How I Hack A Conference With #SocialSelling by Peter Strid

You can’t attend every industry conference. But you can make it seem like you are there…you can join digitally…you might even find a new deal like I have!

There was a recent industry conference, let’s call it “SocialSlam15!” being held in California an exclusive resort. A great opportunity for me to rub elbows with my peers and prospect audience of marketing and sales leaders interested in Social Selling! I had one problem; for those who know me, I broke my leg a few months ago and had a date with an orthopedic surgeon I couldn’t miss, so I couldn’t physically attend. I decided to do the next best thing…Hack it to make people think I was there! (I also saved thousands $ in airfare, hotel 😉

My #SocialSelling Conference Hack was accomplished primarily using Twitter, LinkedIn, Email, Text Messaging and, yes, Periscope. My outcomes were better than anticipated. I attracted a bunch of new Twitter Followers and unsolicited LinkedIn Connections. I had 4 existing clients and 3 net new prospects literally reach out to me wanting to get together with me while I was “at the event” because they thought I was sitting in the resort with them!

Evidence:

I even received an unsolicited job offer from an attendee of “SocialSlam15!” (Thanks but no thanks). The best part of it all; I anticipate closing at least one Net New Deal because of my activity there!

Here are a few examples of the type of activity during the “SocialSlam!” Event that made my presence known:

1) I start with a post on LinkedIn…a simple screen capture of a picture of the key note speaker that I borrowed from another attendee’s tweet. Here’s a simple example of a conference being held right now in NYC called “Uncubed”. Looks like I’m sitting in the front row. Some people on my team even thought I was in NYC today after seeing this post!

2) I tweet the same content to take advantage of the many attendees referencing the #hashtag throughout the event. I also “tagged” the Uncubed team. I’m starting to get noticed! And I could continue with more tweets and posts…

With the rest of this post I’ll describe how I can “attend digitally” without physically being present and while saving $5000 and 4 days away from my office. I am engaging with peers and prospects not in an attempt to trick them, but an important observation is that when people gather physically at a conference, they also gather digitally. This creates an opportunity to engage – whether you are there physically or virtually. I’ll use an awesome upcoming Conference that I’d like to attend as an example: Selling Power Magazine’s “Sales 2.0” Event in Philadelphia!

Make Yourself Known!

1) Your best results will come if you get a head start. Before the kick off of the conference you are targeting, do some research. Review the website of the conference for basic details…Location, Timing, Agenda, Speakers, etc…

2) Find the twitter #hashtags associated with the event. Usually the conference website will have point you to their twitter handle where you might find some info. In the case of this upcoming Selling Power “Sales 2.0” conference the #hashtag is: #s20c. 3) Follow as many of the speakers and conference affiliates on Twitter that you can find…this will help you get them to notice you and set you up for tweeting about them when they are on stage. 4) Make your excitement and anticipated presence known by tweeting that you will be there! A few tips…add an image such as the logo of the conference, use the event #hashtag, tag the speakers (you can tag up to 10 people). Every time someone interacts with the tweet they will be notified!

5) Along with that tweet, make yourself known on LinkedIn as well. Here I have re-purposed that tweet on LinkedIn by uploading a photo…again making sure to tag the key note speakers.

6) Be sure to retweet, “like” and engage with some of the current activity from the speakers…especially if they are already tweeting about the event! Also pay close attention to the #hashtag in the days leading up to the event…you might find something to take advantage of.

I’ve outlined the basics of the beginning of my activity. Leading up to the show I will continue to follow the #hashtag and “like” and retweet select posts. It’s important to be creative and have some fun with it. Some events post updates to their blog or website, some even live broadcast. Use these to your advantage…listen and pull sound bites that you can retweet and credit the speaker. Speakers love being on stage and they LOVE when people boost their egos with tweets of their presentation content. People will retweet you and you will be on your way to being there. (Almost!)

This strategy can be incredibly fruitful. I have literally closed deals because of this type of behavior. For more detail on how I proceed on “gameday”, reach out to me. I have a lot more tricks…too many to list here; things like how to use Periscope for live action or even YouTube. If you’d like me to teach you or your sales team how to do this in your industry, please reach out to me…I’d love to help.

