Social Selling; LinkedIn Training Doesn’t Work, Here’s Why
At the start of 2016, many recognized leaders in sales management predicted that this was the year when social selling became part of mainstream B2B selling methodology. For the most part they were right. In Spring, CSO Insights released their 2016 Edition of Sales Best Practices Insights. Over 71% of their “Best Performers” group had a social selling or LinkedIn training in place. Yet a few weeks later, CSO Insights’ Tamara Schenk questioned the effectiveness of most social selling training, noting that her blog that sales leaders surveyed considered social selling training to be the sales instruction most in need of improvement.
Why is the training available so far behind the need? There are two reasons:
1. Social Selling training is not a tools training webinar. Social selling tools are not an end unto themselves, and simple proficiency in those tools, or a complete LinkedIn profile, does not lead to social selling effectiveness. The overwhelming majority of social selling training centers on either LinkedIn contact scraping or Twitter automation with little regard for the human interaction. Until Social Selling experts recognize that social selling is 90% psychology and 10% technology, their teaching will continue to receive poor marks. Relevant training must teach Sales Professionals to use social interactions to recognize the behaviors of decision makers, and the behaviors of organizations not just in the beginning stages of a buying process but throughout the buyers journey.
2. Packaged social selling training does not integrate social selling into the sales process. “One size fits all” online social selling books and webinars have no relevance to sales professionals and is quickly disregarded because they cannot relate its value to their daily goals. For Inside Sales and Sales Development Representatives, social selling must integrate into the natural flow of the sales process and cadence they use every day. Developing a cadence for interacting with prospects that includes telephone calls, voicemail, email and social touches is a more integrated approach to building social selling into a sales process. It must fit into each stage of the buyers journey, not just at the beginning as an offshoot.
The solution is to provide custom training for your team of sales professionals that incorporates social selling into the process of building value for the customer. Traditional sales trainers have for the most part been slow to embrace social selling, and even now many see it as a stand-alone optional add-on to the “real” training. Sales Training professionals must realize that THEY are the ones who are responsible for delivering the sales training their clients need with customizable cadence-based training programs that feature social selling techniques as an organic part of the instruction.
Make customized training a part of your agenda for the 2017 kickoff meeting. LinkedIn training alone won’t be enough.
Guest Blogger: Kathleen Glass, Founder, Oinkodomeo (www.oinkodomeo.com)
Passionate about building a bridge between sales and marketing, inside sales, social selling. Follow on https://www.linkedin.com/in/kglass @KathleenGlass
