Episode 164: Rolling Out Social Selling for Your Sales Team

Bob Woods  00:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to Making Sales Social Live! Brought to you by Social Sales Link. I’m Bob Woods, the LinkedIn Sherpa, and I’m joined by fellow LinkedIn and social selling professional, aka the “LinkedIn whisperer.” Hey, how are you doing Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  00:18

I am so good. How are you?

Bob Woods  00:21

I am doing fantastic. 

Intro 00:26

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! As we share LinkedIn, and social selling training strategies and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me Bob Woods every week, Making Sales Social Live!

Brynne Tillman

For today’s episode, we’re gonna get a little corporate. Now that doesn’t mean boring or anything like that but we are going to talk…

Brynne Tillman  00:54

I’m never bored when I’m with you.

Bob Woods  00:56

That’s excellent. Let’s just cross our fingers that our audience feels the same. So we are going to talk about rolling out LinkedIn and social selling to an entire sales team, or even a sales force within a company. So even though this episode is getting corporate, there are still plenty of takeaways for smaller companies and even individual salespeople to use. So we’re not forgetting anyone in our audience. So everyone’s going to have something coming out of this. Simply put, LinkedIn and social selling can be done wrong, very, very wrong. But if you follow these steps, you can get your sales team or yourself on the right path pretty much immediately after rollout. 

So there’s so much going on here, we’re actually going to split this into two parts today is part one. But there’s an ebook we’ve developed that accompanies this entire little mini-series that we have called LinkedIn for social selling program, rollout checklist, boy, that rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it, you can find it at socialsaleslink.com/rollout, which does roll off the tongue. And you can be ahead of the class if you want because we all know people who want to be ahead of the class. I used to be one of them by downloading at socialsaleslink.com/rollout. 

So let’s get to the individual items for part one. So for number one, you know, ya gotta start at the beginning and when you start at the beginning, you really need to look at the end or the desired outcome. So you do that by establishing goals and KPIs or key performance indicators. If you don’t know what that means. And yes, believe it or not, this can be done with social selling. Most people use social selling to have more sales conversations with targeted connections. So we’ve got some that you can use here, there are other KPIs that you can set with social selling, as well. This is just to kind of get your thought processes rolling. Do you want to take those three Brynne or should I just keep on it?

Brynne Tillman  03:07

Well, even before that, I want to talk about what you said, because I think this is really important. I just want to spend another minute beginning with the end in mind. So you know, as a sales leader, or even if you’re doing this for yourself, we really have to define what we want to get out of this program. Some of it and we have three we had, there’s so many KPIs we can focus on but so much of what we do on LinkedIn is these random acts of social, we come on, we like we engage, maybe we connect with someone, maybe we post something, it’s all kind of like, “Hey, in the moment, what am I doing?” But we have to look at it, especially when we’re rolling out a program like this, what are the things that I want to achieve at the end? So, you know, in 60 days, when we look back, what do we want to have achieved in 90 days and 120 days in one year? And when we know the goals that we want to achieve? We can then set KPIs or what are the activities that we need to put in place to achieve those goals? That’s where I wanted to start with this before we actually go into like, what can we measure? Because I think for all of us, this is really important because if we don’t know what we want to get, then we don’t know if what we’re doing is successful.

Bob Woods  04:36

Absolutely! And I think that’s really important at the corporate and enterprise level because I think a lot of these people are thinking, Oh my God, my salespeople are going to be on LinkedIn all day long, and they’re not going to be doing anything and how do I know if they’re being successful or not? Because they don’t know that you can establish real goals and KPIs that can be tracked so that they are being productive and yet they are forming the types of relationships that you want them to form to have the sales that obviously everybody wants them to have.

Brynne Tillman  05:13

Yeah, so the first number of targeted new connections and a defined timeframe. So if you have weekly meetings with your sales reps, or, you know, bi-monthly or monthly, we want to determine and by the way, when we roll out these KPIs, they’ve got to be nimble enough that if we’re not hitting goals, by our defined time, that we can change them and modify them based on the results that we’re receiving but this is a big one. So if we’ve decided, we want Jane the SDR to have 50 New right connections this month, targeted CEOs in the Lexington Kentucky area, right? We know exactly the types of people that she should be going after, we can actually do that search with a first-degree connection, filter, grab that link, and save it, and then when it’s time to meet with her again if we if she clicks on that link, again, it’s gonna go to that dynamic search and we’ll be able to see how many new targeted connections were added to that search.

