Tony Zayas is Director of Sales & Marketing at Proforma. Tony’s Social Media Sales Challenge is responsible for $5 million in new business for those who’ve gone through this training. I met Tony at GaggleAMP’s conference, AMPlify, in April. In his role, Tony coaches franchise owners in digital marketing and also leads e-commerce sales efforts.
Proforma is a B2B, franchise organization that sells advertising specialty/promotional products, printing services, and other marketing resources through their franchisees. They have 750 global offices across America and Europe. Tune in to hear Tony discuss how Proforma has changed their sales model through content marketing and social selling practices to prospect for new business with their social strategy.
On this episode you’ll discover:
- Proforma’s Social Media Sales Channel, their training, has resulted in five million dollars in new business!
- Social is “not really technology based, it’s simply a communication platform.”
“Social is a communication platform… ” @tonyzayas #sbeshowTweet This
- The sessions Tony conducted on social at Proforma events were very popular; people understood they needed to be on social, but didn’t know how to do it.
- Proforma’s franchise owners had limited time, limited content, and a lack of strategy.
- Proforma’s training for owners is a prospecting program to help them pinpoint decision makers, how to engage and get on their radar.
- Proforma uses GaggleAMP to power their content program and their blog is their biggest source of content with 3 posts per week.
- Their content strategy is focused on being a resource for the end user, both creating and curating content.
- Proforma’s blog syndicates to GaggleAMP and the franchise owners can share from there. They also have the opportunity to blog themselves.
- Proforma’s franchise owners have different client bases to it’s important for them to offer top of mind awareness content.
- As a B2B organization, Proforma regularly shares content on LinkedIn.
- Proforma helps franchise owners to optimize their profiles and encourages using lists on Twitter and LinkedIn Sales Navigator to listen to prospects.
- To engage with prospects sometimes it’s better to go offline to build the “know, like, and trust” factor.
- The Social Media Sales Channel started as a 30-day challenge. One franchise owner, Brian, gained $141,000 in business in the first 30 days by connecting with former colleagues.
- Matt, one of Proforma’s franchise owners, is regularly using Facebook to connect with business contacts and has grown his largest account to $250,000 from social prospecting.
- A sales representative named Rob re-enrolls every quarter in Proforma’s social training. From 2014 to 2015 he saw an 18% increase in sales from using social media for prospecting.
Tony shares best practices on implementing a social selling program
Featured On This Episode:
- Proforma’s Website
- Tony Zayas on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Learn more about GaggleAMP
- Learn how your sales team can improve their social profile
- Join our Social Business Engine community
- Write a review of this podcast in iTunes
- Social Business Engine on Twitter: @bernieborges
- Vengreso’s YouTube Channel | YouTube channel
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Find out more about social selling.
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