Kurt Shaver’s Creative Tips to Transform Digital Selling, Ep #265

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! 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:01] The difference between digital selling and social selling
• [2:27] Why is digital selling important? How can you improve it?
• [4:05] The blueprint for the perfect digital selling strategy
• [5:32] The attributes that make a salesperson excel in digital sales
• [6:50] Tools, techniques, and strategies to use
• [8:50] Kurt’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [12:16] Your LinkedIn profile is a resource—not a resume

Kurt’s blueprint for the perfect digital selling strategy

What is Kurt’s ideal sales strategy? 

• You have to figure out what your goals are and how you’ll measure them.
• Once you identify your goals, figure out who you’re trying to reach, what the buying personas are, and what content does the company has to address the different buying personas in different parts of the sales cycle. Content is a huge play. 
• On the selling side, you need the right tools in place. LinkedIn or Sales Navigator? Will you use video messaging tools or content sharing tools? 
• You need the right training, coaching, reinforcement, ongoing metrics, and make sure it’s woven into sales so everything sticks. 

What are the attributes that Kurt believes make a salesperson excel in digital sales? Keep listening to find out!

Tools, techniques, and strategies to use

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. 

Kurt’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts

What strategies should you adopt? What should you avoid? 

• Learn how to master the social network that the majority of your prospects use. In the B2B world, it’s likely LinkedIn. People in Sports and Entertainment may skew toward Twitter. If they're in advertising they may use Instagram. Be present on that network.
• Embrace and get comfortable with being on video. All the apps are adding video—and it isn’t just social networks. 
• If you want to get ahead of the curve, experiment with texting prospects. This strategy is the hardest to succeed with. In North America, sending a text will get you the highest response rate of any communication medium. But the bad news is that you have to be in someone’s inner circle of trust and you can’t violate that.
• Don’t treat LinkedIn as a resume (unless you’re trying to get a job). It needs to be more like a website and a resource.
• Don’t pounce on people when you send someone an invitation. The first words out of your mouth shouldn’t be selling. You court before you ask someone to marry you.
• If you're trying to build rapport and you get a video conference, turn on the camera so they learn to know, like, and trust you. 

Your LinkedIn profile is a resource—not a resume

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.

Resources & People Mentioned

• Sales Navigator
• Xant
• Outreach
• VanillaSoft
• OneMob
• Hippo Video
• Vidyard

Connect with Kurt Shaver

• Vengreso
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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