Sales Reinvented

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! 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:02] What’s the difference between digital and social selling?
• [1:55] Why is digital selling so important? 
• [3:30] Give your buyer a “wow” at every touchpoint 
• [5:12] Successful sellers are specialized
• [7:25] Tools + techniques + strategies
• [11:21] Top three digital sales dos and don’ts
• [13:45] Sales are all about the long game

Give your buyer a “wow” at every touchpoint 

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. 

Successful sellers are specialized

In Graham’s book, “The Future of the Sales Profession,” the key tenant is about specialization. Buyers expect four things from salespeople:

• That you do your research to understand them and their industry
• That the salesperson has to personalize everything to their context
• The buyers want to learn something from you
• Buyers expect that the salesperson will anticipate future needs (as well as current needs)

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. 

Tools + techniques + strategies

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!

Sales are all about the long game

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. 

Resources & People Mentioned

• The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey
• Rob Michael
• Sales Navigator
• Bombora
• 6sense
• Seismic
• Outreach

Connect with Graham Hawkins

• The Future of the Sales Profession
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter 

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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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.

Outline of This Episode

 

• [1:02] The difference between digital and social selling
• [2:01] How to improve digital sales
• [2:52] Paula’s blueprint for digital sales
• [3:30] The attributes that make a great salesperson
• [4:30] Paula’s favorite digital selling strategy
• [5:23] Paula’s digital selling dos and don’ts
• [9:03] Always sell with kindness

The attributes that make a great salesperson

 

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. 

Paula’s digital selling dos and don’ts

 

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. 

Sell with kindness

 

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.

Connect with Paula White

 

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Connect on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

 

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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! 

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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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! 

Outline of This Episode

• [0:59] The difference between digital and social selling
• [1:39] Why is digital selling important? How can you improve?
• [3:11] Diane’s social selling strategy 
• [4:36] The characteristics of a great digital seller
• [5:46] Improve your digital selling with these tools
• [7:55] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [10:46] Sales is a verb: take action consistently

Why is social selling important? How can you improve?

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’s social selling strategy 

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. 

Improve your digital selling with these tools

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!

Sales is a verb: take action consistently

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.

Resources & People Mentioned

• Calendly

Connect with Diane Helbig

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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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!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:22] The difference between social and digital selling
• [2:20] How to improve digital selling capabilities
• [3:35] Signal intelligence in account selection and prioritization
• [5:00] The attributes of a great digital salesperson
• [6:40] Take advantage of your sphere of influence 
• [9:18] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [12:56] Jamie’s favorite digital selling story

Signal intelligence in account selection and prioritization

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!

Take advantage of your sphere of influence

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’s digital selling dos and don’ts

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. 

The power of signal intelligence

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.

Resources & People Mentioned

• TOPO/Gartner

Connect with Jamie Shanks

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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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!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:27] The difference between digital and social selling
• [2:15] Why is digital selling important? How can you improve?
• [5:03] Brynne’s social selling strategy
• [9:30] The attributes of a great digital seller
• [11:45] Tools, techniques, and strategies
• [13:43] Top 3 social selling dos and don’ts

It’s time to add value + insight

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. 

Brynne’s social selling strategy

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!

Top 3 social selling dos and don’ts

There are a few things that Brynne emphasizes you must do—and a few things you should NOT do. What are they?

• Do NOT connect and pitch. Start real conversations as if you were in a room together. Tailor your messages to be personal. Slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome. 
• Don’t connect and forget. Everyone is guilty of this. People connect and never start conversations. 
• Don’t post and ghost. People put out content and don’t engage with likes and comments. It takes time to build a fanbase.
• Send a personal note with every invitation. A lot of people don’t agree with this but Brynne believes there are three reasons to do this. Taking the time to personalize the message doesn’t feel automated. You can see and remember why you connected in the first place. Lastly, it’s polite. 
• Search your connection’s connections to find who they know and leverage your relationships to get introductions.
• Capture your genius. No one reads 2,000-word blog posts anymore. People are interested in videos and quotes. 

How to leverage your connection’s connections

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.

