1. Build your network
2. Provide meaningful content through your channels
3. Share knowledge and content with network

"So what type of content should you be posting if I said you can’t always be talking about your product? I recommend first looking at the pain points that your target market faces and addressing those through curating third party content or by sharing your own original content."

There are several websites out there that show how to begin socially selling online - it is an art that is learned by doing over and over again. These are the three simple rules: First of all, content does not mean anything if there is no network to share it with. Seondly, in order to build your network, you will find opportunities by being consistent in creating meaningful content through your channels of friends. Thirdly, as you share it forward, your network will grow and readers will begin to rely on the content that you provide. The right kind of value offering will ensure continuous following and provide you with opportunities to sell your product to businesses and new clients alike. 

For more information, you will most likely google the word social selling - this is probably how you found this blog post as well. One of the definitions you will find reads: Social selling is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople will provide value by answering prospect questions and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is ready to buy.

Answering important questions that your clients have is the key to smart content creation. 

​Good luck! :)

To attract customers and clients continuously, a company must have an extensive online presence. Many traditional marketing and sales traditions and practices are being restructured by the internet of things and the dawn of digital media. Smart content and rich media online coupled with responsive sites and mobile extensions of your brand, products and services are essential to staying on top of your game - and in the minds of your clients and customers. 

An increased web presence and infrastructure is not the only thing you are required to focus on - in order for the right people to find you, you also have to add proper search engine optimization campaigns for your fabulous content. Without SEO your online content does not receive the desired results i.e. increased impressions, CPC, improved ROI and simply put, increased sales. Google gets over 5 Billion searches per day and the number of searches increases each year. If your company does not plan on targeted search campaigns - most of the web presence usually goes unnoticed by potential leads and clients. 

For some time Google has provided a solution for managing your search engine campaigns through its AdWords and through its other googly products. To become a savvy AdWords advertiser, or at least someone who wants more control over your AdWords account, one might want to consider setting maximum cost per click (CPC) for keywords and keyword groups and adding ad extensions to the mix. Setting up a campaign is fairly easy and provides a nice platform considering all the ways you want to increase your online presence in Billions of potential customers searching for you. 

In today's day and age, online sales and marketing is a must. Providing your employees and clients the means to connect through several digital channels and enabling engaging media content is already here and the companies that do DIGITAL the best (AND help finding them through SEO campaigns), take the biggest slice of the pie at the end of the day. 

Jack Welch's 20-70-10
I found it interesting to read Jack Welch's philosophy on management. He is probably one of the most renowned leaders of all time. 
One of his most controversial point of view is the "Differenciation" policy, which is simply stated such: rank your people in 3 categories : Good/Average/Poor performers representing 20%/70%/10% of your staff.
You have a different treatment of each category. By getting rid of the 10% poor performers, you regularly get a better and better company. As simple as that - you just get rid of the bad apples. 

The evolution to this is that you never stop this "selection" process, always getting rid of your 10% poor performers and keep shifting the wheat from the tares. 

This very cut and dry process can be effective in honing your perfect company sales machine to its best performance and effectiveness. Is it conducive to a constructive company culture? Apparently, yes. If it worked for the most well-known leaders of all corporate history, it should be good enough for anyone, right?

A company I worked for was acquired by a conglomerate and started introducing KPI and performance standards very much in the similarity of the Jack Welch model where employees were ranked in categories 1-5 where five represented stellar performance and actionable cause for a promotion or a raise. It took some these assessment procedures to be implemented, but I have to say that it did feel a little awkward in the Nordic organisation where things had been done a specific way for some time. The change created a performance and number oriented culture and dehumanized the workforce - quite the opposite what the trend is today e.g. the way Zappos is building its work culture. 

To each its own. Just don't forget Richard Branson's "happy employees, happy customers" philosophy - just saying that there are many ways you can build a great and successful company. Welch's model could be one of them. More food for thought later on this. 

No sales person who is barely starting out, fill a position in being a sales director - everybody must start from scratch and learn the basics of sales. However, whether you are a sales manager, marketing director or a lone salesperson all in one (like I am) - you will find it necessary to find additional people to assist you in the sales process. These other positions to be filled require specialized skills and this is why you most likely will have to hire is sales people (growth=sales). 


