The New Sales Toolkit

Everything you need to know

about social selling

Sales Solutions

In this eBook youll learn:

Introduction
Why read this eBook?
The buyer has changed.

How to get away

from cold calls

Cold calls dont get the response you need.

Social selling success

stories from enterprise
companies

How to create your

professional brand
online

Buyers use the web and social media to research products and define decision
making criteria.
But in light of all of this change, the change of how your buyer makes
purchasing decisions, sales methodologists remain static.

Tips on how to avoid

a social sales pitch

How many have heard the demand of more dials, more prospecting, more
business? The problem is that they way we did business before the Internet
does not translate to business today. The reason? The customer has evolved.

The future of sales

for B2B companies

In this eBook well be diving into the new sales methodology, that of social
selling. This is the methodology of how we move from the analog world, where
meetings were held on the golf course to the digital. These are dialogues, held
without your consent but that effect your ability to do your job.

84% of B2B decision makers begin their

buying process with a referral.

The solution though is simple. Take what you do face to face - online. Its that
simple.

75% of customers say they use social

media as part of the buying process

To help, The stories in this eBook explain how to use social media to increase
their revenue potential, exceed quota, prospect more effectively, and
strengthen professional relationships.

Edelman Trust Barometer

IBM

Top sellers use LinkedIn a minimum of

6 hours per week - Do you?
Jill Konrath

Contents

90% of decision makers say they

never respond to a cold outreach
Harvard Business Review

How do we define social selling?

What is the value of social selling?
Personal branding and customer relationships
Using social media to build and close pipe
The future of social selling

The average sales cycle has

increased 22% over the past 5 years
due to more decision makers being
involved in the buying process.
Sirius Decisions

Social Media As a Channel For Sales

How do we define social selling?
The simple answer - Helping social buyers become customers
For a more definitive description, LinkedIns Koka Sexton proposes:
Leveraging your professional brand to fill your pipeline with the right people,
insights, and relationships.

Social buying is...

Leveraging professional networks
for buying support to increase
confidence in decision making.
IDC

For Sexton, who Forbes ranked number 1 in their top 30 most influential social
sales professionals online, he first realized the power of social selling during his
days in inside sales. He had no way of getting to know prospects in the same
way as traditional field reps, he never went to their offices and saw the golf
trophies on the wall. All I had was a name, phone number and title

90% of consumers trust peer

recommendations but only 14%
trust ads.

Who are social buyers?

We use the term social buyers but read knowledgeable buyers. Its commonly
said that the B2B buyer has completed two thirds of their purchasing decision
before they reach out to a sales person. That means they are searching for
content online, carrying out internal assessments and listening to peers on
social media.

77% of buyers wont speak with

sales until they have done their
own research.

In this new buyer centric sales process, sales professionals are turning into
fulfillment managers, making it difficult to affect purchasing decisions, even if
the solution would be better for the customer.
Social selling is effective as it gives sales access to prospects earlier in the
buying cycle, allowing them to engage with content, positioning themselves as
a peer rather than a vendor.
But you need to re-tool to be most effective

Nielsen

Engage Early, DemandGen Report

By 2020, customers will manage

85% of their interaction with the
enterprise without interacting
with a human.
Gartner

The Value of Social Selling

76% of B2B buyers leverage their
personal and professional networks
for guidance and advice

73% of sales pros that used social

selling outperformed their peers as
well as exceeding sales quotas by 23%

LinkedIn professional content consumption report

Aberdeen research

Weve already established that the buyer has changed and sales professionals
who dont adapt will miss out on new opportunities.
Finding your buyer
97% of your target market is currently not buying - finding a buyer therefore
means finding a prospect at the right point in their purchase path. However,
compared to the pre-social era, companies are far more open with their
intentions as they ask for recommendations and solutions from their peers.
Social media allows sales teams to keep track of target accounts, uncovering
trigger phrases and behaviour on LinkedIn.
This is why professionals using social selling tactics are outperforming their
peers. They are engaging with prospects earlier in the purchase cycle, offering
solutions to their problems rather than products.

