AA-ISP Ireland ran a workshop with social selling experts from SAP, Oracle, Indeed.com, and LinkedIn. The following is a summary of the key points made by both the social selling experts and the workshop audience.

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Advisory Board
From Left to Right: Frederic Chauvire (SAP), Carmel O’Boyle (Oracle) and Declan
McGonigle (Indde.com)
IRELAND CHAPTER
Interview Panel
at the Social Selling Workshop which was held at the IDA Offices
Highlights
from the
Recent
Social
Selling in
Inside
Sales
Workshop
Friday 13 March
2015

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The Panel were interviewed by Ake Braedt (far left) from LinkedIn

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Key points taken from the Interview panel
Carmel O'Boyle from Oracle
• 70% of the sales cycle is over by the time buyers start to engage with possible
suppliers
• Social selling is the current trend and it's not going away for the foreseeable future
• Assumed millennials would be more comfortable with social selling than other
'generations' - Carmel's experience is that this is not the case. This point was also
backed up by Fred Chauvire from SAP (speaking later)
• Carmel suggests critical pillars for any social selling strategy is to ensure all sellers are
(1) Socially Complete (Training - Skills & Knowledge of various platforms) and (b)
Socially compliant from both a personal and an organisational perspective
• Key Point: Also need to educate team on cultural idiosyncrasies - particularly in a
Global / EMEA sales team.
• Need to keep tight controls on 3rd party content - particularly at early stages of on
boarding people . (Social feeds / social content). Over time people will develop better
judgment as to what constitutes useful and appropriate 'thought leadership .. but this
takes education & time.

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• Developing appropriate metrics around areas such as the following are key
a) revenue
b) Movement through the pipeline
c) amount of conversations moved offline towards sales opportunities
d) Quality of stakeholders engaged with
e)Have we done business with them recently
• Carmel also suggests that it is very important to have an 'internal in company
networking metric"
• Carmel concludes with - 'Social selling is an exercise in change management
and must be managed, monitored and measured accordingly.
Carmel O'Boyle from Oracle Contd…..

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Frederic Chauvire from SAP
• Appropriate metrics are a key challenge
• Activity metrics are easy but commercial and return on investment
metrics are not.
• Management need to be careful and ensure metrics are meaningful and
move the organisation closer to achieving commercial results. If not
careful, activity based metrics will result in some agents engaging in
activity to be 'compliant'.
• Tools like sales navigator in LinkedIn add great value from a coaching
perspective. It allows the senior sales manager challenge the 'reach out'
process being used by the inside sales agent.
• Making thought leadership relevant to target audience one of the biggest
challenges.

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• Indeed are at the evolutionary stage of social selling
• Suggests up front classroom style training is key
• Need for clear guidelines to keep the company and individuals safe.
• Metrics are the biggest challenge
• Currently trying to get people consistent and compliant - in terms of
both posting and growing a connection base
Declan McGonigle from Indeed.com

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Question 1
IRELAND CHAPTER
How do you measure the impact of social selling in
your inside sales teams:
(What have you tried? What has worked? How do
you balance time invested in social selling activities
with a return on 'investment'?)

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Question 1 - Answers
IRELAND CHAPTER
• Very difficult to measure the direct impact of social selling
however you can measure the influence you have by use of
tools like the Social Selling Index, Klout (you can see how active
a person is) and you could also measure from Re-tweets or
Favoured posts etc.
• Most commonly used is LinkedIn, followed by Twitter – with
one company using a digital business card.
• With customers researching via social media prior to making
final decisions, companies have to be visibly active and
relevant.

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Question 2
IRELAND CHAPTER
How and where do you integrate social selling
into your sales process?

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Question 2 Answers
IRELAND CHAPTER
Use it end to end, some examples are:
 Demand generation – especially good for acquiring net new customers
 Account management
 Renewals
 Gamification – competition that measures Klout score for each rep and
gain points the number connections you make, content you share etc.
 Account discovery
 Virtual Summit – invited network of customers to attend through social
media a virtual summit which was a webinar – more registrations and
attendees than using traditional methods
 Recruitment – check candidates social activity on LinkedIn/Twitter etc.
before making a hiring decision – have found that the more active a
person is, the more successful they are when they join as they are
natural at multi-tasking.

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Question 3
IRELAND CHAPTER
The Social Selling challenge:
How does your organisation marry the company
social selling agenda with the social selling
agenda of the individual inside sales agent?
(They are not mutually aligned)

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Question 3 Answers
IRELAND CHAPTER
 You do not have control over your employee’s LinkedIn profile, what they
post etc.
 You can give guidance and training on how to be socially compliant
 Management need to lead by example
 Score their LinkedIn profile against criteria and provide feedback on how
to improve in order to create a professional BRAND and improve
DISCOVERABILITY and REACH e.g.
 Professional photo
 Customer Focused Headline
 Put in the Company Disclaimer. *Views expressed here are my own
and not necessarily the views of Company Name”
 Show Your Personality (voluntary, affiliations, sport etc.)
 Add Rich Media Attachments (80/20 Rule)
 Language Considerations – 1st party OR 3rd party

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Question 4
IRELAND CHAPTER
How do you ensure your reps represent your
brand appropriately on Social channels ?
(could open discussion on social media policies,
mitigating risk on social media)

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Starts with Hiring – presence
Candidates should have a great presence on social media upon interview- this gives
an indicator of their approach to professional brand
Peer learning
Employees learn from each other, having a peer group review of online social
profiles will help with employee brand representation to the market and create
competition among the peer groups
Company Guidelines
Company guidelines on what is deemed a company appropriate social profile will
help steer employees in the right direction to create social media profiles as
ambassadors for their brands.
Question 4- Answers

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Question 5
IRELAND CHAPTER
"Social selling now means inside sales
professionals pick up the telephone much
less than is ideal" Discuss

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Qualification
Social selling allows the sales person to better qualify leads and prospects,
reducing the overall sales cycle time and providing a better customer experience
Enabling Salesperson
Social sellers are better enabled with insights on leads and prospects to have
more informed sales conversations therefore increasing relevance of sales
message
Social v Email
When 90% of DM’s do not respond to cold outreach (either by phone or email),
social is fast becoming a better means to connect with your prospects…..in-
mails/tweets are now an acceptable means of transacting in todays business
world
Question 5 - Answers

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Have you seen any differences in adoption
across your teams – regionally ? Why ?
Question 6

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Question 6 - Answers
Yes – regionally and industry
• France – Hierarchy – lower
• UK – Flat – Higher
• Ireland very high rate
• Middle East High (2009)
Anglophone tools – prevalent
• Germany - high adoption, International, Efficient
• Austria less central to networking – less international
• Media/gaming - fast
• SMB V Enterprise
Metrics
• Performance of Business – using camp. code