Unfortunately, they still mean different things to different people. And they have been misused for too long.

“The greatest inhibitor to sales effectiveness is the seller’s inability to communicate a VALUE message.” — SiriusDecisions

To me, a value proposition is a means to communicate succinctly to a Prospect or to a Buyer what’s in it for them when they deal with us.

A value proposition is a means to communicate succinctly to a Prospect or to a Buyer what’s in it for them when they deal with us.

It should be that simple, but organizations have tied themselves into knots coming up with ones that work for them.

What’s worse, too many organizations are still inward-looking and product-focused when they should be customer-centric, i.e. they should “do everything with the customer in mind”, as Jeff Bezos put it for his company Amazon.

So, to me (and to Jeff, I guess) the only value proposition that counts is the one that engages your customers.

The only value proposition that counts is the one that engages your customer.

Why is that important?

Because if you get it wrong it can have horrible consequences for your business. One of my pet grievances is when marketers put up a value proposition that is completely focused on the wrong thing: on their organization.

Not only does it wreak havoc with how prospects view your website, but your sales people will start using it in their prospecting and customer interactions, too.

Here are some actual real-life examples of what I am talking about:

This is a cold email that landed in my in-tray and didn’t get caught by the spam filter

“Dear Peter,

Greetings from (name withheld)! I am reaching out to introduce (name withheld). We are a cross channel ad management and optimization platform. Our advanced algorithmic solutions automate & optimize your digital marketing process to give you a better ROAS. We have deep integration into various digital channels and analytics into a unified dash board. This equips you to easily manage and optimise all your social marketing campaigns. Attached is an introductory deck which showcases our product features. I would love to get on a quick 10-minute introductory call to discuss how our automation platform can add value to your digital marketing efforts. 

How does anytime this week look for you? Let me know when I can set up the call.

Best,

(name withheld), Product Manager”

Did you notice how many sentences above start with “Our”, with “I” or with “We”? What is this email about? Is it about the company and its products, or is it about what they can do for their customers?

So, I say that any value proposition that begins with “I” or “We” leads you down the wrong path because it leads yo to talking about yourself, not what’s in it for your customers.

Here is an example from the ABOUT US page of a vendor website:

“(name withheld) is a fully managed IT services company that focuses its time and energy on developing, maintaining, and supporting technology systems for growing businesses, implementing ERP systems and custom application development. 

(name withheld) has distinguished themselves by working for and with leading companies and service organizations acquiring vast experience with, and on, a wide range of complex, mission-critical and high-volume information systems platforms and roll outs for high profile organizations.”

How customer-centric is this information? What value does it convey?

So, have a look at your own business. On your company website does the ABOUT US page talk about you, or about what you do for your customers?

Check how your sales reps and SDRs: How do they introduce your organization every day?

Does your ABOUT US web page talk about you? How do your sales reps and SDRs introduce your organization?

Sales executives that I deal with tell me that prospects now decide in the first few seconds of a cold call whether they are interested, or not. Once they have lost interest it is VERY difficult to get their interest back. So we only have a few seconds to make a positive impression and to capture the imagination of our prospects.

We have to make our value proposition immediately engage our customers and prospects.

We have to make our value proposition immediately engage our Customers and our Prospects.

So, how customer-focused in your value proposition? How do you get yours right?

It’s easy: just consider everything you do from your customers’ perspective and convey clearly what’s in it for them.

The post How Customer-Centric Is Your Value Proposition? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Many sales organizations these days are struggling to achieve organic sales revenue and profit growth.

According to the TAS Group, 67 per cent of salespeople do not achieve their sales targets.

Thanks to the internet, buyers now have more information available to them than ever before. This easy access to knowledge is putting sales reps into a weak position, as it empowers buyers to take charge of the sales process. Buyers now carry out extensive online research before feel ready to contact a vendor. Thus, now the Buyers decide WHICH VENDOR they will contact, and WHEN they will do so. If your organization is not among the chosen ones your reps may never know that the buyer even existed. Yes, we are in the era of the buyers journey.

Now the Buyers decide WHICH VENDOR they will contact, and WHEN they will do so. If your organization is not among the chosen ones your reps may never know that the Buyer even existed.

As illustrated below, there are three distinct windows of opportunity in the buyers journey to influence the buyer towards our brand and our goods/services:

1. Opportunity To Create Desire

In the early stage of their buyers journey sellers have the opportunity to create desire in the buyers’ mind to consider our offerings, whether it be a new car, a new pair of shoes, or a complex IT system.

2. Opportunity To Influence The Buyer

Later, we have the opportunity to influence their decision-making and lure them away from competitors and towards our brand and offerings.

3. Too Late To Influence The Buyer

But, unfortunately, once they have made up their mind about what they want to buy and which vendor they want to buy it from, there is little opportunity left for vendors to change the buyers’ mind. They simply have come too far down the track towards making their buying decision to change tack now. Unless, that is, you have a very compelling argument or information that they had not considered (see the section on Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling below).

Obviously, waiting to be contacted by a buyer is not a great sales strategy. We need something more pro-active, and we need to focus on the first two windows of opportunity that I mentioned above.

Obviously, waiting to be contacted by a Buyer is not a great sales strategy.

Over time, several options have become available to restock the sales and marketing arsenal that has been depleted by the buying journey and by the modern buyers. They can be used in any combination to help you reach your sales targets. Here are some of the more commonly used ones:

1. Cold Calling / Warm Calling
2. Content Marketing
3. Social Selling
4. Storytelling
5. Account Based Marketing (ABM)
6. Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling

Let’s now look at the above options in more detail:

1. Cold Calling / Warm Calling

A lot of articles have been written about the pros and cons of cold calling. Tony J. Hughes, has written extensively on the subject, largely promoting cold calling as an effective sales technique. Personally, I am not a huge fan of calling somebody out of the blue, interrupting whatever they are doing and expecting them to drop everything to listen to your sales pitch. The only time this has half a chance of working is if you really have something significant up your sleeve that is of vital importance to them and to their business. If you have something like this then please feel free to go straight on to the section below on Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling.

Otherwise, my recommendation is to stay away from cold calling. Instead, warm up your prospect with Content Marketing or Social Selling (both described below) before making direct contact. In this way, at least they know who you are and that you have something that is worthy of their time, or not.

2. Content Marketing

This strategy requires marketing to issue content that entices and compels buyers to our business. This content is usually published to the website and online generally, and complementary material is issued to the sales team. Content may comprise white papers, thought leadership articles, client success stories and lead generation campaigns. The key to success is that marketing continuously monitors the performance of its content and actively seeks feedback from the sales team about how prospects and customers react to it. Equally, sales reps must actively provide their front line intelligence to marketing so that the performance of marketing content can continuously be improved.

Success depends largely on a highly collaborative feedback loop between sales at the customer-facing front and marketing at the online front.

3. Social Selling

This is a specialist version of content marketing which is practiced by individual sales reps. The idea is that we want to attract buyers not only to our brand but also to individual reps who have built a reputation of being subject matter experts.

The way it works in many organisations is that marketing provides the right content to the sales force for them to promote their personal subject matter expertise on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. In other words, individual sales reps attract the buyer through their personal brand, as well as their employer’s brand.

Again, the success of this initiative largely depends on close collaboration between marketing and sales, if the content is to match the individual, and vice versa.