Sales professionals who use

LinkedIn for social selling are:

51%

more likely to exceed

sales quotas

3x
1.6x

More likely to smash sales

quotas

More likely to be promoted

to VP from Director

A Social Success Story

3000% ROI and a 25% shorter sales cycle

About the company

More than 5.5 million Australian consumers rely on PayPal when transacting
online or on a mobile device. PayPals digital wallet enables consumers to
purchase with security, flexibility and convenience. PayPal is now accepted by
most of Australias large retail websites and the company is striving for PayPal
to be a payment option for consumers, anywhere, anytime and any way they
choose to transact.
Problem
Head of Field Sales at PayPal Australia, Paul Weingarth, was looking for a way
to provide his team with more accurate leads and a solution to reducing the
sales cycle. Paul says, Time is money in our business so the longer it takes us
to acquire a merchant, the greater the opportunity cost..
Solution
Sales navigator, LinkedIns bespoke platform for social selling, empowered
Pauls team by giving them access to LinkedIns network. This allowed them to
build lead lists and track prospects behavior and activity across the LinkedIn
platform.
Results
At an investment of $10,000, Paul estimates that Sales Navigator brought in at
least $300,000 of new business within its first year. In addition to this, the sales
cycles at PayPal have been reduced by an average of 25%.

86% of IT buyers are already using social

media today in their purchasing decision
process
IDG

PayPal have changed their mindset towards LinkedIn as Paul explains, We

used to see LinkedIn as an online CV but we have realised that its a thought
leadership channel and a shop front for contacts. He adds, Id absolutely
recommend Sales Navigator to any sales organisation. Its a fantastic tool and
its transferrable to any sales role

Personal Branding and Customer

Relationships
So social selling starts with engaging prospects early, during the research
phase of the buying cycle, but what next?
Social selling does not mean simply implementing the same sales techniques
learnt from the cold calling days of yesteryear. We have to remain customer
first, and so being salesy is a no-no.

88% of customers believe that sales

reps are knowledgeable on products
whilst only 24% think they have
business expertise
Corporate Visions

Social selling means offering advice and expertise, not information about a
product. We are aiming to build a trusted relationship, the social seller can
elevate themselves to peer instead of just a vendor.
The 4-1-1 Rule
This is the social sellers blueprint for posting on social media. Popularised by
Joe Pulizzi and Tippingpoint Labs, the 4-1-1 rule was first designed for Twitter
but is applicable across all social platforms.

The 4-1-1 Rule

What this means is for every 1 piece of self-promotional material share 4

pieces of educational content and re-share anothers social post.
Social selling pioneers such as Sexton quickly realized the power on their
professional brand.
Your prospects will be looking for people that have answers. Theyll be
doing searches to find solutions related to your product, and theyll want to
know youre reputable and knowledgeable before they get in touch.

4.
Four pieces of
educational content

1.

1.

One re-share
One piece of selfanothers social post promotional material

Top Tips for a

Professional Brand

Using Social Media to Build

and Close Pipe

Use a professional headshot. Your profile picture

doesnt mean stiff or formal; depending on your
industry and preference, you might not even have to be
wearing a suit. Avoid selfies or photos in which youre
clearly at a social event.

When sales professionals are surveyed, building a

robust pipeline is always a top priority. And with
tools such as LinkedIns Sales Navigator, social
selling leaders consistently outperform their peers.

Have a descriptive headline on your LinkedIn profile.

Your headline doesnt have to be your job title.
According to an award-winning Slideshare presentation
from Bertuzzi, your prospects might find CustomerCentric B2B Software Sales Professional more
compelling than Sales Executive.
Include a concise summary of your professional

experience and work history. Your summary should

explain what youve achieved for your company and
customers - not what youve achieved for yourself.
Use applications such as HootSuite or Buffer to

schedule and post your updates. This is a great way

to stay consistently active on social media, even if you
cant do so in real time. Consistent communication will
increase your reputation as a reliable source of insight
and information and put you in a great position to be
seen as a trusted advisor.

9% YoY increase in
average deal size
using social selling
Aberdeen research

STEP 1.

STEP 2.

STEP 3.

STEP 4.

Utilise the lead builder

Connect with decision

Use TeamLink to

Filter your news feed

within Sales Navigator

makers at target

see your colleagues

to stay informed about

to search LinkedIns

accounts and build

connections to get

your target accounts

entire database of

out your reach into

warm introductions to

and engage with

professionals to identify

the decision making

senior decision makers.

relevant, valuable

a prospect list.

unit through LinkedIns

content.

lead recommendation
engine.

Does it work? Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing, Inc., has heard numerous stories
from clients who have leveraged social as a channel for establishing trusted relationships with
customers.