Have any hacks of your own that are similar…please share them below!

If you found this post useful…send it to your friends. Nothing better than a nice share to your followers! Thanks!

Follow Me On Twitter @PeterStrid

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Category: Business, Sales, Social Business, Social Media, Social Selling, Social Selling | No Comments »

10 Ways To Teach Your Customers To Buy From You by Gerry Moran

When it comes successful social selling and meeting your sales quota, being more like a car mechanic, instead of a car salesman, might be the key to your success. Huh? How are you going to meet your quota if you don’t act like the tenacious and famous car salesman, Cal Worthington?

I have purchased over 10 cars in my lifetime and cannot remember any of the names, faces or other details of the people who sold them to me. However, I remember every car mechanic I’ve ever worked with. I remember each of them because we built a trusting relationship. They taught me and did not sell me. They showed me how to maintain my car and advised me on what to look for when buying a new car. They were my trusted advisor who helped me fix my current problem and frame my future purchase. Wow!

Whether you are selling enterprise software solutions in the cloud or trading show shipping services you can position yourself as a teacher, like my car mechanics, and reap the rewards of being a top seller.

Social Selling Lessons | Be A Teacher Not A Seller

1. Differentiate Yourself From The Sales Sharks. With InsideView reporting that 90% of CEO’s do not return cold emails or calls, becoming a trusted advisor and teacher to your customers makes sense. It’s the only way to break through to them. Don’t ‘look’ like the typical sales professional and you will separate yourself form the herd of sales sharks.

2. Don’t Be All About Making A Deal. Instead of focusing on a small amount of sales, build a large social network people modeled after your customers and their influencers. 75% of B2B decision makers use social media to learn. So, plug into this larger network, to bust your quota.

3. Pass On Valuable Information. Don’t use your social media and network channels to promote your solutions. Pass on valuable information, instead, to lead the conversation to you when the time is right to buy. You want to be known for handing out knowledge and not brochures.

4. Associate Yourself With Great Brands. You are the company you keep, so keep good company. Associate yourself with great knowledge brands, like Harvard Business Review, Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, to build your reputation and brand.

5. Think Outside The Trade-Show Booth. Cast the trade booth sales mentality away and spread your knowledge so people will eventually visit your trade booth when it’s time to buy; 73% of customers are willing to engage with you on social media, so get to it!

6. Use Social Media To Teach And Not Sell. Selling is best done face-to-face. However, Social Media Today reports B2B buyers look at an average of over 10 digital resources before ever making a purchase. Since customers need to learn before they buy, use this opportunity on social media to connect. Your customers are there whether or not you are.

7. Teach And Connect With Today’s Technology. Connect and get on the radar of your customers and potential networks by retweeting, sharing, commenting and favoriting others’ content. Intersecting with their learning tools is a great way to build a relationship instead of finding and phoning them from a LinkedIn search. LinkedIn reports 85% of IT Decision Makers use social networks for business, so your future customers are waiting for you to socially engage.

8. Develop Insights. Before you teach and connect with your customers, you need to listen to the customer and their customers. Listening is a great way to prepare for your connections and calls. SirisuDecisions reports 82% B2B decision makers think sales representatives are unprepared for meetings, so this insight-driven approach will help you build the best social selling lesson plan.

9. Tap Into The Ready-made Network. There is an entire social community on LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs, where customers are tapping to learn how to be smarter, more effective, more efficient to make more money. Determine how to tap into this potential, leverage the rules of engagement, and position yourself as a teacher; especially since the Sales Benchmark Index reports reps with 5000+ linked in connections have a 98% chance of attaining quota.

10. Be A Publisher. In addition to curating and passing on the great content to your network, create your own assets on a blog. Blogging is the social selling secret weapon. Hubspot reports that 92% of companies that blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog, so this strategy seems like a no-brainer!

Do you have another teaching tip to share? If so, please comment below.