4. Storytelling

Storytelling is very powerful. Ever since humans were living in caves we sat around the campfire and told stories. Before the written word was invented stories were the way that we acquired information and learned new skills, such as how to hunt, gather and grow food. Even today, us humans remember stories much better than mere facts or figures.

When salespeople engage with a prospect or client they will have much deeper impact when they convey their information through a story. Storytelling also has the advantage that it doesn’t feel like selling. Just telling a story or an anecdote feels less intrusive to both the buyer and the rep. So, go ahead and tell the story of how a past client found themselves in a similar situation to your current prospect and how your solution helped them to overcome their challenges and to succeed.

Your marketing team should arm your sales force with stories to regale your prospects and customers.

5. Account Based Marketing (ABM)

ABM is nothing new, but modern sales and marketing technology has elevated it to the latest “must-have”. The reason is that it can be very powerful, if executed well. Imagine you want to win a new key account or retain a major client that is at risk of moving on to a competitor. Wouldn’t you want to give them the attention they need to help secure or retain their business ? So, you create a specialist team, let’s call them a “hit squad”, to identify the key stakeholders in your account, i.e. the decision makers, influencers and gate keepers, and you identify what makes each of them tick, their likes and dislikes, challenges and opportunities. Then you provide each of them individually, through whatever means necessary, with the information that they need to make an informed decision on why they should buy from your organization. This is so that when they all meet to decide which vendor to go with, they will discover that they all miraculously agree that they should go with your business.

This “hit squad” must consist of a multi-disciplinary team, comprised of marketing, sales, product management and communications experts. So, once again, close collaboration between marketing and sales is the key to success here, too.

6. Challenger / Disruptive / Provocative Selling

I have previously written about this type of selling and why it is not suitable for every rep. However, if your sales force has people with the stature to challenge your prospects’ or clients’ thinking then it can be very effective. The idea is that you disrupt their thinking with some new information that they either did not previously possess, or that they had not yet considered. Something that stops them in their tracks. The neat thing is that, because this particular insight was brought to them by you and only you, it gives you instant credibility over and above your competitors and turns you into a trusted adviser. It should be easy from there on to close the deal.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a myriad of options to engage your prospects and clients, but waiting to be contacted by a Buyer is not a great sales strategy. And, given the myriad of alternatives, there is also no need for cold calling.

Regardless of which of the above sales techniques you choose to go with, much of your sales performance and success will depend on how well your marketing and sales teams work together to engage the Buyer and to differentiate your business from that of your competitors.

Ideally, your teams will collaborate across the entire 360 degrees, as illustrated here.

You are invited to talk to us about your business challenges and we’ll do our best to help, if we can. Go ahead, what have you got to lose ?

The post Six Sales Prospecting Methods, Including Cold Calling. appeared first on Head Of Sales.

What tactics for leveraging LinkedIn Sales Navigator do you need to know?

Blended prospecting techniques are nothing new but codification of these combinations in the context of the Sales Navigator platform is required.

Step 1: Take an account list of no greater than 50 accounts and add them on Sales Navigator.

Step 2: Save 5-7 prospects per account as leads in every account because you are going to monitor the content they share and where they are mentioned + interact with it.

Step 3: Build a robust Sales Navigator feed you’ll utilize in both web and mobile STREAM. It’s a custom feed.

Step 4: Here’s the kicker, sort by Lead Shares and start to comment on what they’re sharing in a thoughtful way. Remember you aren’t connected to these people so it’s wow factor for CXOs to have some total stranger commenting in a relevant way out of the clear blue! Contacts that share based on the 90, 9 and 1 internet theory of prosumption are massively valuable. Basically, only 1% write, 9% share, and the other 90% are really more voyeurs on the web (Wikipedia power law distribution). If someone is sharing, YOU MUST CALL THEM. So use a service like Lusha, Data.com, ZoomInfo, DiscoverOrg or RainKing to directly call them and comment on what they shared in Social to their LinkedIn feed as evidenced by Navigator.

Step 5: You need to set aside time to mine your common connection or “TeamLinks” per account. Your goal is to call common connections or colleagues that are connected into prospect companies. All common connections should be exploited. If you sell software to CMOs, still leverage a Teamlink to the HR department or Legal. All TeamLinks are golden. Navigator “Teamlinks,” for those just tuning in is the most powerful feature of advanced LinkedIn. In essence, it lets you see who in your own company is connected to anyone in the prospect organization.

Step 6: Set aside time to explore all your 1st and 2nd-degree referral sources into prospect bases. These are represented in the middle column on Navigator. I would click underneath the pane to expand and start to look for patterns that emerge in the common connections. Here it will reveal competitive salespeople in other vendor companies or nodes on the network. Nodes are thought leaders in your industry so omnipresent, that their mere connection to your prospects, is heat seeking to indicate they’re the right decision maker. Call up sellers in affiliated vendors that are harmonious to what you sell and co-host networking events with them to overlap your networks. The cardinal rule of referral selling on LinkedIn is NOT to do it digitally. When you identify the connection in common, call that connection point and offer to ghostwrite a message they can pass along to make the warm introduction. MAKE IT FRICTIONLESS.

B2B buyers are 5x more likely to engage when the outreach is through a mutual connection. – LinkedIn Research

Step 7: Watch the daily email digest from Navigator that hits your smartphone email inbox for job changes. When you are going after a calling list, start to call down the Navigator Newsfeed referencing the lead news mentions, job changes, lead recommendations and other triggers like funding, or innovation projects. Use the live Navigator real-time feed as the bedrock for your TRIPLES. You’ll remember the basis of COMBO selling is a call, email and vmail (video or voicemail) back to back to back, preferably under 2 minutes. Jab jab, hook!

Step 8: Don’t exceed 50 target accounts and up to 7 contacts per. This means you should only ever be monitoring 300 objects which is double the Dunbar number of 150. The neocortex can only hold 150 connections. LinkedIn Sales Navigator actually gets unwieldy and you start to miss information if you follow too many people or accounts. Even if you change your STREAM sorting to “recent” versus “most important,” it’s cumbersome. 50 Key Target Accounts per quarter max, 5-7 leads per prospect, at least 1 C-Level per account. Remember you can easily purge out accounts and leads if you track too many. Work clean, keep it organized and tight.

A hodgepodge of Tricks and Tips:

• Nobody ever calls Presidents, CEOs or Board Members. You should call VCs who back the companies if going after earlier stage ventures. Where do you get the phone number? Many times, by just linking in (try to write a customized LinkedIn request), they’re phone number will already be freely shared on profile in the Contact area.
• Exhaust all of your InMails every month no matter what, even a disinterested response gives you a credit back which yields over 30 in total. Huge secret: You can hit reply to any InMail an unlimited amount of times. So that 30 becomes 60 and 90 very fast. Quality InMail follow-up is key.
• I talk to CXOs, they get 1 InMail in every 100 emails. They get 1 phone call / VM in 500-1,000 emails. STOP, REREAD THAT! What does this tell you? It’s not even the quality of a cold call, voicemail or InMail: IT’S DOING IT AT ALL that makes the lion share difference. This 10X action alone completely stands out in the all digital social selling cacophony. Pretty much everyone I add now (and I’ve tested this) immediately spams me back selling products or services. Social selling fail! No value is being added. The vast majority of all sellers are lazily ONLY emailing and adding without a custom invite, only to immediately spam back (once.) No follow up. The golden secret of all sales Cardone will tell you is: F/UP, F/UP, F/UP!

