Influencing RFP´s is a tricky game. the customer may even be procecuted for seeing a salesperson!
This article explores ways to use LinkedIn to influence RFP´s and the decisionmakers.
This was a three-hour lecture presented to participants in the BizTec technology entrepreneurship competition, held at the Haifa Technion in December 2010.
When participants were invited to the lecture, they were directed to a survey about their marketing knowledge, and what they hoped to gain from the lecture. This served as the market research that was analyzed throughout the lecture.
How To Market Your Expertise Online: Creating A Brand StrategyMomentum Marketing
Do you want to leverage your online presence to reflect your expert status in your industry? Learn how to create a brand strategy for your small business or consulting practice in this presentation.
If you are interested in creating a brand strategy for your digital marketing presence, please contact MOMENTUM MARKETING today for a FREE CONSULTATION!
info@gomommentummarketing.com
How To Market Your Expertise Online: Creating A Brand StrategySabrina Franklin
Presented by Sabrina Franklin
Principal Strategist at Momentum Marketing
For the Forensic Expert Witness Association (FEWA)
American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants (AALNC)
South San Francisco, CA on June 7th, 2015
This was a three-hour lecture presented to participants in the BizTec technology entrepreneurship competition, held at the Haifa Technion in December 2010.
When participants were invited to the lecture, they were directed to a survey about their marketing knowledge, and what they hoped to gain from the lecture. This served as the market research that was analyzed throughout the lecture.
How To Market Your Expertise Online: Creating A Brand StrategyMomentum Marketing
Do you want to leverage your online presence to reflect your expert status in your industry? Learn how to create a brand strategy for your small business or consulting practice in this presentation.
If you are interested in creating a brand strategy for your digital marketing presence, please contact MOMENTUM MARKETING today for a FREE CONSULTATION!
info@gomommentummarketing.com
How To Market Your Expertise Online: Creating A Brand StrategySabrina Franklin
Presented by Sabrina Franklin
Principal Strategist at Momentum Marketing
For the Forensic Expert Witness Association (FEWA)
American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants (AALNC)
South San Francisco, CA on June 7th, 2015
It really depends whether you are trying to use email marketing to reach a stranger or to contact someone either you know or who knows you. The whole notion of opt-in email marketing evolved almost a couple of decades ago but email marketing is often viewed as spam because so very few people actually follow the rules.
Law Firm Marketing: Why Attorneys Hate Marketing and What They Can Do About ItEdward Brown
This information provides tips to solo practitioners for becoming recognized thought leaders on LinkedIn to gain trust and credibility, as well as maximize their income and influence within the legal community and the industries they serve.
Using Growth Hacking & Inbound Marketing To Grow On A BudgetKennedy Andersson AB
Low cost & high impact inbound marketing can ignite growth on a limited budget, if you a start-up or feel like giving-up there are opportunities with a comprehensive inbound marketing program to grow your leads and business.
This presentation accompanies a webcast about how to plan top performing marketing content, including mapping content to the buying cycle, plotting a 12 month editorial calendar and aligning content planning with buyer and business needs. The accompanying webcast is available here http://bit.ly/wmconf-webcast
Do you know where your sales tools come from? Ever wondered where things like trial close and handling objections came from? In this is a report award winning business coach Andrew Priestley explores where some of your sales techniques and tools really come from. and if they even work.
So you have a list of leads that are ready to be contacted for an appointment but are anxious about not being able to secure a meeting with them? Then this whitepaper is for you
The B2B Marketer's Lead Generation Field GuidePascal Bourhis
To learn how to track and identify your ideal buyer, amplify your efforts across multiple channels, and work with sales to capture different types of leads.