Category: Sales, Social Selling, Social Selling | No Comments »

How to figure out which LinkedIn Groups your buyers are part of? By Ankur Chaudhary

The best of social sellers leverage LinkedIn groups to their highest potential to develop relationships while generating warms leads for themselves.

However, often, we are not sure how to identify which LinkedIn groups our buyers are a part of. If you are using the LinkedIn advanced search option to build your buyers list, it is very easy to identify Groups your buyers are active in.

After filling in the criteria of your buyers, press ‘Search’ to go to a list of all your buyers.

When you scroll down the list, you will notice a ‘Group’ option. The groups mentioned here are the groups which have a maximum number of your buyers involved.

If you are targeting only a few companies, simply add all your target companies’ names in the ‘Current company’ box and tick any other search criteria required. LinkedIn will still tell you which of your buyers are part of which groups.

Your job is not done yet. A group with a higher number of your buyers might not be the ideal group for you chose to target your buyers.
You will need to check the Group statistics and see if this group might serve your purpose.

Important factors which you should note are:

– Comments over the last week (See below)

Go to demographics section to note the following factors (See image below):

– Seniority percentage

– Function

– Location

– Industry

Then go to activity section, which can be seen in the following image:

Give priority to ‘Number of comments’ than ‘discussions last week’ or ‘promotions last week’ to better judge the relevancy of a group. This information shows if the group is actively used by members to engage in discussions or if it is just a dump yard for promotions.

Here is a helpful post by Chris Makara on ‘6 ways to use LinkedIn groups for B2B Lead generation.’ http://chrismakara.com/social-media/6-ways-to-use-linkedin-groups-for-b2b-lead-generation/

I generated two warm leads in April by developing relationships in couple of groups I’m active in. How about you? I would love to hear some of your success stories.

Category: LinkedIn, Social Selling | 1 Comment »

Have You Been Social Selling All Along? by Susan Marshall

Chances are, you’ve read a blog post, joined a webinar or attended a conference that celebrated the “social selling” revolution. Supporters of the social selling movement claimed that LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites would bring an end to the stereotype of pushy, disconnected, quota-hungry salespeople and give rise to a new breed of relationship-first sellers who use social media to seek connections instead of transactions; who share valuable resources instead of pushing products; who listen instead of talk.

Yet despite the promise of social selling, just one in four salespeople know how to use social media to sell, and a mere 31 percent of reps report using social media at all in their sales process.

The meager adoption of social selling, however, isn’t because it doesn’t work. In fact, 73 percent of social salespeople strongly outperform their traditional selling peers. The problem is that the concept of social selling is woefully misunderstood.

Many salespeople tend to think of social selling as an entirely new discipline: “I know how to sell in the real world, but now I need to learn how to sell on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.” But the simple truth is that social selling isn’t new. The same traits that determine if you’re a good salesperson offline—being honest, helpful, and informative—are what make salespeople successful in the social sphere. Social media are tools. Being a good salesperson is a mindset13. (highlight to tweet)

So, although you may have at first been intimidated by the concept of social selling, understanding the similarities between selling online and traditional selling will help put you at ease. You’ve been social selling all along, and you didn’t even know it.

LinkedIn: Like Trade Shows Without the Travel

Trade shows are a massive investment in time and money. The average attendee travels more than 400 miles to each show and spends more than eight hours meandering through a maze of exhibits in search of leads. The grueling days and hefty travel expenses are worth it, though, if each trade show visit results in new relationships forged on the exhibit hall floor.

It’s that same ability to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships that makes LinkedIn so valuable to salespeople.

Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn is more than a job-hunting destination—it’s an incredibly deep research and prospecting tool that can be used to unearth new prospects and identify key points of entry into the businesses you’re targeting.

Consider how you select which trade shows to attend before buying a badge. You visit the trade show website, do some research on who’s slated to speak and which companies are signed on to exhibit, and then make a judgement call on if you think it’ll draw the type of prospects you’re looking for.

Finding and connecting with prospects on LinkedIn is even easier. Featuring a variety of search options and detailed profiles, LinkedIn enables you to quickly find the people you want to connect wit2h and makes it easy to ask existing connections to introduce you to their connections to broaden your network.

Following through on our analogy, if you think of LinkedIn as a trade show, thenLinkedIn Groups are the swanky, invite-only after parties. And, just like at real parties, nobody likes a pushy salesman crashing a LinkedIn Group. Groups aren’t a place to hawk your products and services. Rather, they’re a place where you can answer questions, share relevant and informative resources, and engage in conversations. By joining in on these real—albeit digital—conversations, you’ll earn a reputation as an expert whose products or services are worth paying attention to.

Twitter: A Warmer Alternative to Cold Calls

Think those cold calls are working? Think again. According to sales research groupHuthwaite, 91 percent of people never respond to cold calls and, even worse, 71 percent find them annoying2. Even salespeople hate cold calling: 63 percent of reps say it’s what they hate most about their jobs.

Even if cold calling is a necessary evil to filling your funnel, wouldn’t it be nice to know just a little bit about a prospect before reaching out to them? Well, think of Twitter as a tool for making cold calls warmer.

The best thing about Twitter is that you don’t need to tweet a single thing to start seeing its value—all you need to do is start “listening.” Twitter is the perfect tool for conducting some basic pre-sales research, because you can search for specific keywords and phrases to identify prospects. Plugging in a competitor’s name might turn up a Twitter rant from an unhappy customer looking to make a switch. Or, you might find that a prospect is narrowing down their shortlist and looking for suggestions from the Twittersphere. You may even stumble upon some of your own customers requesting (or, in more severe cases, demanding) help.

Twitter enables you to find and engage with prospects at every stage of the sales cycle, and can even help you intervene should a current customer be having a hard time. And, should you be so inclined to share some tweets of your own, you’ll find that the Twitter audience is eager for advice: 73 percent of people trust the information they receive from Twitter.

Now, isn’t that better than taking a shot in the dark on a cold call?

Facebook: A Friendlier Way to Nurture Leads

Potential buyers don’t become customers overnight. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales due to lack of lead nurturing. Conversely, leads that are effectively nurtured make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, according to The Annuitas Group.

Relationships are critical in today’s sales cycles, and the only way to build those relationships is by communicating with buyers throughout every stage. Phone calls and email have been the two biggest lead nurturing mainstays among sales reps, but Facebook presents a unique opportunity for salespeople to connect with prospects and maintain relationships over time.

While Facebook started as a way for college kids and, eventually, friends and family to keep in touch, it has evolved to become an important source of news and information for the majority of adults. Nearly 80 percent of people consume some news when checking Facebook, including a small percentage who consider Facebook their primary news source. In other words, it’s no longer taboo to share information (provided it’s relevant and useful) with your Facebook friends.

Nurturing leads on Facebook is no different than nurturing them on a phone call to check in or an email that includes a relevant case study. Nurturing—using any communication channel—is less about closing the sale, and more about answering and asking questions, providing valuable content, and engaging in real conversations. And because Facebook is a place where people are more inclined to share what’s happening in their personal lives, it can lead to even deeper, more meaningful connections.

You’re Already a Social Selling Pro

Social Selling isn’t a new concept; it’s simply taking the same traits that make people good at selling at trade shows, on phone calls, and throughout the nurturing process and applying them across social channels. If your goal is to provide useful information and forge a meaningful relationship, then you will see your sales spike regardless of if you’re meeting in-person on the trade show floor or on LinkedIn, making contact through a cold call or on Twitter, or nurturing through follow-up emails or Facebook. Simply put: social selling is selling.

For 25 years, Susan Marshall has been building and launching some of the best-in-class professional web and video editing applications including Flash, Dreamweaver, and Final Cut Pro, as well as leading digital marketing efforts for ExactTarget, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and more. Capitalizing on her past experience at Apple and mobile startups like ChaCha, Susan now serves as the CEO and co-founder of Torchlite Digital Marketing

Category: FaceBook, LinkedIn, Social Selling, Social Selling, Twitter | No Comments »

10 important changes you need to know about LinkedIn for 2015 by Greg Cooper

The LinkedIn development team have been busy. The last few months have seen many changes, big and small, to the world’s #1 business networking platform and the New Year will bring more. In this post I am going to highlight some of the ones I feel are most important for you to know about. You should be aware that because of the way that LinkedIn phases in updates gradually across its customer base it is likely that you will have some but not all of the changes mentioned below.

Why you may ask is it so important to keep up to date with changes to LinkedIn? Isn’t it at the end of the day just another business application like Word or Excel? Well no actually. LinkedIn is also the place where buyer and seller meet and build relationships. Studies consistently show that that the most successful sales people spend more time on LinkedIn than their less successful colleagues. Part of this time is spent making sure they keep abreast of changes because being fluent on LinkedIn gives you a competitive edge.

And so to the changes. Here in my opinion are some of the most important recent and planned changes you need to know about.

1. Revised pricing

LinkedIn recently revamped its pricing model, dumping the lower priced “Spotlight” and “Business” accounts and making “Business Plus” the entry level paid account. This represents a significant hike in pricing. Larger businesses and those selling high value products or services will still regard the paid account as good value however many small businesses are likely to balk at paying $49.95 per month.

If you are not sure if it is worth paying for a premium account LinkedIn has made it easy to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime from your settings page. Here is acomparison of the different accounts. You can also try out any premium account for free for 30 days.

Here is an excellent article by Andy Brandt that reviews the recent price changes.

2. Profile Page – “View Page As” option

With the new profile page design you can “view page as” it will be seen by (a) your connections (b) by the public i.e.anyone. The latter is a stripped down version of your page which does not show blog posts, contact information, endorsements or recommendations, media files.

This is a useful reminder of the importance of reaching out to connect with your target audience so they have access to your profile page in its full glory!

Button allows you to see your profile as your connections or the public do

3. Permaedit Mode

Although the “edit profile” command remains at the moment in the drop down menu this is now redundant as scrolling over any section on the profile page will automatically turn on edit mode for that section – see below:

Scrolling over the profile page now instantly switches edit mode on

4. New look Homepage

LinkedIn have redesigned and simplified the homepage to become a personal dashboard.This is an update I don’t have at the time of writing. This is LinkedIn’s description of the main changes.

“At the very top of the homepage, your new dashboard gives you instant feedback on how you’re doing. See how many people have viewed you and understand how your status updates are performing. Click on either one to get deeper insights into what’s resonating with the connections you care about. Learn who found you – from that CEO to a long-lost friend – and how they found you, plus how you rank across your connections, within your company, and other LinkedIn members like you. Make quick edits to your profile – which help us surface better opportunities, news, and connection ideas for you – with a single click”.

There is also a new “Keep in touch box” at the top right of the page where you can share a comment, say congrats, or like an update.

Click here to read LinkedIn’s announcement about the redesigned homepage.

5. Redesigned recommendation feature

The recommendation feature is one of the longest established and most important LinkedIn features but until very recently had received little attention from the design team. I am glad to say the feature has now been completely updated, for example the rather bizarre option to send out up to 200 recommendations requests at once has been replaced by the option to send a maximum of three requests at one time.

6. Removal of group connection request

A couple of months ago LinkedIn quietly removed the ability to send connection invitations to people in a shared group. This was a very popular and useful feature. and many people are unhappy that this has disappeared. Being in the same group implies shared interests and would therefore seem a reasonable basis for connecting. If LinkedIn were concerned this feature was being abused it would have been simpler in my opinion to add an opt out in the settings menu.

7. New connection options

A change is coming to the standard connection request process from a member’s page. Currently clicking on the connect button on someone’s profile will bring up the dialogue box shown above. In future clicking on this button will automatically send a standard non-personalised connect request. In order to send a personalised request (recommended) it will be necessary to click on the drop down menu and select the customised request option.

I do not have this update yet.

8. How people found you

When you check who has viewed your profile LinkedIn now helpfully tells you how that person came to your profile e.g. from a group, the mobile app, the who viewed your profile page. Whilst this is not necessarily the most important recent change it does give useful feedback on which aspects of your LinkedIn activity are being effective in getting you noticed.

