REF: How to make your number in 2014
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is a modern prospecting methodology that fills the funnel with opportunities.
What does Social Selling Do?
Social selling generates meetings with decision makers inside of target prospects.
What does it mean to use Social Selling?
Using social selling means a sales team can make its number without any dependencies on other departments.
Social Selling Becomes Mission Critical
In 2013 social selling started to become mission critical. Social selling has shown up in research from time to time in the past. But there has not been enough evidence to prove it worked. That changed in 2013. SBI started to see proof that if sales forces put forth the time and energy to master social selling, they hit the number. It appears we are just getting started on this trend and will see another 7 to 10 years of it. In the past, a sales force had to depend on marketing for sufficient leads to make the number. Over the last 3 years, SBI has seen an over rotation in the dependence on marketing. Marketing has created optimism implementing lead generation programs, lead management initiatives, demand generation programs, marketing automation technology, etc. All these tools are needed, but they are not delivering the expected results. SBI research has found sales forces that depend primarily on marketing for opportunities to fill the funnel are unlikely to make the number. It is now time for sales to take ownership of opportunity identification through self-reliant prospecting. The way to do that in 2014 is social selling.
Success Rates of Traditional Prospecting vs. Social Selling
The cold calling appointment success rate varies between 1% and 3%, according to The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals.3 Why do sales people still bother with cold calling? Because it used to work and habits are hard to break. But today’s buyers are not answering their desk phones anymore. They live with smart phones in their pockets and that is how they choose to communicate. Recent years has seen a shift to email. But email open rates today have declined to 4.4%, according to Google.4 The chances of getting an email through to a decision maker, having it read and ultimately having him take the action are very low. The volume of emails coming at the new informed buyer has rendered email prospecting unproductive.
