4 Steps to Scale a Social Selling Training Program for Success, with Linda DiBias, Episode #61

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In order to develop a social selling training program for your company, you’re either going to have to create it from scratch or learn from someone who’s already done it. That second choice sounds like a far better use of time, don’t you think? My guest on this episode is Linda DiBias, Manager of Content and Social Selling for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. I connected with Linda because I knew her team had recently established a social selling training program to help their sales teams find prospects and build trusted relationships. In this conversation, we talk about how they’ve trained their team to generate leads through social media, why it’s vital to do, how they hold their team accountable for it, and the ways they are tracking the ROI of the program. It’s a valuable conversation, so be sure to listen to this episode of #SellingWithSocial. And if you’re looking for a great, customized social selling training program to equip your team for outstanding social sales results, remember Vengreso offers exactly that.

This podcast is being brought to you by The 10th Annual AA-ISP Leadership Summit.

Social Selling Training Begins With A Relational Approach To Social Networks

Any successful social selling training program needs to emphasize the right way to think about social media networks. When it comes to effectively using social for sales lead generation, it’s not done by repeatedly posting what you do or the packages your company offers – it’s done through establishing new relationships. Sales teams have got to learn how to use social to research their existing networks for the purpose of finding new connections who need the solutions they offer. In this episode, Linda describes how the Verizon Enterprise Solutions sales teams use their social media platform of choice to do that kind of research as well as explaining what Verizon does as a company to make their efforts more effective. You won’t want to miss these practical points she shares.

Sharing Relevant Content Is Vital For Nurturing Potential Sales Relationships

The leadership at Verizon Enterprise Solutions recognizes that their sales teams need to be able to curate relevant content for their social networks. Why? Because when a salesperson shares a resource that is beneficial to one of their connections, they become a trusted resource to that person. The hope is that those relationships become leads which eventually become sales appointments. In our conversation, Linda explained the role Verizon plays in supplying relevant content to its sales teams, why that content is broader than only the solutions Verizon offers, and the impact it has in making their sales team a resource to their networks. This isn’t a theoretical approach, Linda and the Verizon team are seeing it work in real business scenarios, so don’t miss what she shares about the way they’ve structured their social selling training program.

This podcast is being brought to you by The 10th Annual AA-ISP Leadership Summit.

Successful Social Sellers Consistently Use Their Sales Tools

After researching their options, the Verizon team decided to center its social selling program training around the use of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. They adopted the in-depth training that LinkedIn offers but also supplemented it with their own training to help their sales teams apply the principles in their own daily scenarios. Linda points out that by carefully tracking their team’s use of these sales tools, it’s clear that salespeople who consistently use the tools as they’ve been taught are much more successful at social selling. She says the main component of that success is consistency. As we spoke, Linda explained how she tracks her team’s use of the tools, the minimum daily use requirements for their salespeople, and how they’ve learned to track their stats – from the first contact with a prospect via social, to sales conversations.

Social Media Lead Generation Efforts Won’t Matter If You Don’t Track Them

One of the reasons proper training for social selling is essential is because salespeople must know how to record their social activity so it can be tracked. It’s vital to know whether the conversations your team is having via social actually provide a return on investment or not. The Verizon Enterprise Solutions team trained its sales teams to document new connections for that very purpose. Through it, they’ve been able to see that their social selling pilot program has been a huge success. If you’re part of a team that needs to implement social selling, you should hear the best-practices Linda and her team have developed in their social selling training program. It’s all on this episode of Selling With Social.

Outline of This Episode

• [1:38] Who is Linda DiBias, Manager of Content and Social Selling for Verizon Enterprise
• [5:26] The social selling programs within Verizon and why they were started
• [7:49] The reality of social engagement’s role in expanding relationships
• [9:32] The Verizon strategy for launching social selling within the company
• [11:55] How LinkedIn’s training has been integrated into Verizon’s approach
• [14:59] How Verizon has tracked its ROI from its social selling pilot program
• [18:35] Verizon’s activity requirements for providing Sales Navigator to their sales team
• [23:08] The vital nature of feeding your network with valuable content
• [29:20] What role does marketing play in helping sales connect with prospects?

Resources Mentioned

• Linda on Twitter: @LDiBias
• Linda DiBias on LinkedIn
• Linda.DiBias at VerizonWireless.com
• Verizon Enterprise Solutions
• Linda’s Etsy Shop where she provides custom jewelry
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• TeamLink
• Vengreso’s customized social selling training for your company
• Vengreso’s series on SAPs social selling practices
• Social Business Engine Podcast – Bernie Borges
• Linda’s all-time favorite movie: Titanic

The 10th Annual AA-ISP Leadership Summit – April 3-5, 2018 – use the code “Leadership 1095”

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