Bob Woods  06:21

Absolutely. Absolutely. And before we go on to the next one, let just show Jack’s comment really quickly. Jack Hubbard, our friend and PAL, the great thing about LinkedIn KPIs is that they are lead measures. So in terms of time, not like lead as in terms of sales lead, they are lead measures, not lag measures, like sales made, so right.

Brynne Tillman  06:47

So I think that’s like the top of the pipeline. These are leading measures that we can identify if we’re putting enough new people into our sales process. I love that. Here’s another one that is here too, which is connected KPIs like connections to conversations tracking that create coaching moments. Absolutely. And that’s the whole point why we’re spending so much time on number one, which is defining those KPIs really important.  

Bob Woods  07:16

So number two is a number of warm introductions from clients and referrals, partner these referral partners rather, so this one’s easily trackable. It depends on your salespeople but it’s, yeah.

Brynne Tillman  07:31

And so, in your CRM, if you have referral partners, you’re gonna have your opportunities, right. But if you have referral partners that you add, and you can track, you can put them in, as you know, categorize them as a referral partner. They could also be a client, but in this case, let’s just say we can track that and then there’s a place for us to add notes and URLs of LinkedIn people we’re asking for introductions to and then those folks, you know, if they become a conversation that they will now have a their own instance in your CRM, and then you should link the two together, right? That there’s a way that you can see who referred who, but what you need to do and this is something you could go to the IT department to, you need to put in a –like we have normal CRM, right, like first conversation, second conversation proposal sent, like we have the sales process, want to have a warm market process also. So, request made, conversation had, list of people they’re going to introduce, list of people that we’re going to name drop, and then when those people convert into a contact inside of your CRM, that becomes a win, like that becomes your sales process. I know that sounds like a lot. If you have questions, reach out to us for sure.

Bob Woods  09:05

Yeah,it’s just like any other CRM work, you know, it is a little bit to get it in there but once it’s in there, man, you’re golden, you’re good to go. And that actually gets into the third one that we’re going to suggest that you track is the number of conversations booked and then completed, which Brynne has already gone over a little bit. I like to think of this one as the number of conversations booked from LinkedIn activity and then completed because you can book conversations however, tracking LinkedIn-specific conversations booked though, is really good because you can then have this set number where you can look back and say, Okay, this is a good KPI. We can continue with this number or like Brynne said, you’d be nimble enough, it’s like, maybe we need to go back on this or maybe we need to up it a little bit too. It just depends on how your efforts are going. 

Brynne Tillman  09:57

Awesome. Let’s go to number two. 

Bob Woods  09:59

Number two to, again, rolling directly out of number one, buyer identification and mapping. So just remember that the Challenger Sales Study found that there are at least 6.7 influencers on average for any enterprise sales, so you’re going to be talking to a lot more than just one person. So to do that here’s like a real quick rundown. We can go over these in particular, but you should do the following. So, number one, research your best clients. Number two record. We’re going back, all right. All right.

Brynne Tillman  10:42

I love that. Okay. So research our best clients, what does that mean? What I want you to do is look at every single person inside of a client that you’ve engaged with, there are decision makers, there are influencers slash shoppers slash people that have some kind of input in the decision, and there are the users of whatever it is that you do, there could be overlap but what I want you to do is take inventory of all of those people in your best clients look at what are their titles, because when we go to buy your map, we want to match as best as possible. Also, take a look at other titles that they could be under and another company, but definitely start there. Okay. Bob, second one.

Bob Woods  11:31

Record all of the titles of the people who you want to speak to because, you know, an SDR is probably not someone who you want to speak to when it comes to selling into a company, but a vice president, a district manager, or you know, someone at the district level, someone at corporate level, these are the types of people that you want to be recording the titles that they hold.

Brynne Tillman  11:53

The next thing is, is identify your industries, right, like we tend so one of the our strongest industries or financial services, which is actually, you know, insurance, banking, securities, it just, we just attract that we have a lot of that, and we love that business, we love lots of business but if we’re gonna go out to market, let’s look at our top three or so industries that we love to serve, that we’re really good at. So this is really important, right? Who do we love to work with? Where do we have the biggest impact? And selfishly, what industries have a budget? They’re like, I could go nonprofit, I love them but we wouldn’t be able to eat right. So I mean, there are some nonprofits with a budget but generally, you want to go after like that trifecta, who you love to work with, where you have the biggest impact and who’s got a budget?