One of the most impressive stories was when a client did a split
test between cold calling and social prospecting - same pitch, same
general sales process, except that half of the time, the team was still
cold calling, good names and companies but otherwise smiling and
dialing, and the other half of the time they were mining the social
Web for buying signals and trigger events. The social selling work
generated a 50 percent increase in opportunities created.

A Social Success Story

3x more leads with a higher conversion rate

About the company

Weight Watchers is the worlds leading weight loss organisation, helping
millions of people to lose weight over the past 50 years. Weight Watchers is
traditionally a B2C company but in the last year the brand has increased its
local focus on its At Work corporate program which provides people with the
convenience of taking part in the clinically-proven program in the workplace.
Problem
The National Corporate Sales Manager at Weight Watchers Australasia,
Duncan Ellis, explains, We had previously relied to a large extent on organic
growth to drive corporate sales but we needed a more proactive approach.
Solution
Weight Watchers partnered with LinkedIn, adopting Sales navigator and
allowed Duncans team to have direct, high-level conversations with decision
makers.
Results
Duncan explains that Sales Navigator paid for itself within the first month and
tripled the number of sales leads within 6 months and critically a much higher
conversion rate from those leads.
Duncan continued With Sales Navigator we are able to contact decisionmakers at tier 1 companies where previously the team were often struggling
to connect.

ROI Tip: Using your CRM

to track Social to Revenue
To identify measurable results from your social selling
efforts, start leveraging your Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) system. Start with these simple
tips from Sales For Life founder and social selling
training expert Jamie Shanks.
1. Create CRM tabs, one in Accounts and one in
Opportunities. Use these tabs to monitor and measure
social selling success

2. Think of LinkedIn as its own lead source. Have a tab in

Accounts to track where your sales team is acquiring net
new company information for the CRM (LinkedIn must
be one of the choices)

3. Do the same in the Opportunities tab, but now view

LinkedIn as a business-development action that results
in Opportunities. LinkedIn must also be one of these
actions that drive opportunities. Now, with a simple
reporting dashboard, you can clearly understand the
return on investing time in LinkedIn and/or any social
selling platform or activity.

The Future of Social Selling

It always comes back to the customer. They are engaging later with sales and
so sales have to move to them. Its still all about relationships and providing
value - that will never change. Its just that now, those relationships are online.
What is clear to Matt Heinz is that in the near future, social selling will just
become selling.

Do you really want to keep cold calling? Or would you

prefer to respond to buying signals and trigger events that
immediately give you rapport, context, and engagement
from more prospects?

In 2007 it took an
average of 3.7 cold
call attempts to reach
a prospect. Today it
takes 8 attempts

5X more likely to
schedule a first
meeting if you have
a personal LinkedIn
connection Sales

Telenet & Ovation Sales Group

Benchmark Series

Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment

Leap Job

10

When asked when the social selling tipping point will occur, Koka Sexton
predicts it will be within a year and five years from now social selling will be
the norm. This change will be driven from social selling leaders running rings
around their competitors.
When this happens Koka predicts the following will be soon to follow:

Salespeople will be hired based on their social footprint.

For example, a company selling medical devices in Michigan will look for a
rep with that or a closely related social identity. They wont hire a nonmedical
rep from California, because he will not have the connections.
The line between sales and marketing will blur even further.
As salespeople do their own micromarketing. Reps are already good at oneto-one and one-to-few communication. What happens when, instead of
calling ten people on the phone, they can do four social media updates a day,
reaching 15,000 people? Sexton asks.
Reps who are already responsible for about 70 percent of their leads and

revenue may increase that share by becoming their own marketers.

Save people who are important to you to see their updates on your
homepage, Account Pages, or on their profiles, so youll always know whats
going on. If you want to know the most important paper on a subject,
Google will tell you, Sexton observes, but if you want to know the hottest
paper today, Twitter will tell you in real time before it bubbles up a week later
on Google.

LinkedIn Sales Solutions

About Us
LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it simple to establish and grow relationships with prospects and
customers by helping you tap into the power of LinkedIn, the worlds largest professional network
of 347m+ members. Designed for sales professionals, LinkedIn Sales Navigator combines LinkedIns
network data, relevant news sources, and your accounts, leads, and preferences to produce
customized recommendations and insights.
With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can focus on the right people and companies, stay up-to-date on
whats happening with your accounts, and build trust with your prospects and customers.

11

Sales Solutions

For more information, please visit

our Sales Solutions site.
Visit https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions