Why online prospecting is often lazy and very annoying

By / / Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Social Sales

This week’s article comes off the back of last week’s topic ‘ Getting prospects to talk to you’.

It will take a different approach. I have documented the conversation John Smibert and I had in relation to online prospecting. Here it is. Enjoy.

John: “…I was thinking that subject to the particular company, products and industry that maybe a phone call is not always the first contact these days. The reason this came to mind is that with the advent of social selling many salespeople are having considerable dialog with potential customers before making a phone call – many are …

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What is Social Selling? And does it work?

By / / Marketing, Social Sales

Social selling is not a new phenomenon as many might think.

Social Selling has been around for many years in various forms and is the process of developing one-on-one relationships as part of the sales process. Today, this often takes place via digital social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; however, it can take place both online and offline.

Social Selling is most widely used in B2B selling, especially in complex sales, but it is also used in more complex B2C sales environments, e.g. financial advisory services, automotive, real estate.

Social Selling is sometimes confused with social marketing but they are …

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Survival of the Adaptive P1: focus on changing buying habits

By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Social Sales, Solution Selling

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is often misquoted as being ‘the survival of the fittest’ when in fact it is ‘the survival of the most adaptive’. And that is how we need to be if we want to survive and thrive in these ever changing markets – adaptive.

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

One of the ways sales teams can adapt and really get ahead of the curve …

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How buying patterns have changed

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Procurement, Sales Results, Social Sales, Value Based Selling

Salespeople everywhere are faced with demands to meet increasingly high quotas in the face of growing market complexity and relentless financial pressure. There is also more competitors with Me2 products –just as good as brand names–, and an increased pressure on margins with buyers reluctant to make early commitments. Salespeople are facing demands like they never had before.

Current research from the Behaviour & Economic Research team at NAB¹  states that forward orders (in 2014) were very patchy for both big businesses and SMEs, making it very hard to forecast sales and manage pipelines. This only confirms the reticence of buyers …

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Some Social Selling Myths & Challenges

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Prospecting, Social Media, Social Sales

Since LinkedIn started its publishing arm there has been a growing tsunami of articles filling our news feeds and inboxes. Amongst this flood of information are some great articles and, of course, there are those articles that are a waste of time. That’s to be expected. Within this tsunami there has been a range of articles promoting the astounding benefits of Social Selling, especially around writing and sharing content with prospects and clients as a critical part of the sales process. Articles that are sure to get you noticed and have clients contacting you so that you can make more …

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Sales Trend 7 – The Normalising of Social Media in Sales

By / / Sales Trends, Social Media, Social Sales

The seventh Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘The Normalising of Social Media in Sales’.

This sales trend is seeing businesses really ramping up their use of social media and in very sophisticated ways. Rather than seeing social media as a tack on to the marketing budget, smart businesses are now creating their own social media departments which are actively working in concert with sales, marketing, and other departments to create real-time content that is engaging, relevant and interactive.

Prospects and customers have never been closer to our businesses – they are just a click away. They can scrutinise us as much …

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How to use Email and LinkedIn to prospect

By / / Prospecting, Social Sales

In our digital world it is becoming much easier and quicker to find and contact people we want to get in front of. Just think LinkedIn and how easy it is to research prospects by title, industry and company, or using Google to research industries by location, speciality, etc.

There should be no excuse about not being able to find and contact prospects.

So in keeping with the digital world, is it OK to use email or LinkedIn as your initial contact with prospects?

Yes and No.

It’s all in how you do it. …

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Going mobile – the rise of Smartphones in Sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Meetings, Social Media, Social Sales

In December 2012, we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each trend. This month we are focusing on the Sales Trend “Going mobile – the rise of smartphones in sales”. As Australia deals with the challenge of becoming more globally competitive, organisations are making greater use of both increased mobility as well as tele-conferencing using smartphone technology.   Anecdotal research is showing that smartphones are giving salespeople an edge in a number of ways. This sales …

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Tips for using email and web leads effectively in sales

By / / Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Skills, Social Sales

Sales can be made in several ways: face-to-face, over the phone, web-based, direct mail or via e-mail.  With the plethora of internet businesses now transacting sales online you’d be forgiven for thinking that you could dispense with sales people all together but in many instances you would be incorrect.  There are very few businesses that can run purely on the internet with no sales people interaction required.  At the very least these online businesses need customer service or ‘live chat’ enquiry centres where customers …

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From Mass Marketing to Markets of One

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Communication, Marketing, Sales Skills, Social Sales, Teamwork

”Move over mass marketing welcome to fragmentation and segmentation” was voted by our readers as the third most important sales trend in Barrett’s 2012 Sales Trends Report. Market fragmentation and segmentation is well and truly taking over from Mass Marketing society’s staple way of communicating with buyers for over 50 years. So what will this change look like for our businesses and our customers? Barrett is seeing the relationship between marketing and selling widen as each fights for supremacy in the digital communications era. With this widening gap, marketing will finally …

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