Technology plays an important role in the operation of today’s businesses. Do you have an up-to-date website that effectively markets your manufacturers’ representative business? To principals as well as customers? What about CRMs, to track customers, quotations, orders, and commissions?
List of Software Providers and Website Developers
MANA has become aware of these providers through member referrals and online research. This list is not an endorsement of the companies listed, please do your own due diligence before hiring any service provider.
Turner Time Management Steve Turner (630) 774-7944 steve@getturnertime.com www.turnertimemanagement.com Turner Time Management provides performance management and workforce productivity training, coaching and video tutorials.
Data Show Most Salespeople Are Dinosaurs When It Comes to Social Selling
By Dave Kurlan
Several recent LinkedIn posts have urged readers to pick up the phone instead of trying to find new opportunities by using social media. I wrote a very popular article about using the phone three years ago called “The Next Can’t Miss Game Changer for Sales.”
I have data that show that the very people who don’t score well at hunting (reluctant, ineffective or both) also score poorly at social selling while those who score the highest for hunting score higher for social selling too. Check out this data:
The weakest 10% of all salespeople own the lowest average scores for hunting, coming in at 17 (out of 100). Their average score for social selling is just three!
The top 10% of all salespeople have an average score of 76 for hunting and 23 for social selling. In other words, they are almost 450% better at hunting and 766% better at social selling!
Keep in mind that across all 1.7-million salespeople that Objective Management Group (OMG) has evaluated and assessed, the average score for social selling is only 10. Wasn’t social selling supposed to be the big new thing?
Digging further into the data, we find that 63% of all salespeople with a weak score in the hunter competency also have a weak score in social selling.
Hiding and Hoping
It appears from the data that hunters use all available means to hunt while non-hunters shy away from all available means. Clearly, there is still a percentage of salespeople doing what some experts warn against — hiding behind the screen and hoping that their mere presence will magically cause opportunities to appear in their pipelines, but they are in the minority. Check out some more surprising data.
One of the questions I answered in my 18-page White Paper “The Modern Science Behind Sales Force Excellence” was, does social selling impact sales effectiveness?
Thirty-eight percent of the companies who use social selling reported that they had more opportunities in their pipelines as a result. Of those companies with more opportunities we identified the following trends:
They were much more likely to have more than 25 salespeople and between $25-$75 million in revenue.
They were 30% more likely to have a significant increase in sales than the overall population in the study.
Fifty percent provided quarterly sales training compared with 22% for the overall respondent population.
Social selling was used equally across all sales teams.
Eighty-five percent reached out directly to prospects using social selling channels compared with 59% overall.
Salespeople who routinely maintained a full pipeline saw only a one percent increase in pipeline size.
Of those salespeople who typically had poor pipelines, only 20% saw improvement.
Of the companies that reported either no increase or a decrease in opportunities we learned the following:
Sixty-seven percent had an informal approach to social selling.
Seventy-five percent were just beginning to implement social selling.
Seventy-five percent have their traditional sales team practicing social selling.
Seventy-five percent focus more on LinkedIn group participation.
Only 50 percent of their salespeople reach out directly to prospects.
Thirty-eight percent of the companies that use social selling are seeing results, and nearly 100% of those who have formalized social selling are seeing results. Yet the average score in the social selling competency for all salespeople is just 10. So what is going on?
If you visit LinkedIn you would think that everyone on the planet is on there. While most have profiles, it doesn’t mean that “they’re on there.” The question is whether they are engaged on that platform, and most salespeople are simply not engaged.
If you are reading this article online on my blog, then you are probably more engaged on Linkedin than most salespeople. But the same huge percentage of salespeople who are not engaged on LinkedIn are also not online consuming content like this.
It’s time for all salespeople to adapt and leverage the great tools that are available instead of sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that selling hasn’t changed in the past 10 years.
Three books issue especially compelling warnings about the consequences of the careless use of social media. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, Influence Redefined, by Stacey Hanke, and Got Social Mediology?, by Jay Izso, point out that social media practitioners should be aware that even the most offhand comments or critical views can cause lasting damage to a business.
Ronson relies heavily on real-world examples of mistakes individuals have made that have had a lasting impact on their lives and careers. Everything from a passing Twitter comment that was deemed racist, an insensitive joke transmitted over the Internet, to a careless picture showing disrespect for our military have doomed business careers.
Topping off some of Ronson’s anecdotal warnings, Stacey Hanke continues down that path in her book 2017 book Influence Redefined. According to Hanke, social media can work to amplify human errors. “Who among us hasn’t botched a joke or made an ill-timed, inappropriate comment? How many of us face lifetime consequences for it? When a single post can go viral in a matter of hours and be read by millions of people around the world, we must be vigilant. Once a post is out there, it is likely captured forever.”
She continues by observing that “…not a week goes by that we don’t hear about some politician, celebrity, sports figure, business leader or ‘average Joe’ who has gotten themselves into hot water over something they posted on social media or something they did that was captured on social media.”
To make her point she cites examples much like Ronson did in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed:
“The director of corporate communications tweeted what she thought was an innocuous comment to her 170 followers. Then she turned off her phone for an 11-hour transcontinental flight. By the time she landed, her post — which was perceived as racist by most who view it — was the number-one worldwide trend on Twitter. Within weeks, she was fired and her career was ruined.