9. New Inmail policy

From January 2015 Inmails will work differently. Instead of receiving credits for Inmails that are not read the system will be turned on its head so in future you receive a credit for every response received (Reply or Not Interested) from a recipient within 90 days. If you don’t get a response within 90 days, however, the InMail credit will be lost.

The monthly Inmail allowance will also increase depending on your membership. For example the entry level Business Plus account will now receive 15 instead of 10 per month. Unused Inmails will continue to be valid for 90 days, after which they are deleted.

It is possible to purchase up to 10 additional Inmails.

Read the LinkedIn policy in full.

10. New LinkedIn search engine

Over the last 18 months LinkedIn has been developing and rolling out a new search engine code named “Galene”. This has largely replaced the original “Lucene” search engine which was no longer able to cope with the volume and rate of change of LinkedIn’s data.

The key benefits provided by the new search engine are:

Instant member search of whole LinkedIn database
Improved relevance as a result of a more sophisticated algorithm

This is a work in progress and some of the results that a LinkedIn search currently produces can be a bit puzzling with no obvious logic. However it does seem that some of the factors that will influence your ranking on a given search are location, social proximity (how closely connected you are to an individual), and keywords.

There are many more impenetrable criteria hidden in the bowels of the algorithm which we can only guess at, but as with Google search the best advice for users is to make sure you are posting good quality content that is relevant to your audience and you have written and optimised your profile with the customer in mind.

Stop press: LinkedIn have just announced that free account users will now be able to view full names and profiles for anyone in their extended network, this was previously only available to paid subscribers. At the same time LinkedIn are introducing a new restriction on the number of searches that free account users can make each month – this is know as the rather vaguely defined “commercial limit”.A progress bar will appear in your search results when 30% of your searches are left, and will continue to remind you in 5% increments. After you’ve reached the limit, you’ll continue to be able to search, but will see a limited number of results. Your free monthly usage will reset on the 1st of each calendar month.

You can read more here.

I’d love to hear what you think of these changes and any other changes which you feel will have a significant impact on the way you use LinkedIn.

If you have enjoyed this article please share it so other people can too.

_________________________________

Greg Cooper is a Marketing Coach and LinkedIn specialist and Google+ trainer based in Bristol, UK. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing. For over twenty years Greg ran an award winning direct marketing agency working with leading technology companies like IBM, SAP, and Siemens. Today he works with SMEs and Business Units of larger companies. He is an accredited coach on the Government sponsored Growth Accelerator Programme.

For more information about Greg’s Coaching and Training Services or to join the mailing list please click here.

Category: LinkedIn, Sales, Social Selling | No Comments »

Social Selling Trends for 2015 by Jeffrey Gitomer

Free Sales! Free Sales! Step Right Up and Get Your Free Sales!

What are your social goals this year?

No, not who are you taking to the dance on Saturday night. What are your intentions to create more online social involvement that leads to attraction, engagement and sales. Social sales. Oh, that.

UPDATE: Social sales and social selling is the new black.

SET YOUR SALES COMPASS ON “SOCIAL” AND THINK ABOUT THIS:
• What are your social value offerings?
• What are your social product offerings?
• What is attractive about your social offerings?
• Where is the perceived value in your social outreach?
• Where is the perceived value in your social offerings?

These are painful questions – but I’m just getting started.

My good friend, and IBM’s social evangelist, Sandy Carter, asked me to comment on what’s next in the world of social selling for 2015.

