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Empowering Your Sales Workforce with Social Selling Training

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Sales prospecting has taken a hit with 10% or less of executives answering the phone or responding to emails. But that can change says Mario Martinez, Jr., CEO of Vengreso, a social selling training company that helps businesses leverage social networks properly to connect with today’s modern buyer. According to Martinez, to launch a social selling training program it requires a cooperative endeavor of both sales and marketing.  Doing so can help significantly change the sales team’s cold-calling outcomes. He has helped organizations drive 100% rep adoption and is one of the few who have achieved a 99/100 LinkedIn SSI score.

What is Social Selling?

Social Selling is leveraging social networks to help a salesperson establish a personal and professional brand, find, engage and connect with their prospects, and allow them to build a relationship by feeding their network with valuable content. When this happens, salespeople will have more power to connect and create more sales conversations with today’s digitally enabled, mobile attached, video hungry and socially engaged buyers.  As with any sales prospecting methodology, it requires time and focus to execute.  When done correctly, it can help contribute to a healthy sales pipeline.
#SocialSelling connects w todays #digital enabled, #mobile attached, & #social engaged buyers! #Sales Click To Tweet

How do you help companies grow using social selling?

We develop and implement comprehensive social selling training programs for companies of all sizes.  We teach sellers how to integrate social media with sales. In addition, with our LinkedIn Profile Makeovers, we search engine optimize and write their profiles to map to the buyer’s journey. If a salesperson’s LinkedIn profile reads like a resume, the rep will lose their buyer on the first click into their profile. Buyers want to know who you help, how you help and what business problem you can solve for them—then a buyer may be willing to engage. Additionally, as part of our digital sales training program, we offer our Selling with Video Sales Training program for sales teams.

How does a company implement a social selling training program?Sales person pursues sales prospecting with social selling training

The Vengreso 10 step digital selling program is uniquely designed to get the buy-in you want from the sales team. Our proven method creates behavioral change and measurable outcomes that prove return on investment. Each step is designed with the seller in mind.  In fact, most of the core elements were designed and field-tested when I was in the field as an RVP of Sales at a software technology company. Think about the game-changing impact a digital sales strategy can have on your sales team and their results.

How do you empower sales teams to win more with social selling training?

Let’s start with the mindset that social selling training should be a part of your digital sales strategy. With this context, as a Sales, Sales Enablement or Marketing leader, you’ve heard a lot about Social Selling. Maybe you’ve even tested the waters, or use it yourself on a regular basis. But you want to leverage the power of Social Selling training across your entire sales team whether that’s 25 or 2,500 reps. Good move—you’re in the right place.

There are three primary reasons your Social Selling training program will fail:

  1. You haven’t developed an adoption strategy backed by gamification, KPI measurement, and success stories.
    Salespeople love competition…no surprise here. Incorporate a prize or giveaway for the top social seller in your training program to boost motivation across the board. Bonus: there’s nothing like a heartwarming anecdote about a sales professional achieving great success after implementing social selling techniques, to inspire the rest of your team to follow suit.
  2. Your training program doesn’t speak the language of the sales rep.
    Our team is an epic collection of successful practitioners in the digital sales industry, curated by our CEO, Mario Martinez Jr., one of the most accomplished experts in Social Selling. If you think your “social media manager” can deliver social selling training, think again. Our social selling experts walk-the-walk as sales practitioners. We have the experience that earns instant credibility with every sales team we train.
  3. The training doesn’t achieve behavior change.
    The funny thing about us humans, we all learn the same way. We learn through short lessons, followed by reinforcement and coaching, all of it spread out over several weeks so we can absorb what we learn and put it into practice. A half-day or even a full-day, one-time social selling workshop will NOT result in social selling behavior.

Our social selling training programs are available On Demand for individuals and small teams, as well as delivered as live instruction for sales teams of 25+. Teams training is also supported with coaching sessions to reinforce practices learned. Our training builds confidence and results in a social selling cadence for consistent behavior. We work with your leadership, training and enablement teams to implement a complete adoption strategy to fill the sales funnel and drive massive success.

What advice do you have for companies who feel overwhelmed by social networking?

The influence of social media has been proven. The question is no longer “does it work” but rather “how can I make sure it works for me?” Salespeople need to engage online communities, establish credibility, and become a relevant online voice while knowing what is important to their prospects. The social selling training curriculum will teach sales pros to do research that will uncover what challenges their buyers are facing, engage online, then share the appropriate content across each individual social network to help influence the dialogue that will ultimately provide context for their solution.

#Sales pros can use #SocialSelling to connect with potential buyers! #B2Bsales Click To Tweet

A version of this article was originally published by The Examiner (now AXS). Portions of the Interview with Mario Martinez, Jr. and FrontlineSelling.com by author Pam Waits, Chicago Human Resources as was originally published on The Examiner (out of circulation now)  were used in this article.

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