The relevancy paradox is the idea that adding value and changing up the message every time will yield a better result than never varying. It looks needy. Over-researching can cripple an outreach campaign. Don’t overthink it with analysis paralysis, set the appointment.

But for this to work, you’ve gotta have a relevant target that’s as similar as possible to existing prospects or leverages a direct competitor’s solution. They’ve bought before, they get it. Some percentage will be dissatisfied and buy again. Be there when the buying phase begins. Educate in the education phase but move fast and identify prospects who have entered ‘buying phase.’

• Work anniversaries and birthdays are pretty spammy. Congratulating people incessantly on a new role, funding or a school in common is wildly overplayed. The best messaging is that you provide X value (quantified is best aka hard dollars) for Y similar company. It’s really that simple, cut and dried. The Cialdini concept of social proof is the most powerful. If you talk to the CMO of Pepsi about something you’re doing for Coke, you’re getting a callback. It’s fiercely competitive to innovate at the top.
• I’ve tested every type of messaging under the sun. Repetition is the key. Sending a very similar message from the top of the food chain down the ranks and then only slightly varying it, even not at all as you TRIPLE every 72 hours will get your emails circulated. Some call this the art of confusion. You are shaking the trees and low hanging fruit will fall off. Mike Scher had some wild research results looking at 1.4 million calls that I’m paraphrasing here. Check out his work at FrontLine Selling!

Jeb Blount is one of my personal heroes and his book completely changed my life and career. And that’s even after 30 years selling in the field and running entire technology companies for Australia New Zealand. He also stirred the pot tremendously with the below quote which spawned 1,300 likes and 180,000 views on a LinkedIn update I published as at this writing!

“I closed a $2.5 Million deal after leaving the exact same voice mail for a C-Level Exec every morning for 52 consecutive days. He finally called me back and said, ‘You’re not going to stop are you?’ I responded, ‘not until you meet with me.’ The meeting opened a dialogue that, six months later, resulted in my company replacing his incumbent vendor. Persistence is the fuel of winners.” – Jeb Blount

Do you agree? Litigious roaches scurried out of the woodwork and hissed. Bottom line: Drop everything and buy this book: Fanatical Prospecting.

• There’s a higher propensity for folks active in Social to be open to a TRIPLE and convert because of one. Navigator is a great way to help you prioritize your book of business based on Trigger Events – who’s alive and kicking. What’s the number 1 trigger event? Job changes. Thank you Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto (authors of Shift!). In the first 90 days, the average CXO will deploy 1M dollars in OpEx capital for new business expenditures to shake up the status quo and make their mark. There’s a new Sherrif in town!
• I’d be remiss not to mention the mid-funnel practice of MULTI-Threading. Remember there are 6.8 stakeholders in every buying committee now in a complex sale according to CEB, so if you’re single-threaded you’re “deaded!” Ok, it rhymes. But take the time mid-stream, once you’ve opened the oppt, to get connectivity with your contact’s boss, lateral VPs and Operational folks (the victims of the problem), aka the Users of the solution – is priceless to mobilize consensus. This is going to increase close rates and accelerate deals. You should be adding everyone you ever meet, shake hands with at a networking event, etc. Start to harvest as many accurate email addresses, cell phone numbers and build your LinkedIn profile to 5,000 ASAP (much higher likelihood of hitting quota!)

What strategies for advanced Sales Navigator did I miss? How do you utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator in combinatorial ways with other prospecting channels to land meetings with impossible to reach prospects, accelerate your deals, and exceed quota? Very curious…

The post Sales Navigator Techniques To Know appeared first on Head Of Sales.

A lot of prospecting advice given out to sellers is around building out a strong pipeline to make sure that when a deal fails, regardless of how far through you pipeline it is, there will be others to replace it. I agree multiple high-quality deals in your pipeline can be the answer. However, what I often also see is too many deals in pipelines which are overloaded and risk becoming stale. The common focus on having 3 – 5 times pipeline volume as a metric often drives the wrong activity. (As managers, we need to be careful what we inspect/ expect).

If we compare a reps available prospecting time versus the activity levels required to advance those deals, most sellers in this situation have too many deals in their pipeline versus the amount of time they have to develop those deals. This means that many deals are never developed and become wasted opportunities.

Prospecting versus Nurturing.

If you’re operating at the front of your pipeline and you’re trying to generate interest from prospects? Then we know it’s going to take about 7-10 touches across a specific time frame (say a 60day block). I calculate it takes nearly 6mins per single opportunity per week to prospect across multi-channels. PROSPECTING!

If the prospect (deal) is engaged and it’s a matter of waiting for the prospect’s ‘buying window’ to open. For example, a contract renewal, a new need to develop, the existing supplier needs to stumble, or even the sales process is long and tedious, think enterprise sales. Then we could be said to be in the NURTURING stage, and this takes around 4mins per week, per opportunity. These times exclude attending sales meetings.

If you’re one of the many salespeople who need to manage their time across both creating new business and servicing your existing clients, you need to calculate the time you have available for both prospecting and nurturing. Then take that available time and allocate that time per opportunity. I believe, if you don’t have the time to work a prospect into a lead, you shouldn’t even start. Instead, leave it sitting ‘on the shelf’ until you have the capacity. Leave it for another day.

Consistently good, beats occasionally great, in sales.

Consistency is also important for deal progression. Reaching out once or twice and giving up on a prospect is a sure way to be unsuccessful, regardless of how good your outreach is. (Occasionally great) We now know that we need to map-out a valid multi-touch strategy to get a robust conversation started with our prospects. (Consistently good)

Having 100 leads who are pursued through just two touches is likely to be much less successful than having 25 leads who have a deliberate allocation of 6-8 careful touches. Those 25 leads are more likely to develop into conversations and move through to a conversion than those 100 leads. In this scenario, at the completion of this prospecting block, we will still have 75 lovely leads left to pursue.

As a more in-depth example, if you have 13 prospects at the front of the pipe and 12 further along, this can take around 4hrs and 8mins, per week, to stay on top of. Most Sales Leaders/ Account Managers/ Executives I talk to are surprised that it can take this long to work so few deals. If you were to multiply this by 4 to cater for 100 leads, this means you’d be spending more than 45% of your total work time working these leads (Plus you still have to add in sales meetings).

When we need to measure pipeline volume, I suggest we deliberately allocate sub-sectors inside your pipeline by size. Taking the 25 leads as an example, where appropriate, this pipeline could have five deals with a very large deal size, 5 with a large deal size, 5 with an average deal size, 5 with a lower value and finally 5 with the minimum value. The total of these leads volume hits the 3 – 5 x quota ratio. The exact ratio is dependent on your selling situation, but I think you get the idea.

The other reason smaller deals are essential to include (Small fish are the sweetest fish) is that it helps us to maintain sales momentum and sales practice. We get to stay in ‘practice’ the process of moving sales to completion with deals of all sizes. This way, we are less likely to ‘mess up’ when we get to those more important deals. (Again, being consistently good, rather than occasionally great).

Only managing the volume of a salesperson’s pipeline is not always the best approach. If we have too strong a focus on driving these volume numbers, we risk sellers, either consciously or unconsciously, loading the number of deals to meet those metrics whether they be real deals or not, or whether they have the time to develop those deals or not.

Both scenarios are less than ideal. How does your pipeline stack up?

The post When You Have Too Many Deals In Your Sales Pipeline appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Why is this important to know? 