B2B Lead Generation using Google, AdWords, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TwitterAsif Anwar
This presentation includes:
- Lead Generation Principle
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using Google Search
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using Google Alerts
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using LinkedIn Page
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using Google Search
- Find Specific Professionals's Emails using Google Search, Facebook, and LinkedIn
- Email Hunting/MIning using LinkedIn and Google Search
- Communication Principles and Ethics
- Using Twitter for Lead Hunting
- Using Facebook for Lead Hunting
- B2B Leads with LinkedIn Ads
- B2B Leads with Facebook Ads
- B2B Leads with AdWords Audience Target and Remarketing
How Personalized Selling Unlocks Competitive AdvantageAlex Hisaka
Today, too many organizations are using social interactions as a way to make a quick impression, rather than an opportunity to foster a mutually beneficial experience. In a world where we constantly have our eye on the immediate goals of delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time, we overlook key elements: relationships and relevance.
This ebook is designed to help sales reps, sales leaders, and marketing executives guide the buyer by listening to their needs, asking the right questions, and educating them about the right solution for their particular goals.
It really depends whether you are trying to use email marketing to reach a stranger or to contact someone either you know or who knows you. The whole notion of opt-in email marketing evolved almost a couple of decades ago but email marketing is often viewed as spam because so very few people actually follow the rules.
Law Firm Marketing: Why Attorneys Hate Marketing and What They Can Do About ItEdward Brown
This information provides tips to solo practitioners for becoming recognized thought leaders on LinkedIn to gain trust and credibility, as well as maximize their income and influence within the legal community and the industries they serve.
Using Growth Hacking & Inbound Marketing To Grow On A BudgetKennedy Andersson AB
Low cost & high impact inbound marketing can ignite growth on a limited budget, if you a start-up or feel like giving-up there are opportunities with a comprehensive inbound marketing program to grow your leads and business.
This presentation accompanies a webcast about how to plan top performing marketing content, including mapping content to the buying cycle, plotting a 12 month editorial calendar and aligning content planning with buyer and business needs. The accompanying webcast is available here http://bit.ly/wmconf-webcast
Do you know where your sales tools come from? Ever wondered where things like trial close and handling objections came from? In this is a report award winning business coach Andrew Priestley explores where some of your sales techniques and tools really come from. and if they even work.
So you have a list of leads that are ready to be contacted for an appointment but are anxious about not being able to secure a meeting with them? Then this whitepaper is for you
The B2B Marketer's Lead Generation Field GuidePascal Bourhis
To learn how to track and identify your ideal buyer, amplify your efforts across multiple channels, and work with sales to capture different types of leads.
B2B Lead Generation using Google, AdWords, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TwitterAsif Anwar
This presentation includes:
- Lead Generation Principle
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using Google Search
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using Google Alerts
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using LinkedIn Page
- Find Businesses (B2B Audiences) using Google Search
- Find Specific Professionals's Emails using Google Search, Facebook, and LinkedIn
- Email Hunting/MIning using LinkedIn and Google Search
- Communication Principles and Ethics
- Using Twitter for Lead Hunting
- Using Facebook for Lead Hunting
- B2B Leads with LinkedIn Ads
- B2B Leads with Facebook Ads
- B2B Leads with AdWords Audience Target and Remarketing
How Personalized Selling Unlocks Competitive AdvantageAlex Hisaka
Today, too many organizations are using social interactions as a way to make a quick impression, rather than an opportunity to foster a mutually beneficial experience. In a world where we constantly have our eye on the immediate goals of delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time, we overlook key elements: relationships and relevance.
This ebook is designed to help sales reps, sales leaders, and marketing executives guide the buyer by listening to their needs, asking the right questions, and educating them about the right solution for their particular goals.
• More than 665 million people now use Facebook every day
• Over 70% of Internet users say they are more likely to purchase from brands they follow on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook
• The number of active LinkedIn users has grown to over two million, and 35% of them access the site daily. So potentially one third of your leads can be contacted on LinkedIn
Understanding How The Sales Funnel & Inbound Marketing Generate LeadsKennedy Andersson AB
The buyer’s journey across all industries and segments has evolved over recent years with the proliferation of the Internet. Learn how with Inbound marketing to use the Sales funnel to generate more leads for your business.