Bob Woods  12:53

Yep, the next one is big, because this is where you get to kind of translate what you do in how to do it on LinkedIn and that matches any Persona filters that you have with the filters that linked in has when it comes to searches and this is where, and we’re going to talk about tools in a minute but this is where Sales Navigator can come in because it’s so powerful and the filters that they have in Sales Navigator are just so much more targeted and focused and just useful, quite frankly, rather than what you find in the free version of LinkedIn.

Brynne Tillman  13:31

Yes. And the answers to someone Laura asked, Do you use Boolean search, we do use Boolean search in linkedin.com. but to Bob’s point, most of what we do is in Sales Navigator if you are rolling out a social selling program, or you are truly using LinkedIn for social selling Sales Navigator is what we advise.

Bob Woods  13:51

Next thing is build out your org charts, which is something else that Sales Navigator makes easy with its buyer map. Yeah, you can do that with so much. 

Brynne Tillman  14:03

Yep. Three layers. Absolutely.

Bob Woods  14:05

The last one is identifying your social proximity to the influencers, to influencers? So are they your direct connection or first-degree connection? Or are they a secondary degree connection, which means that you need to go through someone else to get an introduction to that influencer. And there are all different kinds of ways to do that as well that we teach here on the regular at Social Sales Link that just makes it easier than you know, then reaching out to someone cold. It’s always better to have a good-quality introduction or a name-drop rather than just trying to go after someone cold.

Brynne Tillman  14:45

Yeah, absolutely. And this is kind of a cornerstone of what we teach. So when you map out your right buyers, we want to go high and warm as high and warm as we possibly can go but why doesn’t mistakes people make is they go as high as they can go that when it’s not warm, right, so they go high and cold, but they’re like, we’ve been taught our whole careers to go as high as we can and get pushed down but what we have found when you go as warm as you possibly can and get pushed up, it’s even more successful than cold push down. So go as high and warm as possible.

Bob Woods  15:25

Absolutely! So number three on our hit parade and cavalcade, and this one is just so hugely, hugely important that we teach it. And we also develop these as well. So value-centric profile development. So you really need to transform your sales team members’ profiles from something, you know that they copied and pasted from their resume, who really cares about that into powerful landing pages that attract, teach and engage your buyers and that eventually develops trust with your buyers. So lots of steps here, we’re going to list them real quick but let’s just talk a little bit about profile development. 

In general, it’s like I said, it’s something that we really concentrate on your social sales like because everything that your salespeople do on LinkedIn pushes the people who they’re engaging with, who they’re attracting through their content and all that stuff, it pushes them to the profile, so that profile needs, it’s huge, it needs to be as strong as possible. And like I said, it needs to attract, teach and engage the buyer so that the trust starts getting developed. And it’s much much easier to get that initial conversation based on just what’s in the profile, it can happen, it has happened, it will continue to happen as long as it’s a strong value-centric profile. 

Brynne Tillman  16:55

Yeah, I love this. And so there’s two ways to think about this and by the way, there are seven tips in the eBook that we’re not going to go deep into now but you can certainly go download that but conceptually, I want you guys to start thinking about this shifting from a profile from a resume to a resource, right? Like, I think this is absolutely foundational. If you are looking to engage your ideal buyers, you have to earn the right, you have to earn the right to get the engagement, you have to earn the right to get the call. And the only way we can do this with strangers is by bringing them value. 

When we bring them value, we create trust and credibility, we create curiosity. You know, if we’re teaching them something new, and they’re thinking differently about their current solution, we earn the right and our profile, as Bob said, where you know, all roads lead back to our profile, it is so important that we do this, the number one tip I want to talk about before we go to the next thing. And by the way, if you have questions about profile, Bob is a genius at LinkedIn profile and positioning definitely connect with him on LinkedIn and ask him those questions. 

But the one thing I want to leave this section with is stop leading to your solution, not with your solution. So that’s by adding value, not by pitch, and make sure that when someone consumes your profile that you master the Ask offer ratio, you ask them to invest their time in order to consume your content. At the end of that time, your content is your profile at the end of that invested time. If they walk away saying, “Man, I got great value,” you’ve earned the right to get the call. And sometimes it even creates inbound which will start to blow your mind, right? Because that’s about bringing that value. So that is foundational. Okay, thank you.