Suppose you’re posting content or using LinkedIn to help you with any part of your business, such as business development, marketing or personal branding. In that case, a large amount of your strategy is going to be reliant on your potential customers being able to see your activity or your profile easily.

Changes to the LinkedIn algorithm impact how, when and why your content or your profile is displayed to others. 

This is why, if you use LinkedIn regularly, it is in your best interest, to know what to do and, just as importantly, what not to do, to help you reach those eye-balls.

Why now?

With both a new algorithm now released and most of us now having access to the new user interface, this is a perfect opportunity to share some of the fundamental changes. Here are some things you might want to think about when you’re posting or interacting on the platform.

Key Changes. 

1) New Easy Wins

All-Star Profile / SSI Score impacts.

Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) is a score of 100 which measures how effective you are with the four pillars: Create a Professional Brand, Find the Right People, Engage with Insights and Build Strong Relationships. The maximum score for each pillar is 25.

HOW DO I FIND MY SSI SCORE? RIGHT HERE. 

LinkedIn awards those who complete their profile to the ‘All-Star’ level by increasing the number of people who will see their content (increased reach). Likewise, the higher your SSI score the higher your reach.

Reach relates to the number of people who will see your initial post, so it is fundamental to your LinkedIn success.

An ‘All-Star’ profile has a reach of X 1.5 above an ‘Intermediate profile’ and ‘the lesser ‘Beginner’ profile suffers a minus reach penalty of X 0.5

An SSI score greater than 60 has a positive effect on your reach; anything below has a negative impact on your reach.

Users with an SSI score greater than 90 have an X 1.5 increase on their reach.

What should you do?

Ensure your profile is complete to reach that all-star. Manage your LinkedIn activity to make sure your SSI is not negatively impacting your reach.

2) Key Changes for content posting.

DWELL Time 

LinkedIn now awards posts that make people DWELL on their content. Such as multi-page PDFs or other rich media.

This change is an attempt to increase the quality of the posts and move away from those short, text-based click-bait style of posts. You know the ones where you click ‘see more’ only to be seriously let down.

Timings of posts 

The Golden hour is dead! The life of posts in our feeds has been extended and will now show into your connections feed for a longer time than before. (up to 5 days). 

This means we won’t need to post every day or to react immediately to our connections posts or to comments on our posts (Just within the first 24hrs) to increase virality. It also means we can spend more time building quality content (see DWELL time, above).

It also means LinkedIn pods, groups of people organised to interact with each other’s content to boost engagement, are now less effective. 

If you have a piece of content that is gathering good levels of engagement, refrain from posting again until the engagement levels have dropped. Instead, reinvigorate your original post, through comments, to see another +15% engagement on that post.

#Hashtags

Hashtags are considered a bit of a mystery on LinkedIn. We should use hashtags to help others find our content and to ‘file’ our content into the right search buckets for others on LinkedIn whom we are not connected too. 

For best results ONLY use hashtags that have more than 100,000 followers. 

It’s not as straight forward as you might think.

#Sales = 5.85Million followers

#SalesDevelopment = 22k followers

#Prospectiing = 9k followers

To determine the strength of a hashtag simply search the hashtag within LinkedIn’s search window. 

Whilst using a maximum of only 3 hashtags was the advice in 2019 now it seems the sweet spot is 3 – 9 Hashtags in a post, but no more. 

What should you do?

Write content that has more detail and can hold your audiences’ attention. Try writing long-form posts and repurpose them into PDFs or other rich media and post them that way.

Be prepared to leave the post to run for at least 24 – 48hrs. 

Interact with your post using comments, as they are the most effective, with all of those who interact with the post. Do this inside the first 24hrs.

Finally, use a mixture of well followed hashtags, between 3 and 9, that are likely to drag people from outside of your network into the post.

3) Reengaging lost connections.

There is no doubt adding many useless connections has become a daily sport for many on LinkedIn. People connect with us, and we never hear from them again. This means many have a focus on building their network via quantity, rather than building relationships. This is the wrong strategy, IMO.

The chances are, you are already connected to a bunch of people who can help you achieve your goals. You just need to reengage them. Good news.

The algorithm is looking for ways to supply you with content interesting enough to hold you inside the LinkedIn platform. It doesn’t want you to leave and go elsewhere. It’s always looking for clues so it can better understand what it is that you want to see so it can give it to you. 

So, if you would like to see more of someone’s posts or activity, let the algorithm know by being very deliberate in reengaging them. 

Comment on their posts, endorse them for skill, give them kudos, send a message or two. Should you carry out two or three of these activities inside a 7day period, LinkedIn will register that and start to place your content and activity at the top of each other’s feed.

This is gold for managing both new business opportunities and for maintaining strong relationships with your existing clients.

What should you do?

Create a list (use ‘leads’ in SalesNAV if you have it) of people you need to ‘stay in touch with’ and then deliberately create those two or three interactions across that first week. Once they reconnect and your interacting again you can slow the activity down to stay truly ‘connected’.

These 3 hacks will help you pick up the easy wins on LinkedIn as you prepare your social and digital selling strategy for 2021. You’ll be much more effective with just these few tweaks to your playbook.

Other new things you might want to check out.

• Tagging lots of people in your posts will negatively impact your post.
  • Posting links in the first comment is no longer useful (if it ever was).
  • Pressing the SHARE button is not a worthwhile activity. LinkedIn knows it’s a duplicate post and won’t spread it further.
  • LinkedIn live has low levels of engagement.
  • Video should be less than 1min, never more than 3mins long and posted natively.
  • Followers see much less of your content than connections do.

All these findings are either from my own research, observations and the analytics I’ve generated from using tools like shieldapp.ai or from speaking with other LinkedIn experts and trainers either in some of our chat communities or directly in my BOSS podcast.  

However, there is one person who is considered the real ‘source of truth’ for all of these conversations. Richard Van Der Blom’s research is both smart and methodical and the base for many of these suggestions. Richards’ study measured over 4500 posts at 15min intervals to determine what works, what happens and what doesn’t. 

I suggest you access a more in-depth review of all the changes here directly from Richard. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/newsletter-4-linkedin-algorithm-research-2020-you-van-der-blom/

The post LinkedIn Algorithm HACKS appeared first on Head Of Sales.

If we want to elevate how we influence and sell, to engage at the CEO or the CXO level in an organisation, then we need to talk the language of leadership and it occurs at two levels:

1. Discuss how you can deliver outcomes and manage their risks
2. Talk about the numbers and the business case, plus how success will be measured.

If we do this we will be leading with why the conversation matters because we will be focused on delivering their business outcomes and managing their risks. That’s really what leaders care about: how can they deliver specific business outcomes and how can they manage the risk of pursuing those outcomes? If you can learn to also talk the language of numbers, then you can go down the path of starting to become a trusted advisor and work with your client in partnership rather than being perceived as someone that’s just trying to sell to them.

Every seller needs to:

1. Lead with insight [beyond providing information],
2. Build trust [beyond mere rapport], and
3. Create value [in every conversation].

These three together are the foundation on which the seller earns the right to gain understanding, propose solutions and then ask for the business. Beyond this foundation, strategic selling is first and foremost defined by engaging early at the most senior level possible. You may not need to engage the CEO of the organization, but you do need to sell to the ‘CEO of the problem’ that you can help with. The person who actually owns the problem or opportunity, the one on the hook for delivering the result, the person who controls the funding and authorizes the decision – this is who you need to engage. Everyone else is a mere recommender or blocker.