Resources & People Mentioned

• Calendly
• Canva

Connect with Brynne Tillman

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

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!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:14] The difference between digital and social selling
• [2:24] How to improve digital selling capabilities
• [4:44] Bob’s digital selling strategy
• [8:10] The attributes of a great salesperson
• [9:34] Tools, techniques, and digital selling strategies
• [13:30] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [15:23] Focus on quality over quantity

Bob’s digital selling strategy

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! 

Tools, techniques, and digital selling strategies

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!

Focus on quality leads over quantity of leads

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.

Resources & People Mentioned

• Microsoft Teams
• Zoom

Connect with Bob Apollo

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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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. 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:30] The differences between digital and social selling 
• [2:15] How can organizations improve digital sales?
• [3:23] Patti’s blueprint for digital sale success begins with engagement 
• [5:38] Attributes or characteristics of a great digital salesperson
• [6:47] Tools, techniques, and strategies to improve social prospecting
• [8:08] Patti’s top three digital selling dos and don’ts
• [12:08] Why email marketing is still a valid marketing strategy

Social prospecting success begins with engagement 

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. 

Tools, techniques, and strategies to improve social prospecting

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. 

Top social prospecting dos and don’ts

What does Patti believe is the key to success? She shares some things you should—and shouldn’t—do.

• Engage on other people’s posts with value-added comments. Don’t just “like” it and move on. It has far more impact than engaging on yours. Read the posts and give your two cents. 
• Be patient. Social media is a long game. No matter what you’ve heard, do your research and be patient. It’s a high-touch, high-volume business that’s worth taking your time.
• Pick one social media platform and get good at it. Learn to be effective in 15 minutes.
• Stop selling. It’s not social selling, it’s social prospecting. You don’t immediately sell to someone in face-to-face networking. Get people to take baby steps to learn a bit at a time. 
• Don’t just rely on digital and social selling. It’s a passive approach and one-way dialogue. Patti believes in picking up the phone and leaving a voicemail. Follow it with an email portraying the same message. You have to talk to people.
• Don’t give up too soon. It takes 10–20 touches before you can even think about giving up. 

Don’t forget about email marketing

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. 

Resources & People Mentioned

• The Sales Experts Channel 

Connect with Patti Pokorchak

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

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! 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:05] The difference between digital and social selling
• [2:03] How to improve digital selling capabilities
• [4:15] Steve’s digital selling strategy
• [6:14] Attributes + characteristics of a great digital seller
• [8:08] Tools, techniques, or strategies to improve
• [9:41] Steve’s digital selling dos and don’ts
• [13:29] Leveraging LinkedIn learning with relevant content

Steve’s digital marketing strategy

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. 

Tools, techniques, and strategies to improve

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. 

Steves’ digital marketing dos and don’ts

What does Steve believe is key to digital marketing success? 

• Be consistent. Keep creating great content regularly (email marketing, blog posts, social media, video, podcasting, etc.). Don’t dabble—commit to doing something and do it. The things that work in marketing compound over time when you’re consistent and in it for the long haul. 
• Specialize. Develop specialized in-house roles. If video content is your strategy, you need someone excellent at creating videos. The same goes for social media marketing and writing blogs. 
• Don’t be boring. Steve believes a lot of digital marketing material can be lame. You need to find a way to create unique value and don’t just regurgitate what’s already out there. 
• Don’t get lost in the noise. Create a niche market that attracts your unique customer profile. Feed them the content they need and want to read/hear/watch. Steve’s podcast is called “Outside Sales Talk” because it’s specifically for outside salespeople and it creates value just for them. 

Leveraging LinkedIn learning

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!

Resources & People Mentioned

• Badger Maps
• Outside Sales Talk Podcast

Connect with Steve Benson

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

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! 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:33] The difference between digital and social
• [2:11] How to improve digital selling
• [3:30] Carole’s digital selling strategy
• [4:43] Attributes salespeople need to succeed
• [6:39] Tools + techniques + strategies to utilize
• [8:45] Top 3 digital dos and don’ts
• [10:46] Learn to be digitally agile 

How to improve digital selling

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’s digital selling strategy

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!

Tools + techniques + strategies to utilize 

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!

Learn to be digitally agile 

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. 

Resources & People Mentioned

• Objective Management Group
• Assess your team for FREE with Unbound Growth’s Sales Force Evaluation
• Pavillion Revenue Collective
• Vidyard

Connect with Carole Mahoney

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter 

Connect With Paul Watts 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com