How to operationalise lead generation in 2023 (cost effectively)!

It’s more difficult than ever to engage with our future buyers in a meaningful way. Most opting not to engage with anyone that looks or sounds suspiciously like a sales person. ?

Marketing content has flooded the market with insight creating confusion with each business looking and sounding the same. ?Vendor websites and blogs are losing credibility with buyers who believe vendors less and rather canvass opinion from impartial strangers in communities.

Traditional demand generation techniques like cold calling and emailing are disruptive and are cited as the top reasons why a buyer would NOT buy from a vendor.

Events are expensive and do not provide the scale to meet with potential buyers.?

So what do businesses do in 2023 to build relationships with their target audience at scale.?More importantly, as a business how does one operationalise the approach proven to develop a steady flow of business conversations that generate pipeline, revenue and sustainable business growth. ?

We’ll take a look at each of the four pillars required to scale relationship development that turns into revenue in this article.?

Social selling & influence isn’t new but most teams transforming their approach fail. Why??No one has yet mastered how to operationalise true social selling.

Before we get started, what’s true social selling?

It’s the ability for each person within each team spanning the operating model to develop their professional brand, align their values and beliefs to the organisations, and activate their network by creating content that makes them stand out, and look like the authentic, genuine people they are.?

Sounds easy. ?

It is if you’re creating the environment for the approach to succeed. ?

YOUR people are the one thing that is unique about your business! Here's how to empower them to collectively drive the growth of your business.

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The four pillars of a successful social selling & influence approach are:

1. Strategy?
2. Methodology?
3. Measurement?
4. Change Management?

For anything more than a 10 person transformation the probability of failure increases, therefore it is critical that you embark on the transformation with these four pillars front and centre.

I will now dive deeper into each of the four pillars.

1.) Strategy

Define what social means to your organisation, to each of your people, be clear about the expectations and commercial objectives that need to be achieved - which could be and are not limited to a mix of the following:

• Visibility and recognition in your marketplace
• Credibility and earning trusted advisor status across your territory?
• Talent and attracting and retaining the best in your marketplace?
• Pipeline, revenue and inbound lead flow, from encouraging your target audience ti walk towards you and your business
• Purpose and a sense of belonging with each team member feeling like they’re part of something really special, making a difference!

2). Methodology?

For each team member it’s important they are taught the foundations of social selling and influence and provided the learning environment and space to flourish.?Including a guiding light of how these new skills are aligned to realising the strategy, walking digital corridors that help them and the business realise their commercial objectives set out in the strategy. ?

Foundational learning includes:

• Professional Brand - understand what you want to be famous for, how this aligns to the business’ core values and beliefs and how this can be used to build influence.?
• Network Growth - growing ones network and community around them has intrinsic value to them and the organisation they work for, especially when done with purpose, and having a strategy.?Imagine what this would mean commercially if all team members were growing and activating their network with your business objectives in mind?
• Being Found and Expanding Your Network - understand where your target audience spends their time, ensure you can be found for the topics you want to be famous for, in the same way you’d take the time to visit an event to meet new prospects and customers, replicate this concept at scale, from the comfort of your home office.
• Social Networking and Building Influence - actively engage in discussion, encourage debate and meet new people within your target audience around the topics that they care about the most.?Grow your influence with your 1st degree connections and build influence across your 2nd and 3rd degree connections that might typically be the more difficult to engage with. ?Lean into this activity and get comfortable with it being a daily activity you enjoy! It's about meeting and getting to know knew people based on shared values as opposed to selling!
• Creating Content - writing does not come easy to most yet everyone can do it with a little practice. We focus on activating the creative muscle in all learners as the written word builds credibility with your target audience, especially when you are amplifying the trusted advisor you are, to an audience who cares about you!
• Activating Your Network?- for many, video is scary! However it’s the most powerful way of engaging with other people at scale.?Showing your expertise and how genuine and authentic you are is a differentiator for engaging your target audience. YOU are the only thing that is unique to your network.?We will empower each learner to unlock their differentiators, their super powers, starting small and exploring if video is for them.?It’s not for everyone!
• Storytelling - bring your content to life by telling stories, captivate your audience with a variety of content that continues to differentiate YOU.?We empower each learner to tell stories, learn how to bring emotion and insight to life to inspire and mobilise the key people in your network and community. ?

When these activities are followed as a methodology, trust in the process builds and predictability of pipeline grows.

Measurement?

What does one measure? Nothing you are currently measuring today will provide you with the insight you need to generate leads at scale in 2023. It's common practice in sales operations to measure the things that matter, track the behaviours that increase the probability of success, so why don't you measure social selling & influence behaviours?

After 18 months of testing and 6 months of data captured across a range of sales people we know exactly what needs to be measured to inform, coach and optimise your social selling strategy. ?

You need a system to collate and visualise the performance data each week, to optimise performance. Only then, with this clarity of sight will reach the benchmark of a 9.9% conversation rate = the percentage of people who accept a call from those asked.?And a 33.6% call progression rate = the percentage of conversations that progress with a meaningful next step agreed.?

Without the system, the process and the visualised reporting it’s impossible to optimise performance and maintain momentum across your sales org.?

Change Management?

Every change management model available today addresses change from the organisations perspective.?Social selling and influence requires personal change. One has to be comfortable making personal change and learn how to manage personal change before they can accept it.? However none of us have ever been taught how to manage personal change. All change that happens to us whether organisational or at home, is personal, the feelings we feel in reaction to change, are personal.

We have partnered with Dr. Grant Van Ulbrich , the first doctor of sales transformation and founder of Scared So What? Ltd , the only change model in the world that focuses on the individual and how they manage personal change.?Only 30% of transformations are successful.?People can reject change which none of the change models previously catered for.?Our partnership with Dr Grant means that we closely manage and coach each team member through the personal change required to do social selling effectively, using his proven coaching methodology. ?

If you would like to discuss this further, please drop me a DM.

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