So, how do you engage effectively at the CEO level? The very best leaders are focused on delivering results, making a difference, treasuring time, building people, and leaving a legacy. Here are ten rules to honor on your quest to engage successfully:

1. Be a person of value – a domain expert who can help make things happen. No-one likes being sold to but they value relevant information, insight and perspective from someone with humble wisdom, a strong network and the gravitas to carry the conversation.
2. Start at the end and lead with ‘why?’. Get to the point and be concise. Genuine insights are rare and never cliché, so do your homework and understand why the conversation is important. Only once you’ve anchored the conversation, should you talk about the what, how, who and when.
3. Open powerfully by not talking about yourself. Make it all about them by showing that you’ve done your homework and that you understand how you can potentially help deliver their agenda, solve their problems, or realize their opportunities; both for them personally and professionally.
4. Talk the language of leadership: positive outcomes and managing risk.
5. Talk the language of business: delivering financial results and KPIs.
6. Talk the language of legacy: sustained change that makes a difference in the lives of customers and staff.
7. No faking-it and no bullshit. Know the industry and have evidence to support your assertions. Be masterful at telling great true stories but be conservative. Also be honest and transparent. If you don’t know, then say so.
8. Always be early, have an agenda, respect time, follow-up in writing. In short – be a pro.
9. Let them be in control. Ask them what they want to see happen after the meeting and what the next steps should be. But if they sponsor you down, always maintain your direct relationship – the right to contact them whenever necessary.
10. Always deliver on every promise. Be rock-solid reliable.

People are best motivated by reasons that they themselves discover. Never therefore preach, sell or lecture. Instead ask great questions that cause self-reflection for the person with whom you engage. All of the above is relatively straight-forward but here is something that could change the way you create value for the most senior people you work with. The fact that you’re reading this means that you could execute.

Most CEOs are consumed by delivering for their company and many neglect their personal life and brand – burn-out is common. Every sales person should build their personal brand in social because people buy you before they buy what you’re selling. You should become an expert regardless of your age. It’s a skill that requires much research and nuanced effort but it’s essential. Why don’t you offer personal education and assistance to the CEO on how to build their personal brand in B2B social?

Here is why it could work. Domo and CEO.com recently published analysis on the social presence of every Fortune 500 CEO. Here are some of their findings:

• 68% of CEOs have no social presence at all on the top five social platforms
• Of those who are on social, 73% are solely on LinkedIn
• Nearly one-third of CEOs on Twitter don’t tweet
• Almost none understand social strategy and the interconnectedness of platforms

LinkedIn is an amazingly power platform. Find ways to use it to research and then engage with the CEOs you can best help. Become the expert they trust and rely upon. Don’t be intimidated – step-up after you’ve earned the right to do so. It’s not as scary as you think.

Here is an excerpt from my book, The Joshua Principle – Leadership Secrets of Selling, where Joshua’s father, a CEO, is giving his son, a salesman, advice on how to engage at the senior executive level. We pick-up the conversation with Joshua asking Mark about potential insights gleaned from reading the annual report of Zenyth, his must win deal.

“Anyway, there’s a lot to talk about with Zenyth. This meeting with their CEO is going to be critical. Do their financials reveal anything concerning what’s really driving their decisions?”

Mark opened a folder he had brought in with him. “It’s actually quite interesting. If I was on their board I would ask the CEO what they’re doing about all the cash on their balance sheet.”

“Isn’t cash a good thing?”

“Not necessarily. Too much cash on your balance sheet can make you a hostile acquisition target because the cash can fund financing costs. Cash is also an underperforming asset; it means you don’t know what to invest in for growth.”

“I guess Zenyth is conservative.”

“It’s not about being conservative. Too much cash on the balance sheet is a wasted resource. I’m pretty sure that the new CEO will be under pressure to look at acquisitions or some other plan for expansion. But they have a bigger problem; I’ve analyzed the last five years of numbers and had a look at recent analyst guidance – well, criticism really. Their sales costs, as a percentage of revenue, have been going up for the last three years in a row. Their margins are also being squeezed and I found an interview with the new CEO that pretty much reveals his hand.”

“Thanks for doing this. You must have spent most of the afternoon on it. Is that the interview last month written by Patricia Smith?”

Mark was impressed that his son had also tracked down and read the article. “David Thomas stated that client retention is his number one priority and that he wants delighted customers. I bet the reason they’ve been losing customers is that competitors are targeting them. When you have market dominance you’re a sitting duck for niche players to pick off your vulnerable customers.”

“Thanks Dad. I hadn’t made the connection with any of this. So would you say they were in growth, crisis or business-as-usual mode?”

“Why do you think it matters?”

Joshua explained the concepts he had discovered concerning the modes of business and the consequential motivation for decision-making. He fumbled with his own notes and showed them to Mark. “This is what I’m trying to figure out – the mode they’re in and how it translates to the things that are driving the CEO.”

“If I think about their situation in those terms I guess I would say they have a mild crisis – customer churn is consistently eroding profitability. If I were David Thomas [Zenyth CEO] I would invest in things that help retain and grow profitable customers. All businesses invest in strategies to drive top-line revenue but many neglect the fact that it is far more cost effective to retain a customer than acquire a new one.”

Joshua was busy taking notes as Mark continued in a measured tone. “The smart thing for David Thomas to do is invest money in limiting customer churn. That’s where he will get the best return on investment. He can continue the pressure on his sales operation to keep delivering new clients but he will only fix his profitability problem by stopping the defection of valuable customers.”

“Are you sure? How can you know all this from looking at their balance sheet?”

“All I know is that they have too much cash on their balance sheet and they’re suffering from eroding profitability which is positioned as a cost of sales problem. But one thing I’ve learned in business is that the problem is almost never the problem. Symptoms are not causes, and I think that if you get to have a genuine conversation with their CEO, he will admit that the real problem is customer churn rather than customer acquisition.”

Joshua looked up from the notes he had been scribbling. “But how do I have that kind of conversation with a CEO? I’m just a salesman.”

“You can have a conversation with your own CEO can’t you? Look, David Thomas is just another person but he’s under real pressure to deliver results. He needs to fix a problem he describes as a customer satisfaction challenge. His P&L describes it as a cost of sales problem. Their annual report describes it as eroding margins caused by competitors. They are a market leader defending their incumbent position. All you have to do is understand what keeps him awake at night – but don’t ask it that way. I hate it when salesmen ask that question. I usually say; ‘my wife – she snores rather loudly’… They always laugh too but then I ask if they have any other inane questions.”

Joshua stopped laughing as Mark continued. “The only thing a CEO dislikes more than amateurs who waste their time, is sales people who waste their time. Josh, you seem to have done your homework and I hope my input is useful, but you must have a business conversation with him. He’ll open up once he sees that you have genuine insight.”

Joshua rubbed his face with fingers combing back hair revealing a pensive look. “I can’t begin to tell you how far out of my depth I feel. If I botch this meeting with their CEO I’ll be finished with my boss.”

“Son, even the most successful men have insecurities. We all secretly worry that we are going to get found out. I feel like I’ve been out of my depth most of my life; I really mean it. Maybe David Thomas feels out of his depth too and you’re someone who can help to get one of his problems under control. If you succeed it will make your career.”