“A man sitting at a tech-industry conference leaned over and privately shared with a friend a joke that just popped into his head. A woman sitting in the row in front of them overheard the joke and felt it was indicative of the gender issues plaguing their industry. She turned around, snapped their picture and tweeted it out to her nine thousand followers with a post calling the men out. Two days later, the man (a father of three) was fired from his job.”
Remembering the Negative
Admitting that once a comment is made or an action taken, it can easily cause lasting harm to a person or company. “Once you’ve damaged your reputation, you’ve also damaged your credibility, trustworthiness and influence. Repairing a damaged reputation is challenging because people tend to remember the negative more easily and longer than the positive.”
The examples she cited in her book serve as a perfect example of how the lines between work and personal lives have blurred — if not been erased completely. What you do and say and post on your personal time absolutely impacts your professional life — something independent manufacturers’ reps should bear in mind. According to Hanke, “It bears repeating one more time: maintaining your reputation and influence is a 24/7/365 job.”
If Ronson and Hanke offer their views of how social media use can impact our lives today, then Jay Izso in his book Got Social Mediology? picks up the ball from there and takes a look at its importance in the future. As a result, if business people today should be concerned about the careful use of social media, then there’s even more to be concerned about the future.
According to Izso, “In the end, though, social media is not so much about the technology as it is about, well, being social. We as humans are naturally social and have a need for interaction. Research has been limited, and yet opinions have been many in regard to what social media’s role is in our social interaction. With more than a billion people currently using the various social media platforms, I would argue that most people’s use is not based on a fascination with technology, but on the ability to in some way connect with other human beings.
“This is not a new concept. People have been trying to connect since the start of time, whether it was to develop spoken language, written words, the printing press, the telegraph, or the telephone. And the transition wasn’t always easy. I can only imagine when the first telephone was put in the local store or café how people rejected it or perhaps feared that they would get shock from it. Now we take phones for granted. Social media is simply our newest way to connect. And today, the speed at which we are able to make a connection with others, anywhere in the world, is always increasing.
“Will you and your business resist this wave of change or embrace? Will you criticize and downplay it, or will you open the door and try it out for yourself? Will you consider, instead of being stubborn or afraid, getting SPICEY? When in doubt, don’t forget our acronym: Strategize, Plan, Interact, Commit, Experiment, and Be You — and if you remember nothing else, remember the principal of reciprocity: give to others on social media, and they will give back to you.”
Too often businesses fail to recognize and embrace the use of social media based on the mistaken belief that their customers don’t use it. That’s something that author Jay Izso maintains is a myth.
Izso, also known as “The Internet Doctor,” says this belief is based on something called “illusory correlation.” He defines that term as occurring when “…we take note of specific instances, pair them with other instances, and then arrive at the conclusion that one instance is related to another when, in fact, it is not the case.”
In his book Got Social Mediology? Using Psychology to Master Social Media Without Spending a Dime, Izso says, “Illusory correlation helps to explain why many people do not use social media as part of a business strategy. First, they may have a few clients who do not use social media, and perhaps these few clients have expressed negative attitudes toward social media. From this experience, the business owner begins to associate social media with the negative client. Next, the business owner concludes, ‘My clients do not use social media,’ and the illusory correlation — or myth — is born.”
To dispel that belief or myth, the author draws on research provided by PewInternet.org that reports close to 73 percent of all Internet users are actively using some sort of social media. “In addition, 71 percent of all Internet users use Facebook, and 42 percent use multiple social media platforms.”
As expected, the age of the Internet user plays a role in their use of social media platforms. As cited in the book, “…the highest percentage of social media users are young, with 90 percent of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 years being on social media. However, you may be surprised to know that 78 percent of 20 to 49 year olds on the Internet are using social media, and 65 percent of 50 to 64 year olds on the Internet are using social media.”
He doesn’t stop there with his research as he goes on to cite the financial status of social media users. Among social media users, “…regardless of income level, nearly 75 percent of every income range is represented, whether it is those making less than “$30,000 per year or those making more than $75,000. The same is true across different education levels.”
Don’t Ignore Social Media
As to what all this research means, Izso maintains the Internet and effective use of social media can hardly be ignored. “Not only is social media growing and expanding, but real buyers, real sellers, and real people with actual money are using it to connect with other people.
“We do need to be cautious here, however, where there is some truth in the myth. Not every client is on social media, and some platforms may not have as many of our clients as others, which is why social media is not the only solution when it comes to growing your company. However, it bears repeating: If your clients use the Internet, almost three out of four are using social media. To ignore this or arrive at conclusions that keep you from using social media holds you back from interacting with many of your clients in a space where they are present.”
In a final bit of advice of subject on this “myth,” the “Internet Doctor” says that “Whether you know it or not, many of your customers are, in fact, using social media. Not all of them may be there yet, but almost three quarters of them are on social media if they are already Internet users. This provides you with a prime arena in which to reach them — and in a new and genuine way that goes beyond marketing to creating authentic relationships.”
For reps concerned about how much time they should be devoting to their social media efforts, Izso advises that should not be a major concern. “In fact, if you are spending all of your time on social media, you may be doing something wrong!” He emphasizes that “It’s not how much you say, but what you have to say that is important.”
He says that “Social media does not have to be all-consuming. Keep it simple, and remember that there is actually more of a danger of over-posting than under-posting. You also need to keep in mind that not every social network is the most appropriate for your business. True, you have to spend some time on social media for it to work for your business, but you can be extremely effective in 15 to 45 minutes a day. What’s more, over time you will become more efficient. Just remember that three Cs: check in, connect, and check out.”
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