Bob Woods  19:00

Okay, so let’s now get to number four. And this has to do with digital productivity. So like I said, something that we strongly, strongly recommend is Sales Navigator, especially the and I can never remember the name of the individual level, but the one that includes smart links, advanced, advanced, advanced, of course, so smart links are really important because you can build like entire I want to call them like mini landing sites, I’m not sure. Landing Pages. Yeah, landing pages to where you can put in all types of information you can put in a Calendly calendar link, which is another one of the productivity tools that we recommend and then you can use that as well to really deliver value and then if they want to book a call with you, they can go ahead and just use calendly, by the way, if you do have Calendly, and you do have blanks also put that in your profile in your about section.

Brynne Tillman  20:05

Great. So let’s talk just just to bring in. So smart links is a content hub that you can upload or link things to. The magic is when someone clicks on it, you get to see what are they looking at? What did they download? How long were they there, and those become actionable opportunities. So I highly recommend that. Calendly, as you mentioned, is the second one. I could never manage my schedule without Calendly. And it makes it so easy for other people to schedule with you. I’m going to side tip, social selling tip, don’t ever cold send your calendar link out without this message. First of all, you have to get them to say “Yes, I’d like to talk with you.” Once you’ve gotten that, send the message that says “Excellent. I’m looking forward to it, please let me know your preferred way of scheduling. If it happens to be a calendar link here is mine.” And the reason is there are still people that find it offensive if you just send the link. Let’s quickly go through some of the other ones we use, obviously zoom

Bob Woods  21:14

Zoom. Yeah, Zoom is fantastic. Smart Links is Don Chester asked if Smart Links is actually a LinkedIn tool or separate add-on that is a part of the advanced package of Sales Navigator. Yeah, I don’t know if you consider that an add-on or what

Brynne Tillman  21:32

It’s a LinkedIn tool? It’s native to LinkedIn.

Bob Woods  21:36

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is native to LinkedIn. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. So the next tool that we strongly advise is Canva. It is so as and zoom, obviously, we just did that. Canva is a great way to make graphics, there are all kinds of if you are not graphic, savvy, like me, you can create all kinds of just wonderful-looking things with Canva, they have a set of templates that is just second to none. It’s very easy to use, you don’t need to know how to use Photoshop. Canva is very, very easy to use. We absolutely love it.

Brynne Tillman  22:17

Yeah! And then there are a few other things I’m just gonna throw out really fast. For curating content, and our favorite, get magical one of our favorites. It’s a Chrome extension, that’s short code, that you can store all of your, all of your templates, and with one click or short code, you don’t have to retype anything. If you go to socialsaleslink.com/magical, we’ve got 17 templates that you can download once you sign up, really a fabulous way to save time on LinkedIn.

Bob Woods  22:58

So we have gotten speaking of time, we have gone through oh my god, and we knew this is going to be so long. That’s why we decided to split it into two parts. So next week, we’re going to talk about sales content strategy, which is usually an episode of its own, where we’re going to do that, we’re going to talk about tailored workflows and templates. That’s really important because you really need to provide your people with a path for them to take when they’re doing all their outreaches and things like that. 

We’re also going to talk about the training program you’re going to need for the rollout and then continuing coaching for improvement, which is something you should be doing no matter what but it’s especially important when it comes to social selling and LinkedIn and remember, you can download the ebook at socialsaleslink.com/rollout. Again, that’s socialsaleslink.com/rollout. So with that, we’re wrapping part one, and we’re wrapping the episode today. Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  24:01

We are, let’s take it in for a landing. 

Bob Woods  24:04

Let’s do it. So thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Live! If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter right now, we do this every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us recorded on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button. If you’d like more information on our podcast, we have one more URL to throw out yeah, and that’s it I promise socialsaleslink.com/podcast 

We do two shows weekly, this one and our Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with the leaders and experts in sales, marketing business, and a lot more areas some of which are kind of surprising, but you’ll definitely enjoy them. So until we meet again for part two, when you’re out and about be sure to make your sales social. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. Bye bye. 

Outro 24:58

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Resources Mentioned:

•  socialsaleslink.com/rollout
• socialsaleslink.com/magical