Master the art of Social Selling to increase sales by fostering relationships...VereigenMedia1
The goal of “social selling” is to increase sales by fostering relationships with potential prospects and stimulating conversations with those customers through social media platforms. For
example, on LinkedIn, marketing specialists share advice with a targeted audience of firms in a specific area (e.g., eCommerce, SaaS, finance).
Consistent participation on the platform increases their credibility and eventually, their
clientele. This approach allows you to market your business without making your posts look
like ads.
The goal of both traditional social media marketing and social selling is to make a sale. Social media marketing focuses on branding and aiming to reach a wider audience rather than just deal closures. On the other hand, in social selling, you leverage your own personal brand to connect with potential buyers. To put it simply, social selling is sales-focused, while social media marketing is more concerned with expanding a company’s brand. It’s setting yourself up as a credible thought leader or industry expert to get more sales.
We will share how to truly evaluate how well your company is marketing itself. When it comes down to actually evaluating PR initiatives, organizations aren't exactly sure. Marketing and PR is considered > intangible in terms of its ROI and associating an actual matrix to its value. Companies know that they need it but consider it a gray area when it comes to setting expectations for their in-house team as well as for their public relation agency, if they have one.
Here are just a few of the questions we will consider along with the importance of why we are considering them:
Is your company vision clearly mapped out for today and for future products and/or services as a context for all company communications?
Have you developed your company's key messages for each unique audience and defined competitive differentiators?
Are you utilizing a matrix to measure the overall success in communicating the company's key messages effectively?
Are you getting placements in at least 50% of relevant editorial opportunities? How do you know?
In producing third-party endorsements, customer testimonials, and success studies, how are you marketing them?
Are you actively seeking award opportunities? How many awards have you received so far this year?
Have you conducted a perception study to understand how your key constituents perceive your company?
We will provide a "How To" PR guide and explain the importance of measuring the results. PR performance measurement encompasses a measure of business value, of strategic alignment and of marketing efficiency. It can seem too abstract to fit easily into a concrete measurement like it does for sales but through our 10 plus years of PR experience, we definitely have seen the PR measurement matrix evolve. Our presentation will help organizations get a handle on setting PR expectations as well as how to successfully fulfill those expectations. We are excited to share with the group through our experience, industry research and customer stories on how organizations are able to evaluate what PR investments they should make along with how to measure their outcome and success.
Marketing for Startup Incubator - January 2012Rebecca Herson
This is an updated, shortened & interactive version of a lecture I presented one year earlier. The audience was startup company founders participating in TheHive@Gvahim, an incubator in Tel Aviv, Israel. The companies' marketing targets are a very broad range, including B2B enterprise, B2C, SaaS and social enterprises. The lecture included mini-assignments for participants to do for a few minutes between lecture segments.
Intelligent Social media marketing, or ISM, is a form of internet marketing with intelligently that implements various social media networks in order to achieve marketing communication and branding goals. Intelligent Social media marketing primarily covers activities involving social sharing of content, videos, and images for marketing or brand promoting purposes, as well as premium social media advertising.
Similar to Influencing rfp´s the power of linkedin by jens edgren salesmakeover (20)
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Many people read this book over and over, to make sales right from start.
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Dessutom: Pitcha din idé, sprid via sociala nätverk och få roligare på jobbet!
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And beware: you could find things scary in this book. But there are remedies - outside your comfort zone.
This is a teaser. Order at www.salesamkeover.tictail.com
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WOW! Sluta jaga kunder, låt dom jaga dig!
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När all information finns på nätet: vad skall en säljare tillföra?
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Influencing rfp´s the power of linkedin by jens edgren salesmakeover
1. Salesmakeover AB +46 651 25 00 (switch)
Fredrikslundsvägen 2 jens@salesmakeover.se
168 51 Bromma, Sweden www.salesmakeover.se
Influencing RFP`s: The power of LinkedIn.