The more the right kind of sales people you have, the more sales you will generate. Notice the emphasis on right kind of people - in order to build a stellar sales team - you need to hire smart. Not only do you need to hire smart, you will have to improve current sales processes, train the existing salespeople and have a concrete, time-oriented and result-oriented measuring of success. 

Evaluating Your Sales Force 
Consistent evaluation of your sales force is an important step in the process of deciding whether and how to grow your sales team because it will let you know about the 20-70-10 rule: 20 percent are the top sales people, 70 percent barely make the good cut and 10 are just waste of money.  In order to keep the edge, you need constant training, and re-evaluation to keep the momentum going and refreshing the sales team. Reward when right things are being done and kill inconsistent behavior by getting rid of the weeds, the 10 percent people. Hire the right people to replace them. 

To start evaluating, be clear on what is the given mission of the company and sales team. Whether it is to go after the larger accounts, leaving the smaller order to customer service personnel and order takers, or setting up the sales team people in specialized tasks i.e. inbound and outbound sales, it is the same, but remember that the salesperson is the most integral part of the company's success and they must be executing the very life line of the company mission, goals and objectives. The sales staff you have is the most visible representation of values, company's image, they hold the client's hand through the good and worse, interface with delivery and, of course, close the deals. Due to this importance, measure their sales productivity and DO NOT penalize them for not making enough cold calls - as long as you trust them (measure and evaluate them) to bring results, the cash flow will come. 

Measuring Sales Productivity 
Pipeline, pipeline, pipeline - just one word that explains the simplest source of measurements you need to evaluate your sales staff on e.g. "divide the volume of sales by the number of salespeople on staff. That will give you an average sales productivity figure and let you know how the average salesperson in your organization is doing. More useful, though, is to know how each individual salesperson is doing compared to the average. You may have a handful of relatively productive people who are carrying the load for a raft of underperformers. This is the kind of information you'll need to know to decide whether to make a change." 
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/80602

Aaron Ross gave excellent advice as he counseled to measure: 

1 New leads generated per month 
2 Number of qualified sales opportunities
3 Percentage of conversion rates
4 Total bookings or revenue
5 Win rates aka What percentage of new pipeline resulted in won sales? 

Hiring Salespeople 
Adding salespeople can result in steadily increasing sales...NOTICE the word can. It can free up time and resources, but it must be done smart and the right people must be hired. If the wrong ones are hired, it will hurt sales and the bottom line and destroy the company image in the marketplace. 

Usually these wrong sales people are not bad, but are just in the wrong position. Oftentimes the sales job has not been dictated clearly enough, there is lack of leadership, vision and no clear tools given to the sales person that is just starting off. Perhaps the selling style you are looking for doesn't match the goals or the culture of the company and the hire misfires because of style issues.  

No salesperson is motivated by good will towards the company. Just like any trust, a salesperson's trust needs to be earned as well. A company makes due by presenting a fair compensation package, clarifying the sales method, goals and processes and familiarizing the sales people with the right tools. If ANY of these are lacking - the company will run into problems and incur expensive hire/fire/hire costs as they try to match salespeople to mismatching and lacking sales processes. In order to avoid these costs - talk to your experienced sales staff and ask them for open advice and how the market is behaving, who the competition is and what needs to be done to improve sales. 

Never just describe your needs to a new sales hire, but help the sales person to visualize him or herself part of a team, having fun, full of energy and committed to making sales successful. If this is not reality, take a good look in the mirror and try to think how these things can be brought into the company. Sales is fun and when it isn't - any hire you make, could be the last you make. 

Best advice I ever heard on hiring came from Sir Richard Branson himself: " There is nothing more important for a business than hiring the right team. If you get the perfect mix of people working for your company, you have a far greater chance of success. However, the best person for the job doesn’t always walk right through your door" More on Richard Branson's philosophy on hiring the right people, go to: 
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130923230007-204068115-how-i-hire-focus-on-personality?trk=eml-mktg-inf-m-hih-0925-p1

Building a business from ground up to a successful one requires same resources from small and big companies - SALES. Sometimes companies look into outsourcing their sales functions in order to optimize their new business acquisition and to get more traction in the market. Many result in successes and others fail due to various reasons. In order to get a sense what common obstacles and hurdles are, here is a list of some of the pros and cons for outsourcing sales to a third party: 


Pros:

• No successive hiring costs (there are still service costs).
• Trained and experienced sales team with a proven track record
• immediate success rate feed back
• Salespeople a highly incented to close business.
• Scalability of cooperation with sales team i.e. as results come in, opportunity to grow or downscale quickly depending on success rate and market feed back
• You pay for results only
• Quick and dirty - this either works or it fails miserably

Cons:

• If success is hard to come by, outsourced salespeople will quickly begin to under-perform in the very beginning. Just like with commission-based sales executives, outsourced salespeople are more likely to fall out before you can see whether or not the relationship will really work out.
• Communication between the outsourced sales team is challenging and often requires clear reporting systems in place and extra resources to keep checks and balances between the two parties
• Outsourcing sales can be a long process and finding the perfect match is no picnic in the park
• Erratic compensation and lack of reliable income means your sales people have more financial problems, ironically distracting them from work goals.

In the case that your company lacks competence in sales and is in a position to pay for results to an experienced sales team, outsourcing is the right path to take. 

However, if your employees are able to close deals, network and accomplish in attracting clients, hire a sales executive to train and motivate your staff in the ins and outs of sales to build a sustainable sales system for your own company. In the end, you either need to build a sales organisation and culture OR buy a ready set-up from somewhere else to "test" market response. As a long-term solution, outsourcing sales depends on which development stage your company is going through.  

Any other pros and cons for outsourcing sales? Leave a comment and start a discussion below! 
Next post: how to build a stellar sales team!  

Pros:

• Reduced risk in hiring (there are still time and opportunity costs).
• Salespeople a highly incented to close business.

Cons:

• If your sales cycles are more than a month or two long, commission-only salespeople will begin starving before they can realistically close enough business. They are more likely to fall out before you can see whether or not they will really work out.
• The company will attract more inexperienced salespeople that can’t get better jobs.
• Commission-only increases the motivation to “do wrong” to close a sale. You do not want desperate salespeople representing your company. They will increase your liability, decrease your customer success and satisfaction, and wreck your culture and morale.
• Erratic compensation and lack of reliable income means your sales people have more financial problems, ironically distracting them from work goals.

If you have a “churn and burn” culture that sells commoditized product, perhaps commission-only sales is a way to go.

If you want to build a solution-selling, high-value sales force, commit the team and company to invest in their success just as much as you expect them to invest in the company!

http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/predictable-revenue/

Valid points made by the Predictable Revenue people and a good question to consider. Here is another one: should you outsource your sales? Pros and cons soon to come in my next post. Stay tuned!

Since the last financial crisis, many companies are struggling to stay afloat. As human beings we often relapse to our habits to find something familiar and secure in an unsure environment - this is also the case with companies looking for sure footing to get them back on the growth track. Unfortunately, several corporations fall prey to their old ways and stick the guns they know have worked at some point and time. This approach, however, makes them regress and progress stays at bay. 

Then there are those companies that evolve to their surroundings by innovating, adapting and by acquiring a new skill set that sets them apart. Often times, this new approach finds a way of doing something better, faster or cheaper, or all of them at once. 

This last July, Harvard Business Review published an article on Inside Sales, which in the past two years has become more and more popular. Many organizations are prisoners of their routines and success models that have proved to work in the past, but bear an increasingly lesser role in the world of today. The tools of yesterday do not simply measure up with the ones needed for the ever-changing world we live in now. HBR contends that Inside Sales is the upcoming trend that is already picking up companies from their ruts and lifting them up to new heights of growth. 

First there was Salesforce and then there was inbound/inside sales. As companies seek to cut back on costs and increase the efficiency of their sales force, they have quickly embraced SAAS as the way to go. In order to use a system like Salesforce up to its full potential, there needs to be a inside sales process in place to keep feeding 'The Machine'. Bringing the bacon home is not a mere function of having sales people visit clients in the field. With the digitization and globalization it is more evident that inbound lead generation, digital channels and inside sales needs to be more data-driven and...well, digital. 

Mike Moorman, a senior leader in ZS Associates' B2B sales and marketing practice states in a HBR 26th of July interview the following: 

"Many B2B companies are making inside sales a priority. I've seen companies investing to create new inside sales teams, adopt advanced analytics to measure and improve productivity of those teams, realign inside and field sales to optimize market coverage, provide value-based selling tools tailored to inside sales, and upgrade their inside sales customer engagement processes and skills." 