Here are the Social Media and Social Selling Trends for 2015:
• Social media and social selling are entering the next phase. It’s the “comfortable with” phase – big companies and previous naysayers in general are branching out and digging in. Everyone is realizing the unlimited power, and has some experience with the process and applications. Comfortable enough to BUY.
Social Selling Challenge: Are your customers and prospects buying from your online offerings?
• Will your social selling offers only bring sales? The discount offerings bring customers. The value offerings bring customers and PROFIT!
Social Selling Challenge: How much profit are your online sales bringing in?
• Every social media site is trying to do and be everything to everyone. Photos are now everywhere. Videos are now everywhere. The “likers” are now everywhere.
Social Selling Challenge: How current is your social presence? Are you gaining a following?
• Kids will continue to abandon Facebook for Instagram – 300,000 million Instagram users – and don’t be misled by the word “kid” – in 5 years they’re your new customer – and will probably be more social savvy than you are.
Social Selling Challenge: What are your kids doing? What are they buying?
• Smartphones will continue to be the social involvement device of choice.And the app will continue to dominate Internet use.
Social Selling Challenge: Do you have a social selling app? What’s your plan to get one or improve the one you have?
• “Social” involvement is no longer an option – it’s an imperative. You no longer have a choice – it’s all in or be left out.
Social Selling Challenge: Who is in charge of social sales and social selling in your company?
• Social selling is becoming more prevalent and more sophisticated.Analytics is the new black. Data-driven selling is the new norm.
Social Selling Challenge: do you know who your online customers are?
• App developers are thriving to capacity. That should tell you the story all by itself.
Social Selling Challenge: Partner with an app developer and make something happen.
• Purchases are the final frontier. The more people buy online, the more social interaction becomes and stays relevant. Ratings by customers will outweigh all other forms of advertisements.
Social Selling Challenge: What is your social selling volume? And what’s your plan to double it?

My business plan for 2015 has a heavy concentration on social selling. So much so that I am writing (like this), investing in infrastructure (website and apps), and intensifying my social presence with more value messages.

Oh, I am also learning. Social selling is more fluid than mercury. Changes occur by the hour. And game-changers appear daily. I study the marketplace and especially MY marketplace, daily.

Where is the attraction coming from and what’s happening once the attracted actually land someplace? Are they buying or are they flying (okay, clicking) away?

Social selling is on the rapid rise. And unless you’re Amazon or Apple, you’re way behind the eight ball in development and execution.

Hopefully your competition sucks worse than you do. And hopefully you’re doing something about it sooner than they do.

This article can be found in the Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Pocket Reference

Category: Sales, Social Media, Social Selling, Social Selling | No Comments »

Are You Smarketing or Smelling? Guest post by Gerry Moran

Great organizations’ sales and marketing teams converge to create a strategy, an approach, a culture called smarketing. The ones who do not do it so well are, well, are smelling.

And your Modern-Marketer customers don’t like smelling, This convergence is a natural evolution led by a better-informed and more-empowered customer.

Smarketing by Kenny Madden

Johann Wrede, a customer engagement specialist for SAP states, “Customers have less tolerance than ever for content-free interactions, and sellers are struggling to connect early enough in the buying journey to exert influence on the decision. To adapt, marketers and sellers need to assess and remix their skills, regardless of the organizational silo they happen to be in, rather than wait for organizational boundaries to change.” So, the customer and content is king.

Are you a smarketer or a smeller?
Why Smarketing Makes Sense

While there is no specific scorecard to discern the smarketers from the smellers, there is solid research to support the integration of sales and marketing strategy, content and activation makes sense.

Smarketing Drives Growth. Aberdeen research indicates companies who ‘get’ sales and marketing integration grow 20% faster than those who don’t. Smart marketers, right? No, smarketers!

Content Smarketing Generates Leads. HubSpot research suggests blogging companies generate 55% more leads than non-blogging companies.

Smarketing Gets Sales Reps Involved With The Buying Cycle Earlier. SiriusDecicions findings show 70% of the buying journey is completed before the buyer is recognized as a prospect and in the CRM ‘books’ by the selling organization.The key inference is that there is less chance to frame the sales opportunities and more chance to complete an RFP.

7 Guiding Principles For Smarketing Success

1. Move from silos to outcome-based activity. Day-to-day reality in many organizations manifests in managing daily call reports, creating marketing content for social media channels and communities, and closing sales for the quarter. Quarter after quarter this set of sales and marketing activities is a ‘wash, rinse, repeat’ cycle.” Rhonda Holloway, Founder and Senior Partner of Six20 Partners has a holistic solution to this chasm. Holloway states, “Sales and Marketing should be SMARKETING for the greater good, but the two roles are vastly different. Perhaps B2B companies should institute 3 month job rotations between Sales & Marketing. After the rotation, the salesperson should have a better understanding of how to partner with Marketing and better use the great content and Marketing should have a better understanding of the material that really makes a difference in the field. Both jobs are hard and I think the problem is we both think the other is easy – hence the chasm.”