Salespeople who have spent countless hours answering to RFP´s, waiting for response and
evaluation – finally loosing without given a “fair chance” to influence the process and explain
the suggested solution might find this blogpost interesting.
LinkedIn offers golden (untapped) opportunities to influence the people creating, evaluating
and taking decisions based on RFP´s:
Open the eyes of the customer for new ways of seen the needs
Create curiosity & credibility for the solution offered
Create credibility for the team behind the RFP
Increase the positive status of the vendor
And influence the real decision makers directly without contacting them.
The nature of RFP´s
RFP´s (request for proposals) are only about control, ensuring that the procurement decision
is based on logical reasons only. That means defining the needs, collecting data about possible
solutions on the market, ask vendors to present and offer and, finally, compare the bids to
select the “best” offer. You can set up parameters in a spreadsheet, with columns for each
vendor. You can make a checklist of the requirements of the “best” solution, put values (+/-)
for how the vendor performs at each item.
But at the end of the day the largest part of the decision will
be based on feelings. It is how the procurement team perceive and feel about the vendor, the
quality of the solution, what other people (in the organisation) will say and think about the
decision.
2. Salesmakeover AB +46 651 25 00 (switch)
Fredrikslundsvägen 2 jens@salesmakeover.se
168 51 Bromma, Sweden www.salesmakeover.se
So in a close race between vendors the X* factor is the attraction of the offer and the vendor.
To stay neutral and fact based the customer does not want sales people to run around in the
organisation, influencing people to their favour. Once the RFP is out on the street, the door to
the customer is closed. The key is in the pocket of the procurement officer. In fact, in
government buying the consequences of neglecting the buying procedure described by law
can mean that the tender process has to be redone. And that is connected with both costs and
loss of face.
This is a part of the RFP process sales people hate the most, no access to the customer. I have
heard stories about secret meetings in bars, customers wearing disguise, private hunting trips
where the customer and the vendor spends time together etc. Creative ways to organize
meetings outside the protocol.
New ways of creating influence (in a safe,
legal and honest way)
The power of social networks is well documented**, over 70% of C-level managers utilise the
communication capabilities that LinkedIn offers to gather information about solutions and
vendors to support a buying decision.
Most people on LinkedIn check in to the news feed every day or at least a couple of times a
week. They follow the news flow, read blog posts that are interesting to them and they keep
updated important topics. Can we use LinkedIn to influence them? Absolutly!
3. Salesmakeover AB +46 651 25 00 (switch)
Fredrikslundsvägen 2 jens@salesmakeover.se
168 51 Bromma, Sweden www.salesmakeover.se
Back to basics, 5 strategies for the brave new thinkers
1. Who do we want to influence?
We will have to do research on the people form the customer who is involved directly into the
information gathering, RFP evaluation and in the final decision making. Sometimes we may
want to include end users as they can influence or block a decision.
We can use LinkedIn (pro version***) to find them and make a list. We can put a tag on each
profile (see example) with the name of the RFP project. That will make it easy to find them
and follow them.
You can choose to follow each person by clicking on the “follow” button. Now everything
they do will be visible in your news feed.
2. Where do they search for information?
On each person’s profile you will see who they follow, which groups they are members of and
recent activity. This will provide an opportunity for you to join the same groups and start
following the same people. Also will you be able to see how you are connected to them,
directly or indirectly. Often someone else in your company have a direct contact or someone
you know. That person could be both a source of information and a potential influencer.
Now you can summarize your findings and select the most important groups to join and the
people you may want to ask to help you influence the RFP team.
4. Salesmakeover AB +46 651 25 00 (switch)
Fredrikslundsvägen 2 jens@salesmakeover.se
168 51 Bromma, Sweden www.salesmakeover.se
Important: count on that the people you want to influence will visit your profile (people at
your company). Make sure that the profiles look professional, updated and the summary of
each person contains the information you want to communicate.
