even as things begin to open, Bill doubts that we’ll return to how things used to be. He believes we’ll be looking at a hybrid model for companies where many more people will work from home. McKinsey reported that 75% of buyers are saying that when they get back in the office, they’d prefer initial meetings to be conducted virtually.
People need digital communication to set up meetings and have the meetings. Companies need to support their reps with decent technology (camera, microphones, laptop, etc.) and teach them how to use it so they’ll be successful.
Bill implores salespeople: Don’t try to build relationships with mass outreach. Use social selling to build relationships. You use digital outreach—like an email campaign—to get valuable information out. The second part—using social selling to build relationships—means you need to slow your outreach to increase your outcome. You have to go fast to go slow.
So you have to identify social tactics that will build relationships and credibility and build a cadence around that. Don’t just blindly connect with people and pitch your product because they’re your ideal client. You need to identify them, view their LinkedIn profile (or other social platforms), and engage with their content. That gives you a reason to connect with them. Once you’ve done that, you need a well-crafted welcome message with a piece of content that’s educational and ready to send them if they want it.
When you do this consistently, it builds relationships that lead to more sales conversations. It takes time—but you don't end up burning people. When you do mass outreach and you get a conversion rate of 5–10%, that’s considered successful. But what are you doing to the other 95% of people? When you slow your outreach, you aren’t burning those that aren’t responding.
Bill believes that much of digital selling will have to be video, which means you have to be comfortable in your own skin. You also have to be authentic and comfortable talking about yourself in a way that shows people that you’re human. You have to be open to learning new technology, tactics, and strategies. You have to be adaptable. Lastly, you must be consistent with digital and social selling. People have to get used to you. It develops a relationship and credibility—that is what makes a difference in your digital selling efforts.
Video isn’t the future—it’s the here and now. If you’re not using it, you’re being left behind. If you hate the way you look and sound in a video, guess what? You look and sound the same in a physical meeting. It’s not different and you have to get used to it. Treat the camera as someone’s face and look them in the eye when you speak. Eye contact builds trust and it’s no different with virtual communication. All prospects, clients, former clients, etc. are all people. Digital selling can seem impersonal, but you can really create a connection across a screen.
Bill shares a few things to keep in mind with digital and social selling:
Bill shares a digital sales story that demonstrates the need for consistency and persistence. Listen to the whole episode to learn more!
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