Sean's Sales Vitamins

If a customer’s buying journey (and your corresponding sales process) is complex and you’ve reached a stage in growth and maturity to warrant hiring specialized sales roles including pre-sales, lead development reps, hunters, farmers, industry or domain experts and overlays, then you have a set of people with vastly different needs in what they should learn and what content they should read. But far too often, sales enablement strategies fail to take this specialization into account. Training and content are primarily designed for the hunters, since they have the most prominent role in acquiring new logos. When the strategy is more specialized, it becomes two-track, where more technical training is delivered and content created for the sales engineer. But that strategy still leaves out a wide range of customer-facing individuals, including those that are viewed as highly influential by prospects.

The ideal approach is one that looks at all the different roles involved in the sales process and designs training and content specifically for each of them.

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The best stay attuned to their customers' signals in the social graph.

 

Condensed...

 

1. Be findable and credible. There is an unstated expectation from buyers now that they should be able to find you on Google and social media. Creating a profile on LinkedIn or Facebook is only part of the equation. When buyers know a purchase is going to require working with a sales rep, they want to know that person is credible. The best social salespeople build out their online presence by sharing pertinent education and work experience information, connecting to their customers (who can provide references), and participating in relevant LinkedIn Groups.

2. Become the trusted advisor and teacher. Social media is an enormously powerful and effective tool for sales reps to demonstrate expertise and consequently build trust. Successful salespeople stay top of mind with their customers and prospects by regularly sharing helpful tips relating to the products they sell, relevant news, and personal updates that build emotional connection and convey positive character such as a philanthropic interest. The personal connection is equally important in B2B as B2C sales — so long as you are not just competing on price and there is risk in the purchase decision, prospects will always be inclined to buy from someone they feel they know, like, and trust.

3. Deliver highly personalized service at scale. Delivering personalized service is nothing new to a seasoned salesperson, but scaling this with social media technology is key to continuing to drive up sales productivity and effectiveness. Today's customers expect reps to do their homework and to reach out at the right time with the right message. Successful social salespeople don't annoy prospects before they are ready to hear from them. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to be high-touch with everyone all the time, so the smart salesperson strives to be low-touch until it's the right time to become high-touch.

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