Good Afternoon all,
Here is an excellent Tether tip from our MD, John Hennessy.
This weeks Tip is the Introduction of a new Partner Product which will bring a new dimension to your Social Sales Ability.
Pipelaunch brings Social selling to Salesforce
Recently Tether were announced as a partner with a new product in the salesforce ecosystem called Pipelaunch.
One of the key challenges Tether and our clients face every day is the idea of social selling and how to link it with our CRM data. How to get to the decision makers and how to be impactful with our selling strategy.
It is hard to imagine that in 1996, Hotmail launched the first free web-based email service. And it took another 6 years until LinkedIn would come about. Previous to that, if you were in Sales, chances were you only had limited resources available to research a company or a prospect.
Fast forward to 2021 and amongst the almost 800 million LinkedIn members, you are unlikely not to find the company or decision maker you are about to contact.
What is Social Selling?
More often than not, Social Selling is mistaken with Social Advertising, or Marketing.
Social Selling is about using social media information (e.g. LinkedIn, Xing) in order to compliment your sales and/or prospecting efforts.
Social selling allows you to research, connect and build relationships with your prospects. If done well, you will never have to call a complete stranger again.
Don’t miss the important information
It’s more than just about name and company name. Sellers often neglect to dig in deeper and get all the goodies:
- Profile History
- Where has the prospect worked before – were they a customer or thinking of buying your solution
- do they know your product
- have they worked for a competitor
- Contact Info (highlighted next to the city where the contact is based)
- Birthday – which can turn into an ice breaker
- Twitter Profile – helps better understand the person you are speaking to
- Email address – some contacts have a public address. Meaning the email will be listed under Contact Info
The secret sauce to success
Do not sell when connecting – your connecting message is your opportunity to build trust. Avoid using elevator pitches, as it will decrease your acceptance rates. The market is inundated with people offering their services on LinkedIn, you therefore need to make sure you stand out from the crowd.
Give before you take – give your prospects something they can take away (e.g. knowledge, insights or tips) before trying to get a meeting. If you sell services around improving landing pages, give the prospect feedback on their website.
Research, research, research
- Find something that you and the prospect (your company and their company) have in common, you are likely to only get one shot, don’t leave it to chance. If you have similar hobbies, university, etc., try to make it part of the message, without making it too obvious.
- Try to find out what their landscape looks like for the service or product you are selling. You can even use job descriptions to better understand what products or services are in place.
- In some cases companies have funding information, such as amount and cycle. This helps find out at what stage the business is at and what potential services they might need.
Mix up the channels – connecting with a person on LinkedIn can be the start of a long relationship. However, if you do not get a connection or even a reply, think of other ways you can use in order to reach out to the prospect. According to research, picking up the phone still has the highest conversion rate at 5%-10%.
Regular communication – Even if you didn’t get a meeting you should stay on top of the prospects mind, as needs change over time. If your company is organising a webinar or your solution has a product update, share it with people you connected with in the past. This will ensure they keep your product or service in the back of their mind.
Summary
The most important aspect of social selling is to stay relevant for your prospects. This can only be achieved through research and regular communication. There are solutions such as PipeLaunch.com in the market that help you stay on top of social selling.
What is PipeLauch doing to make sure you SMASH IT!
PipeLaunch is the next generation Sales Engagement solution that turns Salesforce into the ultimate pipeline generating tool, enabling salespeople to build pipeline faster by having your planning, research and sales applications all within Salesforce.
Have LinkedIn, Company News, Relationship Maps, case studies and objection handling scenarios all within one Salesforce view.
For more information visit www.pipelaunch.com
We Hope this Helps, and that you are all keeping safe and well,
John Hennessy – Managing Director at Tether.
#tethertip #pipelaunch