3. What topics do we want to address?
First do a competitive analysis and find you “killers”, differientors where you really have a
competitive edge. Next step can be to find you weak points. Can you make them less weak?
Winning in competition is about winning on your strengths and avoiding loosing on you
weaknesses.
The themes to address can be:
The needs perception, are there other ways of viewing the needs than the customer
have done? Are there other perspectives? Maybe other clients have addressed the
situation in another way? Maybe industry experts have published reports that supports
your viewpoint?
The solution the customer are looking for. Can you create trust for your offer by
publishing reference stories or white papers that can influence the buyer? Are there
group discussions you can join/start that supports your standpoint?
Your company, your team. At the end of the day it is all about the people. People you
trust. Can you reinforce the status of your team? Updates, news, awards, recognitions?
FUD**** (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Sometimes you want to shake the customer up
a bit, highlighting risks of failure if certain things are done or not done. It could be
about using a certain technology, method, business policy or type of agreement. FUD
stories are best communicated by neutral, highly recognized sources. You can find
evidence for your standpoint and post that.
3. How to influence in an honest way?
Since your customers don’t want to be directly engaged or contacted you will make a few
assumptions. From your research you know where and how they engage on Linkedin. It is
also likely that they check up profiles they are interested in. Honesty is very important as you
want to influence in an intelligent way so your arguments eventually will come from the
customer. Too obvious or aggressive posts will backfire.
1. Start with updating all profiles on your team; make sure they are broadcasted to
contacts
2. Find relevant group discussions and share your opinion, backed by third party research
(and link to that research)
3. Create new group discussions on the topics you choose. A good thing is to use a
challenging headline, a question or statement that would encourage people to read and
5. Salesmakeover AB +46 651 25 00 (switch)
Fredrikslundsvägen 2 jens@salesmakeover.se
168 51 Bromma, Sweden www.salesmakeover.se
comment. Always refer to third party research (Gartner/Forrester etc) to increase trust
and credibility.
4. Create blog posts with your topics, in the form of a white paper: challenging headline,
a good picture and short introduction with your standpoint backed with third party
research.
5. Link blog posts to your homepage and offer downloads in return of a mail address.
6. Update several times and share each other’s blog posts.
7. Ask permission from your customers to post updates about reference cases where the
key message supports your opinions, topics you want to influence on.
8. Visit your targeted peoples profiles, that will create curiosity and they will look at you.
9. Ask your connections to share your blog posts to the people you want to influence.
10. Finally invite to an open breakfast or lunch seminar to discuss the topics.
Try to work in cycles of three days, very active Monday – Wednesday, and repeat next week
for 1-2 months. Spread the responsibility in the team.
5. How to know we have succeeded?
The final answer to this question would be that you win the tender. In the mean time you can
create a dashboard and follow:
“Who viewed your profile”, did your key people check you out?
“Who viewed your updates”, did you reach beyond your connections?
Number of views, comments and likes on your articles
New followers, from people you target
Summary
Influencing a group of people on LinkedIn requires a focused approach, regular activities and
team work. LinkedIn is still not used as a sales channel. That’s why an “influence plan” can
make a huge difference.
Good luck!
Jens “Salesmakeover” Edgren
Jens is the CEO of SalesMakeover, a Solution Selling certified business partner. Jens Edgren
have been training sales organisations since 1989 and is the author of 3 books, amongst them
the best seller “How to sell the answer to a problem” found on amazon.com
jens@salesmakeover.se +46 707998800 www.salesmakeover.se
6. Salesmakeover AB +46 651 25 00 (switch)
Fredrikslundsvägen 2 jens@salesmakeover.se
168 51 Bromma, Sweden www.salesmakeover.se
*The X Factor is a British television music competition to find new singing talent, contested
by aspiring singers drawn from public auditions. The person with most talent and public
attraction is elected by the viewers.
**Research Discover Org,2013)
***LinkedIn´s pro-versions offers search capabilities, tracking capabilities and increased
view