This just goes to say that companies are already implementing inside sales big time - and the ones that are, reap the rewards: 

Salesforce.com - Aaron Ross made inside sales an integral part of the sales process and ramped up the revenue by 100 million. 

Astra Zeneca - replaced its field sales people with a 300 inside sales team and saw costs reduced significantly. 

IBM - focused on SoMe and generated leads to its inside sales people and saw a 55% increase in Twitter and a high-quality inbound leads.

SAP - expects to increase channel sales by 40% with the help of specialized inside sales teams. 

These are only a few examples. If the big ones are seeing the benefits, maybe should the little ones. To find out more - contact me and let's discuss setting up your own inside sales team. 

If your sales cycles vary, and you only have commission-only salespeople - they will soon starve before they can close any business. Falling out and decrease in sales morale will also quickly result. The company will also attract more inexperienced salespeople that can't get better jobs and the erratic compensation and lack of reliable income means your sales people have more financial problems, which will distract them from work goals. So, think twice before considering commission-only salespeople or sales model. Perhaps if you sell a commodity, commission sales may be just the right thing for your company. 

However, in order to create predictable revenue and to develop a motivated sales team, you need a little bit more. 

"If you want to build a solution-selling, high-value sales force, commit the team and company to invest in their success just as much as you expect them to invest in the company!" 

- Aaron Ross, (Author of "Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With A $100 Million Best Practice Of Salesforce.com" and "CEOFlow: Turn Your Employees Into Mini-CEOs." He is the founder of Predictable Revenue, Inc..)

It is really as simple as that. There is nothing more motivating than a sales team working together in a mutual goal, where each person is allowed to participate, give input, ideas and develop sales together. As managers do that, sales persons commit to the vision and give all they've got. 

A couple ideas how you can do this: 

1- have weekly 'war rooms' where you set goals, qualify leads and prospects and decide next strategic steps. 
2- follow-up and review, give thanks for successes
3- stick to the plan: do not give up until you have given a fair shot at the plan you came up with your team

Giving credit where it belongs, distributing trust and accountability, delegating and specializing your sales force will empower your sales people to excel. 

"So there I was, sitting in front of a client trying to do my very best to convey a clear-cut value proposition and all I got was a cold blank stare - not that impressed, I was guessing...the customer had heard it all before."

Many of us have probably stumbled across a difficult sales call where the amount of work does not quite cut it and bring in the sale. An interesting article on customer value propositions in business markets was written by Anderson et al. in 2006 where the main premise of their research concluded that most often customers only look at price and do not listen to your sales pitch. Anderson suggests that there are three kinds of value propositions: all benefits, favorable points of difference, and resonating focus, of which the latter is the best practice alternative and yields the best outcome to professionals pitching their products or services. 

A resonating value proposition answers the customers' question: "What is the most worthwhile for our firm to keep in mind about your specific offering?" It also requires a profound understanding on how the offering delivers superior value to customers, compared with the next best alternative, of course. After all is said and done, the resonating approach requires an inquisitive mind and oftentimes exhaustive customer value research. Anderson et al. contend that sales people will avoid common pitfalls as they bring one or two points of difference (and a point of parity for extra umph) to the table in order to showcase the greatest value proposition for the foreseeable future. 

As sales people focus on constructing and delivering a well prepared value proposition to clients, it will make a significant contribution to business strategy and performance. The best offerings cut to the core of the client's business and really have a keen understanding of the customer's underlying real needs and fixes. 

The essentials of sales was basically covered in our last post. Whilst in the midst of sales calls and cold calling, one might ask what the most important thing is that you should be doing. 

Facebook is without any hyperbole the most successful SoMe company in the world and was able to create a whole new business. What is the most important thing I could be doing? - IS the most important question we should ask every day as far as sales is considered. Fortunately, in trying to figure this out for a company, there is an easy answer: SALES. 
Answering this very same question for sales, however, presents a little more complex reply and include elements where making sure your sales funnel is being filled with meaningful and quality tasks and serves the bottom line. 

In order to get sales, one must attack the problem from several fronts and often at the same time. The most important thing you should be doing in sales is to figure out how to serve the customer's bottom line. What is this bottom line? How to save money? How to get the best outcome? It all depends on the customer, of course, and what they value the most. Our next post will go more into this by introducing a customer value proposition model that will be a "sure fire" method for any sales person.