Sales Solutions
“Transformation to Social Selling”
LinkedIn Confidential ©2013 All Rights Reserved

Our Agenda for Today
Presenters:
•Ralf VonSosen
•LinkedIn Sales Solutions, Head of Marketing
•Craig Rosenberg
•Industry Expert & Leader, Focus Expert Network
Agenda:
•Overview of Social Selling
•Transformation to Social Selling
•Making Social Selling Scalable
•Q&A (send questions throughout)
LinkedIn Confidential ©2013 All Rights Reserved

How you
doin?
What social selling is not.
LinkedIn Confidential ©2013 All Rights Reserved LINKEDIN SALES SOLUTIONS

What social selling is not.
Been out on the
course lately?
LinkedIn Confidential ©2013 All Rights Reserved LINKEDIN SALES SOLUTIONS 4

Transformation to Social Selling
Craig Rosenberg
May 2011

Why social selling? Your buyers are there
175 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
As of June 30, 2012, business professionals are signing up to
join LinkedIn at a rate of approximately two new members per
second.
Page 6

Why social selling? Your buyers are telling
you who they are
Never in the history of modern selling have we seen time where
prospects and customers publicly post and update information
on their roles and responsibilities
Page 7

Why social selling? Your buyers are telling
you what they care about
Never in the history of modern selling have we seen time where
prospects and customers publicly post and update information
on their roles and responsibilities
AND what they care about and are working on
Page 8

Why social selling? Your buyers starting the
buyer process online
75% of respondents to an IBM buyers survey
said they were likely to use social media in the
future as part of their purchasing decision.
Page 9

Buyers are buying by committee
“Decisions are not made by a single person in B2B models – they are made in
a chain-of-command or committee model. “
Esteban Kolsky
http://estebankolsky.com/2012/07/question-why-are-you-in-social-channels/
Source: Marketing Sherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, August 2010
Page 10

Buyer decisions are getting longer and more
complex
awareness consideration purchase
level of buyer activity
“ We have a
project”
“I’m just
“ We’ve
downloading
made a decision”
stuff”
“ We’ve
shortlisted
vendors”
“I’m just browsing”
time
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 11

The first round of social selling: Chaos
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 12

Second round of social selling: Proven
Productivity
1.We understand the goal of
social selling
1.Organizations are adopting
2.We now have a framework for
success
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 13

Social selling does not replace sales, it
enhances it
“Many of the social selling tenets
are selling best practices”
Andy Rudin, Outside Technologies
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 14

Social media allows sales to create
meaningful, one-to-one relationships
And you don’t need to pick up the phone every time
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 15

Social selling: not just for breakfast anymore
1. According to Richardson/McCord Social Media in
sales 65% of businesses report using social media
in their sales efforts.
2. 1,700 IBM North America inside reps have now
been trained and enabled with tools for social
selling, and the company is preparing to extend the
initiative to overseas regions for some of its digital
brands. The inside sales team now has a total of
50,000 LinkedIn connections and has posted 20,000
tweets..
3. The IBM program drove 4x orders for product during
their pilot quarter of social selling than during the
same time the year before.
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 16

Your social selling framework
1.Standardize
2.Self brand
3.Listen and watch
4.Deliver valuable insight
5.Find
6.Engage
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 17

Three questions for every sales manager
1.Where are our customers?
2.Where will my reps be most
comfortable?
3.Where will my sales reps get the
most value?
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 18

Create a standardized social platform
1. Designate one platform
for sales reps to “live
Secondary platform
inside”
2. Monitor other platforms
when appropriate
Main platform
In most cases, Linkedin will be the base for social operations
•It is the place where the vast majority of social business activity happens
•Unprecedented visibility into your customers and their organization
Page 19

The self-brand
• Buyers need to trust you
• Buyers need to know that you know the right people
• Buyers want to know you have are an expert in your
space
• Buyers want the best sales person (believe it or not)
• The most unique thing is not always the company or
the product; but it is always you
Page 20

Think like a marketer: Build a credible online
presence
•Complete profile including: photo, experience, skills, honors, and
recommendations.
•Stream of updates to relevant content
•Membership in relevant groups
•Connections
Page 21

Always be connecting
•Create a core
competency and
process in your sales
team around building
their networks
•Sales managers
should monitor and
reward network building
Page 22

Sales Person PI: Watch and listen
1.Know your customer and their
organization
2.Follow them
3.Watch them interact
“Effective use of sales intelligence increases revenue
productivity per sales rep by 17%” CSO Insights
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 23

