social media | Jane Frankland

October 18, 2014

What Is Social Selling & Why Should You Care? [Part 4]

By JaneFrankland | business start ups, Established business, Marketing, Sales, Selling, social media | No Comments

In Part 3 of What Is Social Selling and Why Should You Care, I discussed how you can move opportunities through the pipeline faster, free up yourself (and your sales team) to move on to new prospects, and lower acquisition costs.

In Part 4, (the final in this series) I'll be going through how you can achieve greater client lifetime value, make bigger deals and retain more clients.

October 8, 2014

What Is Social Selling & Why Should you Care? [Part 3]

By JaneFrankland | business start ups, Established business, Marketing, Sales, Selling, social media | No Comments

In Part 2 of What Is Social Selling and Why Should You Care, I discussed how you can get more and better leads. In Part 3, I’ll be looking at how social selling methods will help you shorten your sales cycle. I’ll be going through how you can:

Move opportunities through the pipeline faster
Free up your sales team so you can move on to new prospects
Lower your acquisition costs

September 21, 2014

What Is Social Selling & Why Should You Care? [Part 2]

By JaneFrankland | business start ups, Established business, Marketing, Selling, social media | No Comments

In part 1 of ‘What is social selling & why should you care?' I wrote about how buying has changed and how you now need to sell in a different manner if you’re going to build a strong sales pipeline and exceed your revenue targets. In this post I’m going to expand upon this and show you how you can get more and better leads.

As you now know much of the buying process occurs before your buyer reaches out to a salesperson. However, what you may not be aware of is that it’s not happening behind closed doors. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Buyers are in your sight-line and good leads are there for you – in full view.

Yes, your buyers are on social media. And, there they're talking about their business needs, asking questions about issues in their industry, revealing intelligence about their own companies and reaching out to their peers for advice.

So, the question begs. If they’re doing all of this, why aren't you there too? Why aren't you socially surrounding them and recognising their buying signals so you can be of help?

September 15, 2014

What Is Social Selling & Why Should You Care? [Part 1]

By JaneFrankland | business start ups, Established business, Marketing, Selling, social media | No Comments

Over the past few months there's been a lot of hype over social selling so I'm going to explain exactly what it is (and means) in a series of posts. The first starts here – obviously!

Meet Jessica. She's a a buyer and she's looking for a supplier. She doesn’t do a Google search and then call to make her inquiry. Instead, she searches Google, reviews the supplier’s website, considers their services, checks their reviews and reaches out to her connections for verification or recommendations. If she thinks they're OK, after having done all that and having compared them to other suppliers, she then makes contact via email or the phone.

Chances are, you're no different to her. When you're looking for a new supplier you do the same thing.

Why?

Well it’s because buying has changed.

And, it doesn’t matter who you are or what industry you’re in, that's a fact.

Today’s buyers are better informed and better connected thanks to technology. Social media had lead the way and revolutionized everything.

And, as a result we need to sell in a different manner – that is if we’re going to outperform our peers and the competition (of course).

July 8, 2014

6 Social Media Tips for B2Bs [ignore these & sell diddlysquat]

By JaneFrankland | Established business, Marketing, Selling, social media | No Comments

In this post I'm going to be sharing six social media tips that B2Bs can use to help them strategically develop business. I'll be looking at some of the main challenges and how they can be solved. Whilst this article is aimed at anyone who's responsible for selling in a B2B environment, if you're looking to build your influence (and brand) as a consultant I'm pretty confident that you'll get mileage out of it.

Now let's get started!

In case you've not noticed social media is maturing. No longer is it just seen as a tool for marketers. Now, there's a growing amount of buzz around using it as a sales tool especially for B2Bs. Many understand its value. They know from experience that when it's implemented correctly it delivers a solid return on the investment. And, that's why more and more businesses and individuals (brands), year-on-year, are keen to get it right and use social media as a tool for increasing their influence and business development.

So let's look how you can set yourself up for success by giving you six social media tips that address the main challenges. These are:

What to say
How to find the time
What content to create
How to engage with your audience
What the cost implications will be
How to integrate social media fully into your business

June 30, 2014

3 Social Selling Myths Busted [these are making you loose sales]

By JaneFrankland | Marketing, New business, Selling, social media | No Comments

Irrespective of the fact that you may or may not be practising social selling, in my world, winning sales starts by having conversations.

And, every good salesperson knows that in order to get people (or more specifically influencers and buyers) to talk to you, you've got to:

Look the part so you can be taken seriously and heard amongst the increasing noise.
Have the right story so you can convince your prospects to change and use you.
Have the right skills so you can deliver your story with impact and articulate value.

Furthermore, that to pull this off in the digital era you've got to have marketing and sales aligned.

For B2B companies, being able to execute your company’s growth strategies, including new product or service launches, go-to-market campaigns or even merger or acquisition deals, comes down to one thing:

Great conversations that go on between your salespeople, prospects and clients.

Ensuring your company delivers great conversations is therefore of major importance. And, in a rapidly changing technology driven environment it's based on three critical activities:

1. Building influence. You've got to get dressed for being online, and present yourself as a key person of influence. It's imperative that you become the signal and not the noise in cyberspace so you're heard or sought out by your prospects and clients.

2. Creating the right stories. Your sales messages and tools have to communicate enough value to break through your prospects’ current situation and differentiate yourself from competitors.

3. Enabling the right skills. Your stories must be delivered with power and impact. They need to create value, convince sceptical executives, and protect your profitability.

Listed below are three popular sales and marketing myths (the two these days are joined at the hip) that I’m going to bust. Unfortunately, these might have been leading you astray when it comes to developing and delivering your messaging. However, discovering the truth behind these myths and embracing their alternatives will serve to empower you AND convince your clients to say “yes” to change, and “yes” to you!

So let’s get on with it!