For sales people, here are some other articles I’ve written on the topic of engaging senior leadership:

Engaging the CEO Series

• PART 1 – What CEOs really think of you!
• PART 2 – Decoding the CEO

The post Engaging The CEO (PART 3): Language Of The C-Level Executive appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The buck stops with the CEO, but so does every decision – he or she has the power of veto. CEOs are the puppet-masters pulling the invisible strings in the background. Their agendas are the ones that win, their people rise to the top, and their priorities take precedence. But it can be intimidating dealing with the CEO, whether you’re an external consultant, sales person or an internal subordinate. Yet the CEO need not be a mystery. Every CEO is human, and he or she has needs that you can meet. Behind the façade is a real person with fears, insecurities, goals and aspirations. They have to manage the board, inspire their leadership team, deliver results and manage risk that could blindside or derail. They also need to build the corporate brand – but most neglect building their own.

Strategic selling is first and foremost defined by engaging early at the most senior level possible. You may not need to engage the CEO of the organization, but you do need to sell to the ‘CEO of the problem’ that you can help with. The person who actually owns the problem or opportunity, the one on the hook for delivering the result, the person who controls the funding and authorizes the decision – this is who you need to engage. Everyone else is a mere recommender or blocker.

So, how do you engage effectively at the CEO level? The very best leaders are focused on delivering results, making a difference, treasuring time, building people, and leaving a legacy. Here are ten rules to honor on your quest to engage successfully.

1. Be a person of value – a domain expert who can help make things happen. No-one likes being sold to but they value relevant information, insight and perspective from someone with humble wisdom, a strong network and the gravitas to carry the conversation.
2. Start at the end and lead with ‘why?’. Get to the point and be concise. Genuine insights are rare and never cliché, so do your homework and understand why the conversation is important. Only once you’ve anchored the conversation, should you talk about the what, how, who and when.
3. Open powerfully by not talking about yourself. Make it all about them by showing that you’ve done your homework and that you understand how you can potentially help deliver their agenda, solve their problems, or realize their opportunities; both for them personally and professionally.
4. Talk the language of leadership: positive outcomes and managing risk.
5. Talk the language of business: delivering financial results and KPIs.
6. Talk the language of legacy: sustained change that makes a difference in the lives of customers and staff.
7. No faking-it and no bullshit. Know the industry and have evidence to support your assertions. Be masterful at telling great true stories but be conservative. Also be honest and transparent. If you don’t know, then say so.
8. Always be early, have an agenda, respect time, follow-up in writing. In short – be a pro.
9. Let them be in control. Ask them what they want to see happen after the meeting and what the next steps should be. But if they sponsor you down, always maintain your direct relationship – the right to contact them whenever necessary.
10. Always deliver on every promise. Be rock-solid reliable.

People are best motivated by reasons that they themselves discover. Never therefore preach, sell or lecture. Instead ask great questions that cause self-reflection for the person with whom you engage. All of the above is relatively straight-forward but here is something that could change the way you create value for the most senior people you work with. The fact that you’re reading this means that you could execute.

Most CEOs are consumed by delivering for their company and many neglect their personal life and brand – burn-out is common. Every sales person should build their personal brand in social because people buy you before they buy what you’re selling. You should become an expert regardless of your age. It’s a skill that requires much research and nuanced effort but it’s essential. Why don’t you offer personal education and assistance to the CEO on how to build their personal brand in B2B social?

Here is an excerpt from my book, The Joshua Principle – Leadership Secrets of Selling, where Joshua’s father, a CEO, is giving his son, a salesman, advice on how to engage at the senior executive level. We pick-up the conversation with Joshua asking Mark about potential insights gleaned from reading the annual report of Zenyth, his must win deal.

“Anyway, there’s a lot to talk about with Zenyth. This meeting with their CEO is going to be critical. Do their financials reveal anything concerning what’s really driving their decisions?”

Mark opened a folder he had brought in with him. “It’s actually quite interesting. If I was on their board I would ask the CEO what they’re doing about all the cash on their balance sheet.”

“Isn’t cash a good thing?”

“Not necessarily. Too much cash on your balance sheet can make you a hostile acquisition target because the cash can fund financing costs. Cash is also an underperforming asset; it means you don’t know what to invest in for growth.”

“I guess Zenyth is conservative.”

“It’s not about being conservative. Too much cash on the balance sheet is a wasted resource. I’m pretty sure that the new CEO will be under pressure to look at acquisitions or some other plan for expansion. But they have a bigger problem; I’ve analyzed the last five years of numbers and had a look at recent analyst guidance – well, criticism really. Their sales costs, as a percentage of revenue, have been going up for the last three years in a row. Their margins are also being squeezed and I found an interview with the new CEO that pretty much reveals his hand.”

“Thanks for doing this. You must have spent most of the afternoon on it. Is that the interview last month written by Patricia Smith?”

Mark was impressed that his son had also tracked down and read the article. “David Thomas stated that client retention is his number one priority and that he wants delighted customers. I bet the reason they’ve been losing customers is that competitors are targeting them. When you have market dominance you’re a sitting duck for niche players to pick off your vulnerable customers.”

“Thanks Dad. I hadn’t made the connection with any of this. So would you say they were in growth, crisis or business-as-usual mode?”

“Why do you think it matters?”

Joshua explained the concepts he had discovered concerning the modes of business and the consequential motivation for decision-making. He fumbled with his own notes and showed them to Mark. “This is what I’m trying to figure out – the mode they’re in and how it translates to the things that are driving the CEO.”

“If I think about their situation in those terms I guess I would say they have a mild crisis – customer churn is consistently eroding profitability. If I were David Thomas [Zenyth CEO] I would invest in things that help retain and grow profitable customers. All businesses invest in strategies to drive top-line revenue but many neglect the fact that it is far more cost effective to retain a customer than acquire a new one.”

Joshua was busy taking notes as Mark continued in a measured tone. “The smart thing for David Thomas to do is invest money in limiting customer churn. That’s where he will get the best return on investment. He can continue the pressure on his sales operation to keep delivering new clients but he will only fix his profitability problem by stopping the defection of valuable customers.”

“Are you sure? How can you know all this from looking at their balance sheet?”

“All I know is that they have too much cash on their balance sheet and they’re suffering from eroding profitability which is positioned as a cost of sales problem. But one thing I’ve learned in business is that the problem is almost never the problem. Symptoms are not causes, and I think that if you get to have a genuine conversation with their CEO, he will admit that the real problem is customer churn rather than customer acquisition.”

Joshua looked up from the notes he had been scribbling. “But how do I have that kind of conversation with a CEO? I’m just a salesman.”

“You can have a conversation with your own CEO can’t you? Look, David Thomas is just another person but he’s under real pressure to deliver results. He needs to fix a problem he describes as a customer satisfaction challenge. His P&L describes it as a cost of sales problem. Their annual report describes it as eroding margins caused by competitors. They are a market leader defending their incumbent position. All you have to do is understand what keeps him awake at night – but don’t ask it that way. I hate it when salesmen ask that question. I usually say; ‘my wife – she snores rather loudly’… They always laugh too but then I ask if they have any other inane questions.”

Joshua stopped laughing as Mark continued. “The only thing a CEO dislikes more than amateurs who waste their time, is sales people who waste their time. Josh, you seem to have done your homework and I hope my input is useful, but you must have a business conversation with him. He’ll open up once he sees that you have genuine insight.”

