Shane Gibson's Sales Podcast – Social Selling – B2B Sales and Influence

Many organizations want to create a sales culture but many also fail at doing so. Today’s podcast covers nine lessons around creating sales culture that I have learned while helping non-sales organizations create sales culture:

* You need buy-in

* It’s really about creating an opportunity culture

* You need to reward people, that means everyone

* “What gets inspected gets respected” – Trevor Greene

* Move poor fits out quick, and hire the right people

* Feed the monster – train and develop continually

* Fix operations if they don’t support sales

* Fix products and services that don’t meet needs or fulfill promises

* It takes time, up to 18 months or longer before true leadership evolves

I have posted this file to our Sociable! FaceBook page but have yet to post it for non-members in my podcast feed for iTunes until today. This is a free audio preview of Sociable! How Social Media Is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down by Stephen Jagger and myself (Shane Gibson). Also below is a link to Sociable ! on Scribd if you haven’t read the PDF yet. We’re counting down the days until we receive the hard copy of the book but want to make sure we give you an advance sneak peek at what’s coming. If you’re a blogger, podcaster, or from the media and want a review copy of the book send me an e-mail at [email protected] or tweet me @shanegibson.

Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside Down

//

Sociable! on Facebook

Loading…

Today’s podcast is on developing a prospecting discipline and why you need to plan it out and make it part of your sales and marketing strategy. Bullet points on the podcast:

Four Types of Prospecting:

* Face to Face

* Extended Personal

* Community and Network Prospecting

* Media Marketing/Prospecting

Make a Plan:

* Have the intent to meet people wherever you go, be aware and focus on rapport

* Book time everyday for e-mail and phone calls

* Book time everyday for prospecting on Linkedin and listening/monitoring the web

* Attend two target rich events per month and one major conference per quarter

* Budget a percentage of your projected income or revenues and spend it every month on media and press releases etc.

What’s your prospecting plan look like?

Subscribe in iTunes

Today’s podcast is on the connection between serendipity and discipline as well as the connection between training and intuition. I’m also going to talk about why very few people experience high levels of positive serendipity or tap into their intuition because they quit too soon. I’d love your feedback and thoughts on this topic. This applies to social media, sales, traditional marketing and even networking activities.

Looking for a social media speaker for your next conference?

You can contact us or take a look at Shane Gibson’s bio.

I’m doing a seminar on December 2nd in Victoria and December 3rd in Vancouver and thought I would share some of what I will be talking about with you in my podcast.  Today’s focus is on how to engage, lead and train Generation Y / Millenials in the workplace. This demographic is much maligned and misunderstood.

More information on the seminars here:

Seminar Details

“Leading and collaborating with stakeholders and employees in a hyper connected marketplace.”

With employees, customers and stakeholders equipped with technology that allows for mass collaboration and rapid communication we as leaders need to understand how to harness this technology and the crowds we are connected to.

Today’s workplace is not a homogeneous one. As leaders we have to lead teams that are made up of Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y.  This coupled with diverse cultures and values in the workplace make leading both exciting and challenging.

In this session Shane Gibson will cover core trends, leadership tools and opportunities that are associated with today’s digitally connected and diverse marketplace.

Key topics include:

• New rules for engagement in a digitally transparent era.

• Web 2.0 collaboration and learning tools.

• Creating an environment that is productive and engaging for the millennial / Gen Y.

• Tips and approaches for recruiting staff using tools like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

• Using technology to break down silos and create collaboration within your organization.

• How to apply timeless leadership principles to this new work and business climate

CMA Testimonial

“I found the seminar (Partnering & Stakeholder Relationships, November 2009) very beneficial. Shane did a great job on the presentation and communicating the message. I would highly recommend his sessions to my fellow CMAs.”

Sanjeev Lal, CMA, Abbotsford

Register for Victoria, December 2nd 2009 Seminar

Register for Vancouver, December 3rd 2009 Seminar

Today’s podcast is more about questions than answers, this is somewhat of a roughly formed thought at this point. Tribes by Seth Godin really resonated with me when I first read it a year ago. Jay Conrad Levinson’s concept of Nano-casting to small unique groups (often only parts of a tribe) has always intrigued me. On a recent trip to Florida Jay and I spent an evening talking about Nano-casting, nomadic tribalists and social media marketing.

Here’s some of the core thoughts

* We no longer can broadcast, or niche market, we need to nano-cast to small groups of people, often smaller than the entire tribe.

* Nano-casting isn’t enough, we need to employ Listening 2.0 strategies and have intimate conversations.

* You must be adept at being a nomadic social media tribalist, your ability to move from tribe to tribe and adapt as you market is vital.

I really would like your feedback on this concept. Make a comment below, Tweet me, or find me on Google Wave ([email protected]).

Listening is a core part of all strategy, military, personal relationships, sales and social media. Observing your competitors before forming strategy and taking action, or listening to your customer for the purpose of engagement, rapport and opportunity seeking.  It all starts with listening.  In marketing, as in battle it is often one bold stroke that wins, knowing when, where and how we hit our adversary.  Today’s podcast is about Listening 2.0 and what it means to all of us.  Listening 2.0 is about making others feel listened to and understood, it’s not just about nodding our virtual heads or tabulating comments in a social media sentiment report.

Photo Credit: Dr. X’s Vintage Photo Blog

I was recently asked to summarize the what marketers must know about social media marketing by Jay Levinson. I was about to answer him when he added a stipulation in, in 3 points, only 3 summarize what marketers must know about social media. I thought I would share with you what I shared with him:

* It’s a conversation – As marketers in the past we have been awarded based upon our ability to craft messages and broadcast to an audience, a niche or a market segment.  People no longer want to be talked at.  In fact their conversations with each other on Twitter, Facebook, or even the videos they post on YouTube impact and define major brands.  As social media marketers we need to get involved in those conversations if we want to effectively brand and market online.

* It’s a listening tool – More than a conversation, social media marketing is about listening.  We need to be listening for opportunities to engage with people that are talking about our brand.  Social media gives us the opportunity to engage at the instant someone is talking about us (if we’re listening), and have relevant, personal and authentic conversations with our customers.  Use tools like Twitter search, Google Alerts, and SocialMention.com to monitor those conversations.

* Social media belongs to everyone, which is good and bad, it forces you to be different to win – As a marketer you no longer have control or a monopoly on a medium.  Social media tools are in everyone’s hands.  This is great news for anyone who wants to create a brand and generate revenues online.  This is also a bad thing, because it creates a lot of noise. You must have a distinctive message, offering and leadership style if you want to get noticed online.  To win you must be more engaging, add more value, and be more creative than everyone else if you want to rise above the noise.

There’s a lot of talk about being engaged. In particular in social media we talk about engagement as one of the key benchmarks of being a successful brand, marketer, blogger or personality online.  Today’s podcast is on what engagement is about. Here’s a short list of what engagement is:

* Complete listening, not just to hear but to make others feel heard.

* Present consistently

* Connected emotionally

* Aligned with values

* Contributing to dreams

* Seeing trust as an ends not a means

* Creating networks and meeting points

Yes I have consumed the social media Kool-Aid. In fact I have opened my own roadside stand.  Social media is an exciting disruptive technology.  But the ride is almost over, the hype will die down after everyone has found everyone on Facebook and when even our dog has a blog. Marketers and the community at large will ask “Now What?”

Social media will come to an end.  The ride is not over yet, we have a few good years ahead of us but the writing is one the wall.  My podcast today is about the end of social media and what it means to marketers, bloggers, business owners and the community as a whole.