I recently spoke with a friend who specializes in the meetings and incentive travel area of the hospitality business. She’s done everything from promoting destinations like California’s Wine Country, to hosting major incentive events for financial services companies, to helping IBM runs its hospitality operations...
I recently met a woman at Selling Power’s Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Though we shared similar interests in advanced sales techniques and technologies, we live 2,000 miles part and did not instantly discover common connections over a quick cup of coffee. After our...
This is a Guest Blog by Sales Expert Joanne Black Surprise! Your success isn’t determined by the number of devices that connect you to the outside world. There’s nothing like getting the gang together. Salespeople have great power and energy when we gather in person and share...
The other day I published an interview with Koka Sexton. On Twitter I inadvertently dropped a stat that Jill Rowley had brought over 600 additional unique visitors to my site over the course of about 5 days. Not to be outdone Koka quite publicly declared that number would...
Koka Sexton is the Director of Social Strategy at InsideView and a recognized social selling expert. He blends ten+ years of sales experience with a passion for social media. Koka is also the founder of InsideView's newest social media endeavor: Social Selling University – a...
The shift from having salespeople in the field to maintaining and inside sales force has been going on for years. It’s a simple matter of ROI. Inside salespeople cost less to employ and the constant introduction of new communication technology allows inside salespeople to acheive similar...
I recently told executives at business services company that they could grow their Marketing Dept. by 150 people without increasing payroll. This is possible because Social Selling tools like LinkedIn and Twitter can turn every one of their 150 field salespeople into a mini-marketers.
The opportunity to gain a competitive advantage lies in the fact that salespeople have a higher degree of trust with their customers than does the corporate Marketing Dept. It makes sense because salespeople have personal relationships – the very essence of “Social”. The challenges are that few salespeople have been trained for message creation, they don’t have much time for it, and they may not even be authorized to communicate certain types of messages.
So, how does a corporation take advantage of the opportunity while overcoming the challenges? It is a matter of training and, in some cases, systems, to insure salespeople adapt to the new ways of Social Selling.
Here are three considerations to building a Social Selling culture:
Anneke Seley is a pioneer in creating high-performance, high-profit inside sales teams. As the 12th employee at Oracle, she was the architect of Oracle’s ground-breaking inside sales team. She is co-author of Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology (www.sales20book.com) and...
Early adopters have already implemented a Social Selling strategy, but many sales executives may wonder whether the movement toward this new type of selling is just a fad. Years ago, some wondered the same thing when now common sales tools like mobile phones, CRM, and email first appeared. Social Selling is here to stay because it is the response to how customers buy.
Here are recent events that signal the rise of Social Selling in various industries.
I recently posted a 2-minute LinkedIn self-assessment where people scored from 0-100 based on answers to 10 questions. Of the hundreds who took the self-assessment, Jill Rowley of Eloqua score the highest (96). When I congratulated Jill (dubbed the “EloQueen), she said, “Feel free to post my name and a linked to my LinkedIn Profile so people can see how I use it.”
Her response struck me as a perfect example of the Social Selling attitude. She was genuinely transparent and willing to share information to help others. Since Jill is a Social Selling thought-leader who has been interviewed for countless articles and appeared at conferences, I decided Jill would make a great subject for my first audio interview.
Click the Play button on the player icon below or (right) mouse Click here to download the full 24-minute interview.
[audio:http://www.thesalesfoundry.com/videos/Jill Rowley edited.mp3|titles=Jill Rowley Interview]
Here are some highlights:
Jill has been a quota-carrying sales person for all 10 of her years at Eloqua. Still, she admits to feeling “more like a marketer” because she studies and shares so much industry information.