Joshua rubbed his face with fingers combing back hair revealing a pensive look. “I can’t begin to tell you how far out of my depth I feel. If I botch this meeting with their CEO I’ll be finished with my boss.”

“Son, even the most successful men have insecurities. We all secretly worry that we are going to get found out. I feel like I’ve been out of my depth most of my life; I really mean it. Maybe David Thomas feels out of his depth too and you’re someone who can help to get one of his problems under control. If you succeed it will make your career.”

For sales people, here are some other articles I’ve written on the topic of engaging senior leadership:

Engaging the CEO Series

• PART 1 – what CEOs really think of you!
• PART 3 – Language of the C-Level Executive

The post Engaging The CEO (PART 2): 10 rules To Decode The CEO appeared first on Head Of Sales.

LinkedIn reports show that sales organisations are quickly embracing the “new normal”:  

• 77% are holding more video meetings
• 51% are sending more emails  
• 57% are making more phone calls

But what does this really mean for sales?

Many well-established businesses used to have most of their processes in person, often making the most of events and tradeshows. In addition, successful enterprise teams take time to develop and train until they produce results. How does that translate to purely digital? 

There are a few key elements to keep in mind in order to face the new challenges for sales. Let’s break them down.

Not business as usual

It’s crucial to start with the right mindset. Think about creating a work culture that encourages collaboration and support among your team. Leaders need to help sales reps be prepared, and have all the information and resources they need. 

Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, lists empathy as one of the key elements to sell from home. This applies to your team, but also for your prospects and leads. It means to truly try to understand what everyone is going through.

Solutions instead of pitches

When developing new and nurturing existing relationships, we need to identify how we can help our clients and add real value under the crisis. Some deals will definitely make sense to move forward, while other items may not.

As Brynne Tillman from Social Sales Link explains: “Pivot. Find out what your clients need now. Their current state is very different than 8 weeks ago, figure out how you can be a resource for them now, and they will do business with you when the time is right!”. 

Lead a conversation where you can truly help the prospect explore all aspects of their situation, and help them rethink their strategy. Provide data so that the client makes informed decisions, based on quantifiable information.

Listening is vital to achieving this. Sales reps that listen are more successful, and the right solution comes from a customer-centric approach.

Making the most of video calls

Active listening and empathy need to be present in the most popular communication channel under COVID-19: video calls.

A few simple tips, like remembering to introduce everyone and turning your camera on (so many salespeople don’t), can make these conversations more efficient. 

This is also a chance to get creative. For example, some teams now send food delivery gift cards to invite prospects to a “virtual lunch”, while others have branded promotional packages with items to equip a home office delivered when scheduling a call. 

Whichever strategy your team comes up with, the idea is not to make a virtual version of a face-to-face action, but rather embrace a remote mindset. This can be as simple as to call to check how your clients are doing, or hosting a Q&A session for their team. The dynamic should make the prospect feel comfortable and, most of all, heard. Rather than just scheduling an online demo, be available for a conversation.

Finding the right tools for virtual selling

Sales reps are already familiar with the tools they normally need to reach their targets. However, as plans are re-prioritized, this might be the time to allocate time to test and develop new processes that can continue after the pandemic.

There are many options for sales engagement tools, like MixMax, Mailshake or Outreach. Your team probably knows CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot, or even Freshsales, Insightly or Zoho. 

To make the most of what you already have, work with the IT department in your company and focus on integration with other apps, like work management ones as Trello or communication tools like Slack.

Pay special attention to integrations that could work with email and phone, as reps are heavily relying on that. Tools like SendinBlue and Aircall could help improve prospecting processes on those channels.

Discuss as a team where the pain points are, and then work on improving processes and tools with a clear goal. 

Connecting through LinkedIn

When it comes to nurturing relationships, social media has been delivering great results for quite a while. Under this new scenario, using LinkedIn to find and connect with prospects and clients has never been more valuable.

LinkedIn has a few recommendations for virtual sales prospecting: 

• Create a strong professional brand by participating actively with posts, articles and engaging in conversations around your industry.
• ABC: Always Be Connecting. Build trusted relationships by expanding your network 
• Asking insightful questions and focus on the right people to prospect smarter 

Time to adapt and innovate

Instead of holding to the processes that you had before COVID-19, take the chance to innovate and create a healthy and sustainable digital workspace for your team. As we navigate through this crisis, sales, leaders and buyers are learning to adapt together.

Those who embrace the new challenges are the ones who are thriving. Eventually, business will recover. The key is what your team will learn now that will help them come out of this wiser and stronger.

The post Sales and the “new normal”: virtual prospecting during COVID-19 appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Outbound tactics without strategy are sheer lunacy. We must lead with an insight-driven value narrative (‘hypothesis of value’) or hammering away in blended channels is worthless. It’s not what we use, but how we use it; otherwise, it’s scorched Earth for C-level fish we risk scaring off from still waters. Or put another way

Buyers are deadened to seller outreach. Breaking through demands the right narrative and use of blended channels

This is an example of what not to do. Thanks Claudio Camacho from Tuxera for allowing me to share this. He published a screenshot of this InMail from a salesperson was Mike being creative? Maybe. Was he effective? No. I applaud Mike for ‘having a go’ and seeking to break through with some humor and focusing on value (increasing sales conversion rates) but I think it misses the mark.

Why are executive buyers so tough?

1. They are under pressure, drowning in workload and are time poor
2. They don’t believe the over the top ROI claims from sellers
3. They are deadened to all the outreach being projected at them
4. They filter requests based on referrals from a trusted source (people who work for them or peers they respect)

Click here for examples of real emails that secured meetings with a CXO. Thanks Hubspot and the image below is also linked.

Here is some more real world feedback from a CEO. I delivered a 2-day program for 90 salespeople and as part of the agenda we had Hari Krishnan, CEO at PropertyGuru Group join for a one hour interview. PropertyGuru is the market leader in their industry and prior to this CEO role Hari Krishnan held Board Director positions and was head of LinkedIn in Asia-Pacific and Japan. He is impeccably credentialed to provide the most senior buyer perspective and the insights that follow came from this powerful question…

“On what basis do you as the CEO of a market leader engage directly with sellers?”

Everyone in the room was riveted and the feedback forms for this session rated it as the most valuable over the two days. My paraphrase of this sage CEO’s advice for sellers is below and in italics with my own advice added occasionally in non-italic and within [brackets].

1.    If you want to get to me then it’s only going to happen through a warm introduction from someone I know and trust. Understand the nature of my relationship with the introducer will give you some context into how I am likely to receive your introduction.

2.    Cultivate multiple stakeholders in my organisation and educate them on your solution too. I don’t make unilateral decisions or try to push decisions down the organisation; so you need to build multiple relationships.

3.    Don’t be creepy personal. Stick to business early in the relationship. Don’t stalk on personal social platforms such as Facebook. I’m not seeking a new friend or looking for someone to buy me a meal or host me at an event. [Senior successful people are incredibly busy and would rather invest their time with family or where they have strong personal relationships].

4.    Do your research. Seeking a conversation with me without doing your homework is unprofessional and shows a lack of respect. Don’t drop names of competitors or reference industry trends that are not relevant to my region or business. The examples you use need to be from within my geography and relate to what is happening in my markets. A USA-centric approach does not usually work in other geographies and cultures.

