In her SocialMedia.org Member Meeting case study presentation, Cisco’s Social Media Marketing Manager, Jennifer Roberts, talks about how they rolled out social selling capabilities and tools to their virtual sales organization. She shares four real-world examples of how their sales reps implemented the program and provides a checklist to help you get started with social selling at your organization.

1. Cisco Systems
Jennifer Roberts
Social selling at Cisco
MEM
B
ER MEETIN
G
34
SOC
IALMEDIA.
ORG
SAN FRAN
CISCO
SOCIALMEDIA.ORG
CASE STUDIES
Member Meeting 34
San Francisco
2-4-2015
Learn more about Member Meetings
socialmedia.org/meetings

2. Social Selling at Cisco
Jennifer Roberts, Marketing Manager

3. Agenda
What is Social Selling Why Social Selling
Social Selling POC
Review
What We Learned Use Cases Getting Started

4. What is Social Selling?
Lead
Qualification
Sales Demos
Cold
Calls
Today’s Social Selling is about enabling sales to use social platforms and tools to communicate and
connect with customers throughout the buying journey.
Lead
Qualification
Sales
Demos
Warm
Calls
Social
Networks
Traditional Sales Model Social Sales Model

5. Why Social Selling?

6. “It used to be that a salesperson, who made a
100 cold calls would get 10 appointments and 1
sale.
“Today, a sales person who makes 100 calls is
leaving a 100 voicemails that are ignored by 100
people.”
Do you pick up the phone from
a number you don’t recognize?

7. Social Media is today’s new selling tool

8. Scale Social Selling Model
• Create ongoing training—on-demand, liveRaise Your Social IQ
• Select a platform (i.e. LinkedIn) you want your
sales reps to use to grown their networkGrow Your Connections
• Understand their content needs
• Consider creating a platform for your reps
Create Your Professional
Brand
• Identify key metrics: sales qualified leads, # new
connections per accountAttribute Success

9. Social Selling FY14—The Year of the Proof
of Concept OBJECTIVE
Introduce Social Selling capabilities in the form of POC and
Pilots to Americas, APJC & EMEAR VSAMs.
PURPOSE
Educate and enable sales reps to leverage social media
channels (LinkedIn & Twitter) to engage, nurture and
ultimately sell to customers on their preferred platform.
RESULTS
• 7 confirmed SQLs
• 156% increase in LinkedIn network growth
• Rolled out to 62 VSAMs globally
WHAT WE LEARNED
• Don’t introduce new concepts in Q4
• Sales reps are excited about new capabilities but want
control

10. Social Selling FY15—The Year to Scale
OBJECTIVE
Rollout the Social Selling model to entire GVSO
PURPOSE
Raise the digital IQ of the organization; grow the network of
individual sales reps; drive SQLs
RESULTS
• Restarted 1st week of December with Regional
Operational Excellence training
• 3 confirmed SQLs
• 11% increase in LinkedIn network growth Nov-Dec.
WHAT WE LEARNED
• Executive leadership is important but so is knowing where
you need their support
• Cultural changes take longer; Social Selling is not a tool
change

11. Real World Examples
A Sales Rep used a combination of LinkedIn & Twitter to
expand her network and introduced two of the SMBs in her
region.
• Key Takeaways
• Positioned herself as a trusted adviser
• Less about selling and more focused on value she
could provide to her network

12. Real World Examples
A Sales Rep in the Americas used a combination of Outlook,
SalesForce.com & LinkedIn to identify and nurture new
contacts. He added 30 new contacts to his network in a
matter of days and continued to add new contacts over
several weeks. He also captured significant value in
qualified leads.
• Key Takeaways
• Scheduled the use of LinkedIn part of his daily job
• Didn’t just make connections; he nurtured relationships

13. Real World Examples
A Sales Rep in the Americas used her social network to
earn an introduction to a large school district that no one
had been able to connect with for 2 years. Ultimately, this
outreach effort led to a significant opportunity.
• Key Takeaways
• Made herself available to share knowledge and answer
questions from her network
• Gained knowledge about projects for the upcoming fiscal
year

14. Real World Examples
A Sales Rep in EMEA used LinkedIn to help find the right
people to invite to his private LinkedIn group. He provided
extra information and support to his partners and made
deeper connections with his customers as a result.
• Key Takeaways
• Focused on helping his partners develop their own
presence by providing content for blogs
• Interacted directly with customers to help answer their
questions

15. Social Selling Checklist—Getting Started
Executive buy-in is critical—but it’s also important that you bring in their support at the right time.
Training—provide ongoing support: on-demand, live and one-on-one support is needed to make the
transition.
Know what you’re measuring—define the success criteria for your program and determine how you’ll
track the metrics
Test new tools—pilot new technologies with a small group; encourage your sales reps to innovate
Define your content goals—bring sales and marketing together to solve this challenge; define short
term and long term goals and strategy
Training
Evaluating
Connecting
Social Selling

16. Contact Information
Email: jennirob@cisco.com
Twitter: @rideboulderco

18. Learn more about past and
upcoming Member Meetings
socialmedia.org/meetings
MEM
B
ER MEETIN
G
34
SOC
IALMEDIA.
ORG
SAN FRAN
CISCO
SOCIALMEDIA.ORG
CASE STUDIES
Member Meeting 34
San Francisco
2-4-2015
Learn more about Member Meetings
socialmedia.org/meetings