I can see the inflection point happening right now.
- Sales are down.
- Quota attainment is way off.
BUT
- CFO has asked us to cut spending and pause on additional headcount.
Every CRO and CMO in the world says, “How are we going to get blood from a stone?”
Here are the three topics this week:
- Need to cut sales & marketing spend? Look hard at LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- LinkedIn – by an aggregate – #1 data source for real-time job changes
- The Social Selling Revolution is back baby! All Hail Social Selling
Need to cut sales & marketing spend? Look hard at LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
I get it. I’m a 3x founder who has had to make financial sacrifices. Every quarter we conduct a Zero-based Budgeting (ZBB) exercise that has us look objectively at every expense as if that expense didn’t exist. We have to argue and justify that expense back in.
I’m the first to tell you that we leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator and love it. But, if I look at the sales & marketing tech stack of the +600 customers we’ve served, the #1 most under-utilized, over-purchased, “blanket purchase” is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It’s penny-wise, pound-foolish.
- Why do your sales engineers have a license?
- What do your majors/enterprise sellers with < 5 accounts and log in 1x a quarter have on Linkedin?
- Does ANYONE on your team use SmartLink?
- Have you ever once leveraged the new Buying Intent feature?
The data inside LinkedIn is second-to-none in the world. It’s the best. But it needs to be harvested and turned into something meaningful and actionable for sellers to be SALES INTELLIGENCE.
Pockets of your sales team could/should/would leverage Navigator, and the rest of your company can:
- Connect for free to develop a centralized 1st-degree network.
- Leverage FREE Group messaging to send LinkedIn messages (as your team is probably NOT using InMails)
- Every Social Post, Job Post, and Job Change is already accessible on the platform…
Find a partner to mine the sales intelligence from LinkedIn on your behalf at a FRACTION of the cost of arming your sales team with licenses that become shelfware.
This is the fastest way to save $1,000’s or $10,000’s per month.
LinkedIn is by aggregate the #1 data source for real-time job changes.
As mentioned above, we love LinkedIn. I pioneered Social Selling in 2012 because I saw the platform’s power. I often get asked, “What happens if someone changes jobs and doesn’t update their LinkedIn profile right away? Isn’t the Signal late?” In this instance, yes, you are accountable for user-generated data. But as an aggregate, this is EXPONENTIALLY better than the alternative.
Tools like ZoomInfo would call companies and ask if “Jim Smith” still worked there. Their data would typically lag by 3 months or more.
There has never been a study that I’ve seen that monitors the timeliness of a new hire updating their LinkedIn profile, but honestly – look at your LinkedIn feed:
New hires are so eager to share their newfound opportunity that they are typically updating their LinkedIn profile the Sunday night before/Monday morning during their fresh start. At scale, this is the #1 data source your team needs to rely on for Job Changes:
- Who’s new in an account?
- Who’s been promoted?
- Who’s left?
Nothing in this world is perfect, but this is the most accurate data source your team will be able to acquire.
Turning this data source into SALES INTELLIGENCE is where partners like us come in. We correlate all these job changes in the world to determine the following:
- Did the new hire come from your customer?
- Which account did they come from?
- What employment hole did they leave in your customer base?
Opportunities & Risk Analysis at the most global scale – monitoring 100% of your Total Addressable Market… in real-time!
The Social Selling Revolution is back baby! All hail Social Selling 2.0.
- In 2013 (10 years ago), I tried to convince people that prospect on LinkedIn as possible.
- In 2016 (7 years ago), I felt an inflection point where my company, Sales for Life, was running a SQL call per day with an Inc 5000 company looking to implement “what everyone else has – Social Selling).
- I remember in 2019 (4 years ago) when Social Selling training slowed as it became a “Standard Operating Procedure” for the SaaS community.
- In early 2020 (3 years ago), when Covid-19 hit, every field rep on planet Earth became an inside seller overnight, and companies “digitized” their sales motion in haste.
The stock market has turned upside down, sales quotas have plummeted, and hundreds of new sellers have entered the sales community. Some are “digitally native” (born with TikTok and Instagram accounts, it appears) but lack the process to turn digital tools and platforms into sales outcomes. The demand for Social Selling is resurgent because – IT WORKS.
Social Selling works because every year, it increasingly aligns with the buying process/demographic of the modern buyer. Modern buyers want information from their peer groups and communities and trust online thought-leaders as the “source of truth.”
Time to put together a Social Selling 2.0 sales enablement program for your organization.
FREE RESOURCE – Fortune 2000 Executive Job Change Report (every month).
Do you sell into the Fortune 2000?
We are tracking all administrative job changes in these organizations and providing you with that lead list – FREE. Download it here.
Never miss the ‘Window of Change’ ever again. The ‘Window of Change’ is a magical time between Day 30-Day 100 when new executives are most open to new people, processes, and technology for their new team.
Free Fortune 2000 – Executive Job Change Database
Do you sell into the Fortune 2000?
Immediately launch your Fortune 2000 sales campaign to book meetings / SQL’s. Fill out the form and get your hands on the Free Resource – Fortune 2000 Companies Signals.