5.    Know my industry. As the market leader I am not chasing disruptors but I am interested in what relevant companies are doing. Know whom I define as my competition (current and emerging) and bring me insights about them, their strategies and initiatives. I am not seeking confidential information or trade secrets, nor should you offer them, but you must bring a perspective that is of value to me. [The VP of Sales doing the interview later commented that sellers should always seek to be a customer of their prospective client, or talk to some of their customers, as part of their own research and take a perspective on how that experience could be improved].

6.    Don’t appear arrogant. Assuming that your brand alone is the reason I should buy from you is a mistake. [If you’re the market leader, don’t tell the customer that you are ‘dominant’. Instead use the term ‘leader’ and earn their interest and trust rather than assume it].

7.    Take the time to understand how I define success. Know what motivates our organisation and how we measure improvement and success. Focus on how you can help me achieve our KPIs and performance measures.

8.    Aspire to be a trusted advisor. Not in a clichéd way but differentiate yourself in the way you engage our organisation by acting in our best interests rather than your own. Resist the urge to push and close when we are not ready. Trusted advisor for a seller is achieved over time through alignment with my personal and organisation’s success.

“Your focus should be on my success as the customer rather than on your sales goal.”

According to Hari Krishnan, the three levels of relationship are:

1. Trusted Advisor: I collaborate with you, and involve you deeply in my planning process, and there is emotional personal connection and trust
2. Partner: I regard you as being strategic to my business and I solicit your thoughts in the planning process
3. Vendor: I transact with you and focus on price as the primary way of defining greater value

And I always thought that the ‘trusted advisor’ phrase was a cliché used by sales people when they decided to get cheesy. There is gold within this advice from Hari.

I think there are some important points to consider when considering Hari’s advice. Don’t use LinkedIn as a spamming platform, instead use it to research and find the best path for a warm introduction. Cold calling and direct marketing strategies rarely work at the CXO level but even with an introduction you’ll need the right combinations of outreach to break-through. Once you’ve secured your path for an introduction, you need the right narrative to ‘set the agenda on insight and value’ to form the basis of a conversation.

Referrals are the fastest way to revenue. This is we we must cultivate our networks and nurture our own brand.

Special thanks Hari and also my client who allowed me to publish this on the basis I do not divulge their identity. Everyone who was in the room two weeks ago will compare this post with their own notes to continue their own journey of becoming the sales person worthy of Trusted Advisor status as they seek to turn every C-level interaction into an opportunity.

For sales people, here are some other articles I’ve written on the topic of engaging senior leadership:

Engaging the CEO Series

• PART 2 – Decoding the CEO
• PART 3 – Language of the C-Level Executive

The post Engaging The CEO (PART 1): What CEOs Really Think Of You! appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Recently I found that there has been a change in the way many are approaching ‘LinkedIn’.  Have you noticed it? It’s like a disease — mindless, endless connection requests of no value.

A swarm of people, all seemingly trying to RUSH to increase the size of their network trying to reach eye-popping levels. With what appears to be no real regard for quality, reaching out for a mindless connection.

My guess is they might be thinking that having 10,000 connections is essential, or more likely, will make them seem important to others. They might believe that at that level of connections, business will be pouring in through their Inbox. (It won’t) I think they’re gathering connections in the same way my teenage niece has thousands of ‘friends’ on facebook but yet she couldn’t tell you if she was standing next to 20 of them at the bus stop. Friends who are not really friends at all. Connections who are not really connected, or even interested. Think, how much are those connections really worth to you? Zero.

So with all those ‘useless’ connections are you truly ‘well connected’ or are you just overloaded & crowded?

If the quality of your connections is JUNK, what’s the QUALITY of your network? – JUNK. 

Your network is your Net Worth. What’s your NET WORTH?

Rubbish in – Rubbish out.

A FOOL with a TOOL is still a TOOL.

Interesting how I can use an old CRM saying and it seems relevant talking about LinkedIn. (LinkedIn has undoubtedly changed a lot in the last year or two).

Let’s say you do get to 50,000 connections. How would you credibly engage with them all? You can’t. NEWS FLASH. It’s not the shares, likes or views that matter in this game; it’s the quality of the engagement.

Social is social, that means interactions; it’s not a database; it’s not a calling list; it’s not a ‘number’ of connections; it’s not a CRM. If you can’t provide some insights or some value to those who want to connect with you or that they provide to you, then why are you connecting?

Having lots & lots of connections will not automatically make you a LinkedIn superstar. I suggest having the wrong connections will ruin your LinkedIn experience and, at the same time, make it significantly harder for you to use LinkedIn for what it is designed. A networking tool which should be helping you to drive great conversations and then, eventually, opportunities.

Of course, there are exceptions, enter, people like Tony J Hughes. He uses LinkedIn very well to publish. He wants as many people as possible reading his material, which I love BTW, He has a strategy which works for him. But it’s not a strategy which will work for most of you. It will work for 5% of people, maybe. (Have you seen how well he writes)?

I’d suggest, don’t connect with everyone you see and don’t connect with everyone just because they send you a connection request, that isn’t very smart.

Currently, I’m only accepting around 40% of the connection requests I get. The other 60% are simply not a good fit for my network and (here’s the rub) they are much better off without me in their network. I will drive them, their network, and their feed crazy with my sales orientated conversations and posts. (just like this one).

I’ve spent a significant amount of time DELIBERATELY crafting and designing a network which is high value to me, high value to my network as well as my business strategy. So, if you’re not going to add value to the network, to me, or I to you. I’m probably not going to accept.

The average person who needs to use or ‘leverage’ their LinkedIn account to help them to grow their business or perhaps find more business opportunities is misusing the platform if they are connecting without thought and without a clear, defined strategy.

I’ve written about this previously, and I’m sure I’ll need to repeat myself. You need to deliberately design your professional network in the same way as you carefully look for a workplace who has a culture you think will help you to be successful. Your social feed has its own culture.

Why? If you fill your network with ‘randoms’ it will be INCREDIBLY harder to shape your online conversations to be of any benefit to that broader audience. There are plenty of subject matter experts out there, so how can you ‘talk’ (post, share and comment) to a broad audience about everything? You can’t. You might find you’re not getting any traction at all with a broad, large, but weak network. Posting articles, posts, blogs, pictures etc are all designed to drive engagement if you’re connected to 10,000 people, and only 500 people are interested in your business proposition, or what you’re posting about. I’d argue you really only have 500 connections and 9,500 people who’s feed you are destroying with ‘rubbish’ which is not relevant to them. Do you want to be that person who is posting crap which nobody wants to read?

So think about your connection strategy (Do you have one)? And make the necessary changes to make sure your LinkedIn network has the best chance to give you what you need from a true business networking sense.

Failing to do so upfront, will potentially mean trying to ‘undo’ 10,000 poorly crafted connections, that’s not going to happen quickly. You will need to either

A: Abandon the platform altogether,

B: Forget about using LinkedIn as a BDM tool.

C: Delete your account and start again from the beginning.

That’s why I’m selecting ‘IGNORE’ – it’s the polite thing to do.

TO BE CLEAR: – If you’re in IT from Canada, I’m probably not interested – sorry. If you’re in any aspect of sales from within APAC and send me a PERSONALISED connection request, I’ll connect.

A personalised connection request trumps all. Tell me why you’d like to connect, and chance are I will. As will your perfect future customer. You might even start a conversation.

It’s all about the engagement.

The post How To Sell More Without Social Media? appeared first on Head Of Sales.