Marketing and sales leaders are struggling with adopting social as a true sales tool that can be tracked and become part of the overall KPI and data components within the current sales climate. There is no doubt the pressure is on sales production and B2B companies are dealing with a lot right now. Covid, work-from-home, and changes to the way many people communicate and their effects on our daily sales activities have been thoroughly discussed and documented.
But, the challenge remains. How do companies make sales and our marketing efforts more effective despite these challenges?
Furthermore, what changes do companies need to establish, test, and implement within their sales organization? Not to mention, what new tactics are companies willing to test and adopt in order to make it in the current complexities facing B2B sales teams. There has to be a way to determine what will give a company the confidence to try something new or beta test new methods or new technologies?
It begs the question, is there really value in social-based sales activity,
and can a company confidently implement a company-wide system and technology to support it?
Confidence in testing comes from an ability to capture data that will demonstrate the effectiveness within pipeline generation and the resulting influence on new revenue acquisition. Am I right?
The Sales Industry Demands Change
As a side note, recently, SalesLoft made a major brand announcement. Yes, they changed their logo and their colors. But, more importantly, they changed their messaging around sales.
Why did they make this change? The market demanded it. They saw what was happening with sales. The tried and true KPIs of emails sent and phone calls made are reducing in their efficacy. The ROI from these activities is dropping. Teams need new methods that produce better ROI.
Sales have changed and companies need to adapt their tactics, training, and tools to empower sales to perform their prospecting, relationship building, information sharing, and yes, even their personal brand building.
You can read about the new SalesLoft here. FunnelAmplified and SalesLoft will announce our integration partnership in the near future as well. We are very excited to reveal this powerful partnership and what it means to the entire sales and social selling game. More on this soon.
The Triangle of Social Selling Success Model
At FunnelAmplified we created and have tested a model for social KPIs. As we learned what worked for sales successes, we also kept adding features to our platform to provide the best and easiest technology that will enable sales teams to perform daily social selling activities. We also capture the important data points and the results of the known effective activity, so that leadership can see its influence on deal flow, pipeline growth, and new revenue wins and losses.
Before we jump into discussing the measurement of social selling KPIs and how it can demonstrate value and additional revenue results, we need to establish certain terms and details around social sales. We will in fact publish a follow-up piece on measuring the KPI’s and revenue from social selling next, but it will prove valuable to review the Triangle of Social Selling Success Model. The following is a quick summary that will further the KPI conversation surrounding social selling we are currently having.
Our research and experience in training sales professionals on the art of social selling have demonstrated 3 key activity areas for a successful social-based prospecting, sales, and revenue generation program.
Social Connections
Expand your digital network with strategic focus and messaging.
Thought Leadership
Thought leadership begins and is developed through content! Buyers want to engage with trusted advisors. They want to invest time in others that will help them understand their challenges better, make good decisions, and implement them for success. Buyers don’t want salespeople who just have “commission breath” and are just focused on getting a demo and closing a deal.
Social Engagement
Some will argue, and I am one of them, that engagement is the most important social selling activity for all sales professionals and business leaders.
The tendency is to believe that we don’t have time to do it. But, the value of engaging with ideal customers and specific, strategic prospective customers is more valuable than voice messages and flurries of emails that don’t get responses.
Understanding the changes that are happening within sales and the changes to the normal KPIs that will increasingly involve social elements is more important today than ever before. The recent world events, business climate changes that have resulted from those events, as well as the continued drive to more social and online relationship building, are center stage today. The pressure facing sales organizations to do more with less, and drive results within these pressures are only going to escalate from here.
Watch for our next post that will cover – Social KPI’s – How to Measure Social Activity to Demonstrate Value to Deal Flow and Revenue Generation