Account planning has gone virtual
Old Days Today
Day long account planning sessions Minutes-long account planning
“Sell high” Triangulate
Manual account investigations to Real-time visibility into organizations
determine relevant decision makers
Cold calls Referrals
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 24

Listen and learn
1. Follow companies
2. Look for personal updates, profile changes, and updates
3. Watch them interact in groups
and forums
"At the rep level, social media is less about
tweeting than it is about listening, reading
and knowing what people are talking
about. That's what lets them better tailor
their contributions to the discussion.”
Douglas Hannan, IBM
http://chiefmarketer.com/social/ibms-social-selling-computer-giant-finds-
b2b-leads-social-media?page=1
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 25

Deliver valuable insight
Answer the following question: Why
would a buyer follow you?
The answer is NOT: “Because they
can’t wait for you to hard-sell them”
Provide value to their day-to-day
challenges
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 26

Four ways to deliver insight
1. Status updates with content
2. Personal content deliveries via
Inmail (“Jim, I thought of
you when I read this”)
1. Offer to make connections
2. Group conversations
3. Use the “like” feature
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 27

How to scale content with sales
1. Provide them with content
• Marketing should provide content
• Self-tools like RSS feeds
2. Allow them to and encourage adding their own spin
3. Manage and optimize their insights
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 28

Four rules to sales insight
1. Don’t talk about yourself
2. Don’t pitch
3. Help and provide value
4. If you build it, they will
come
“I really think of myself as that information concierge and really have become a content connoisseur in really
understanding what is required from an education perspective to get that future advocate to purchase and to
become an advocate of our company, our product and my personal brand as well.” Jill Rowley, Eloqua sales
and social selling expert
http://www.heinzmarketing.com/2012/06/social-selling-in-action-qa-with-eloquas-top-salesperson-part-1-of-5/
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 29

Opportunity generation
Old Days Today
Purchased lists Ability to find the right people with the
right role with the right challenges
Calling the admin and asking around Advanced search techniques allow you
to find the people you want to talk to
“Columbo-style” interrogations of Unprecedented pre-call sales
prospects intelligence
Open with pitch about you Open with pitch about them
Seek and find people needing help Buyers publicly asking for help in
Groups, Forums, and Q/A
"If we didn't do this kind of social listening, we wouldn't know about a lot of these
opportunities until it was too late to get considered. Social media let us engage
earlier with our clients—hopefully, earlier than our competition.“ Hannan, IBM
http://chiefmarketer.com/social/ibms-social-selling-computer-giant-finds-b2b-leads-social-media?page=4
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 30

Engagement
“Delivering relevant, timely, and
meaningful messages to prospects
and clients has NEVER been
easier”
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 31

Pre-call research: How sales manager teach
today’s social sales person
1. Study contacts and
companies
2. Read their blogs, Linkedin
updates, Twitter feeds
3. Search for business
problems aka don’t ask
them about the golf trip with
their buddies
4. Use playbooks based on
buying personas
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 32

“Someone you don’t know has a problem”
1. Via listening, the sales rep finds a person
with a challenge
2. Deliver valuable content or help make a
connection.
3. Content playbooks tell sales reps what
internal content should be passed along
4. Two paths:
• Early in sales cycle: connect and nurture
• Late in sales cycle: engage directly
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 33

Social Selling 2.0
1. Institutionalize it
2. Train sales
3. Build for scale
4. Share success stories
5. Make it part of day-to-day life sales life
6. Optimize
We really wanted to make social selling part of the basic way we sell. We didn't
want our reps spending five minutes a day tweeting and then going back to
their 'real' job.“ Douglas Hannan, IBM
http://chiefmarketer.com/social/ibms-social-selling-computer-giant-finds-b2b-leads-social-media?page=1
© 2011 Focus, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 34

Thank You!
•Craig Rosenberg
•Funnelholic.com
•@Funnelholic
•http://www.linkedin.com/craigrosenberg
•Ralf VonSosen
•rvonsosen@linkedin.com
•@rvonsosen
•Linkedn Sales Solutions, Head of Marketing
•LinkedIn Sales Solutions
•Website: http://sales.linkedin.com
•Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/linkedin-sales-solutions
•@LinkedInSelling
•LinkedIn Group: LinkedIn Sales Solutions
LinkedIn Confidential ©2013 All Rights Reserved

Sales Solutions
“Transformation to Social Selling”
LinkedIn Confidential ©2013 All Rights Reserved