One year ago, the world changed. Before that, I was traveling for business two weeks out of every month- meeting people, shaking hands, having meals. I enjoyed the face-to-face personal interactions and moments both serious and hilarious. Did I tell you about the time when the barbecue sauce exploded during a business meal?
I didn’t realize how awesome these times were, even covered in barbecue sauce, until we were no longer allowed to have them. I was developing deep personal connections with prospects, talking with them about life and business, together in the same room. But last March, at the drop of a hat, all of that changed.
As lockdown became the norm, and travel came to a halt, the typical relationships that we had built up were waning fast, and we needed to quickly discover a new path to building and maintaining relationships.
Fast forward to today, and 85% of business decisions are now being made online instead of in person. So, how did we make the switch? We moved our important conversations to video chat and started looking for answers from LinkedIn, websites, and webinars. Where digital marketing and social selling used to be important, they are now essential. These efforts are fostered by great content that opens doors for conversations about needs and solutions- discussions that will eventually lead to sales.
To help you thrive in our new digital business environment, we recently posted our Paths to Success: Social selling for sales professionals webinar, presented by our Learning and Implementation Manager, Amber Shimkus. Amber shows you how to develop your social selling strategy through sharing content regularly and creating your follow-up plan for LinkedIn and email. As sales professionals, we need to share content on a regular basis that builds a storyline about our solutions. Your shared content should touch upon these four elements:
Empathy: Connect the salesperson to the prospect’s challenge
Relatability: Share how others have faced the same problem before and how they resolved it
Resolution: Show the return received from investing in the solution
Solutions: Provide how the prospect can purchase and effectively deploy the solution
The pandemic will hopefully soon come to a close, and hopefully, we will be back to creating relationships and building stories in person. Did I tell you about the time I got a high five from one of the industry’s top executives? Regardless, the need for digital/social selling has been imprinted permanently on the sales process. As salespeople, we need to remember to welcome support from our marketing teams to help us craft an effective storyline for our solution.