2. Manage The Sales and Marketing Convergence. Corporate silos and fiefdoms (remember, the customers are in charge of the kingdom) need a strategic group or individual to bridge the gap and broker the convergence. This person is a Smarketing Director. Although I’ve not seen this official ‘Smarketing Director’ moniker, it is present in evolving smarketing organizations. They are the ones taking the leadership role by laying the foundation. They are bridging the gap between sales and marketing. Most start with a single project, like social selling awareness program or provide structured LinkedIn tune-ups to the sales and marketing departments.

3. A Sales, Marketing or Smarketing Playbook Drives Quicker Adoption. Sometimes the quickest way to drive adoption is to bake the ingredients into an established recipe, to make it new and improved! The fastest way to drive smarketing adoption is to co-opt native behavior and not to ask someone to do something completely different. Just integrate it into a smarketing play.

Smarketing 1 by Kenny Madden Are You Smarketing or Smelling?

4. Measure Smarketing Success To Monetize It. It is likely no smarketing KPIs exist for any organization. However, revenue, quota and efficiency are common KPIs. Getting out of bed isn’t a KPI either. However, you need to get out of bed and you need to use smarketing to reach revenue, quota and efficiency goals. Ultimately, success is measured and monetized by accelerated sales pipeline and fewer resources required to do the job. Heidi Schwande, Chief Digital Office For WSI World adds “Getting sales and marketing to see themselves as allies instead of rivals improves the company’s bottom line.”

5. Let Customers Guide You. Martin Weinberg, a Philadelphia-based digital leader states, “From the buyer’s perspective, it truly is one continuous journey, so this type of thinking is long overdue. Separately, it’s too easy for each department to generate activity instead of accomplishment by focusing on short-term metrics. One of the top benefits (of smarketing) would be an opportunity for more effective messaging by pre-handling real objections salespeople encounter within marketing communications. Now that most communication is digital, it’s more cost-effective than ever to take this approach, though the opportunity is often overlooked.” Kenny Madden, a Market Developer for Spiceworks, underlines the need for smarketing with the buyer, “You have to get through the 1st 50% of the sales cycle to get to the last 50%.” I’d call that “percentage smarketing!”

6. Content Marketing Strategy Is Key To Being A Smarketer. Marcy Hoffman, a Miam-based Independent Consultant who helps start-ups and small businesses who people start the process by looking for information often because they know their problem, but haven’t defined the solution; adding Knowledge/content at the beginning of the process helps identify the content creator as a leader in their industry which serves to reinforce the next stage.

7. Adapt and Adopt or Be Overlooked. Victor Clarke, principle for Clarke, Inc, a marketing services firm, states, “I have sold everything from Xerox copiers in the 80s to the first computers to be installed in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate in the 90s to marketing services currently. Sales has been turned upside down in the last 5 years with smarketing. SPIN selling is dead and sales folks either adapt or they are gone.” Mike Ausloos, Head of Business Development for Northern Concrete Construction stated “I don’t know how any system can be effective without operating with SMARKETING. Both are gathering market info & there needs to be collaboration to form the correct content, selling points, etc. seems to be missing a determiner before it.”Barbara Giamonco states in her book, The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, “In the midst of this communication revolution sales must adopt a new approach that incorporates social media. When we overturn the old business practices, what emerges is something called “smarketing.” Sales and Marketing need to work in tandem, as Giamonco notes. However, some forced ‘hard wiring’ likely needs to happen for evolution to effectively occur.

Do you have a smarketing guiding principle or point to share? If so, please comment below. Or reach out to me directly at MarketingThink.com, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+.

Combining sales and marketing to achieve company goals is key. If you do it right, then you are a smarketer. If you don’t do it right then you are a smeller. Which one are you? A smarketer, or a smeller?

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