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

The most common question I hear as a consultant when working with clients to integrate their sales, marketing and social media strategies is “What is the ROI ( Return on Investment ) for Social Media and Social Networks.” Many business people and companies struggle with the ROI on tools like Twitter, Blogging, FaceBook, or Video online.  Based upon a book I have been working on called “Social ROI” which addresses the ROI in community engagement I have put together this podcast on 26 ways to measure Social Media ROI. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated (especially if I missed one!). (Direct Download)

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This week I made a statement on Twitter saying “Find your voice and then your tribe will find you.”  I got several responses and one of them as a good question. The question was:

LesleyChang: @shanegibson What’s the best way to refine your voice?

That’s a great question so I thought I would answer it in the form of a podcast today.

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I believe that CRM or customer relationships management software is going to be going through some major changes in the next 24 to 36 months.  Not all organizations will have a need for this change, but for those of us who will benefit from this next generation CRM it is an exciting development. Jeremiah Owyang was one of the first people I heard talk about it.

What I am talking about is real time, permission based data on clients that will have the potential to tell us everything from what time of day they are most likely to answer a twitter comment from us to what events they are attending and what brand of TV they prefer or “favorite.”

This data is available on most contacts you have if you are connected to them on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin but the challenge is managing the noise and the chaos to hone in on the events, preferences, and people that matter most to your sales, networking and community building efforts.

A comment made to me on Twitter just moments after recording this podcast was:

From: @Raize604 @shanegibson it’s also more high maintenance CRM which makes me wonder if its worth it” (He was referring to all the trouble with watching clients and prospects on multiple networks)

A properly engineered and formatted Social CRM can pull all of this data for you, filter it, help you focus on a target group and tell you when specific people or groups are most responsive to what messages in what mediums.  Here’s today’s sales podcast on Social CRM:

I picked up my copy of Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals today and it really got me thinking about how casual or loose most sales teams and organizations are. If I was to go into battle (so to speak) how many sales people that I know would I actually bring with me? Who could I count? Who can count on me?  Today’s podcast is about how sales management and sales professionals can learn from the leadership lessons of the Navy Seals.

Today’s podcast is about applying 5 easy steps to increase the momentum in your business or sales process.  If you have been going through the motions or not feeling motivated today’s podcast will hopefully give you a boost.

Today’s podcast is possibly about why your prospects aren’t calling you back.  I’ve created a bit of a monster, several events here in Vancouver and abroad where I have been telling people that attending events like The Vancouver Sales Performance Meetup, various Vancouver Board of Trade Functions, Tweetups and industry functions is how to grow business. This is not true. It only works if you’re doing it the right way.

Some once said part of success is just showing up. To add to this it’s about HOW YOU SHOW UP. Have a listen (Be warned this one may offend those who don’t enjoy sarcasm):

Today’s sales podcast is focused on 10 ways to avoid cold calling. In the sales podcast I will cover 10 ways to avoid cold calling. Here’s the list:

* Become a constant prospector

* Attend industry events twice a week

* Blog everyday about solutions to client pains

* Make new connections using Twitter

* Ask for introductions through Linkedin

* Share your ideal client profile with your entire network in the form of a distributed case study

* Inform clients you’re looking for new business

* Offer referral fees to non-competitive service or product supplier

* Be newsworthy or launch a press release

* Use seminar and webinar selling

* (Bonus) Become a subject matter expert

Here’s today’s sales podcast on the topic:

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Today’s podcast comes from a question submitted to me by Dave Macdonald via twitter (@davemacdonald).  Here’s what he asked: “What are some sound strategies to ensure that positive or negative momentum doesn’t result in purely transactional behaviour?”

It’s an interesting question. Falling into being transactional when things are going well or when things are not going well is a bad long term sales and business strategy.  Non-transactional selling is relationship based, focused, purposeful and customized for your client and market. I answered his question via podcast. If you have a sales question you want answered follow me on Twitter.

Here’s today’s podcast:

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I read a blog entry posted by @salesbloggers via Twitter the other day and it inspired this podcast. The entry by Steven Rosen claims that sales training is a non-revenue generating activity. Great sales training is just that, it gives sales professionals more efficient approaches and processes to close deals.

If you could pull together your sales team for three hours, give them just three things to implement that would increase their efficiency by even 5% your Return on Investment over the next 90 days would be worth much more than the 3 hours they spent out of the field. In addition to this, I found the blog entry to be another one of many coaching versus training blog entries. Why can’t we all just get along?

Organizations that really have their sales performance strategy together will be driving forward with both training and coaching working synergistically. Each plays and important role in maintaining competitiveness, motivation and retaining star players. Have a listen to my rant on this topic:

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Many people talk about the sales pipeline.  I have heard many people comment on the fact that they have a lot of business in the pipeline. When prodded further they can’t tell me how strong their relationship is with each client. Even fewer people have a method of measuring where they are at.  You just can’t predict when a deal will close unless you have a handle on the relationship. Have a listen to today’s podcast:

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