How to Use Social Selling to Influence Your Current Pipeline

Before we start this blog, this example is about Public Sector / Federal, but the concepts and opportunities (in my opinion) remain the same.

When I started my sales career, I spent the first 5 years selling to Public Sector (Federal sector I think it's called in the US). While it probably took me 12 months to get used to the ebb and flow, I soon get used to the challenges and the opportunities. And there are plenty of opportunities.

For example, people with budget they have to spend as they approach the April new financial year. I also found that certain functional requirements were also a barrier to entry for competition. There is also the predictability of certain decision making cycles. For example, if they have budget, they usually spend it. It's not so much like the private sector where "do nothing" it one of your biggest competitors.

One of the challenges is the RFP (Request for Proposal) process.

What is an RFP?

For those that don't know, an RFP is a document that a public sector organisations issue and suppliers have to answer to be part of the process. Usually it has a list of functional and technical requirements. The RFP is dreaded by suppliers as they "suck up" so much resource, with no guarantee of winning the business. In fact I've often suggested that buying a lottery ticket might be a better bet.

The RFP process is such, that when it is issued the "shutters come down" and as a supplier you are unable to ask questions, have meetings or try and "influence" the process in anyway. We will be coming back to this in a moment.

In many cases I've seen practices that if you ask a question of the customer, the questions and answers are circulated to all the other suppliers. Obviously this makes sure that suppliers don't ask questions or risk declaring your hand to your competition.

Why do you have such a cumbersome process? As a taxpayer, I want to make sure the money I pay in tax is spent wisely. The RFP process is there to (try) and create transparency and an audit trail of why a solution was purchased.

For anybody out there that thinks, this is easy, we just answer yes to everything and win lots of business. The RFP response becomes part of the contract, so you end up contractually committed to delivering what you said yes to. I'm aware of at least two UK accountancy software houses that no longer exist as they said they could deliver functionality and they couldn't. So onto how we can influence the process with social.

The RFP Holy Grail

Ever since the first RFP was issued, (probably on stone tablets), us suppliers have tried to find ways to get out of the effort. I've worked for small software houses where RFPs pretty much locked up all the resource of the company.

There are many analogue ways that have been used in the past to influence a tender. You worked with the organisation early on to help educate them, so when they defined their requirements, it would be of course for your USPs (Unique Selling Points). Locking out the competition. One way suppliers do this is to "seed" your own RFP on the basis you already have standard responses and this speeds up the process of responding.

This method is so widespread that if I received a non-solicited RFP in the post, the first thing you do is try and work out which supplier wrote it. Does not mean you won't respond but does mean you know which competitive strategy to deploy.

So What Has This Got to Do with Social?

New Sales Guy started working for me in the Education sector. He came from a competitor that does not believe in social, which is always (to me) great news.

As with most sales people he was proud of his track record and always took a pride in his work and always "did right by the customer". The Public Sector as are many industries, the industries are actually very small and you can soon build a reputation and pipeline based on referrals / references.

I explained how with social, "all" we do is "lift" our analogue work and put it on-line. He was very trusting and went with this and over about 3 months, I mentored him to change his LinkedIn profile and we tried different wording out. Then one day he phone me.

"I've just had what they call "aha" moment with this social"

"What happened?" I answer?

He went on, "You know we did that personal brand stuff?"

"Yes" I replied.

"Then I connected to all my clients and prospects?"

"Yes" I said.

"Then I posted interesting content, so I can get FoM (Front of Mind) with all of my prospects and customers every day?"

"Yes" I said ..... Like me you are probably thinking "get on with it!"

"Well the Finance Director of such and such University, has just liked one of my articles."

(Note: This was the decision maker of one of the accounts he had an ongoing tender with.)

He went on "Now, I'm not saying this will win me the deal, but that decision maker, has just had to think about me, our company and the solution .... and I'm confident all those feelings will be positive."

(Note: He went on to win that business.)

Now I'm not saying that post on social won him that deal. But let's not forget, in sales there are no silver medals, our job is to win gold. This sales guy went on to tell me that he was now a believer in social and could see the power of a great personal brand He also understood that social allows you to scale your territory, quicker and cheaper than any analogue method.

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If you're interested in a blueprint to help you in your move to digital and social then I recommend my book. “Social Selling - Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers”. Written in a workbook style, it's designed to help you implement a Social Selling strategy across Sales and Marketing. 

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About the Author

Tim Hughes is co-founder of Digital Leadership Associates a company that provides support and guidance in all areas of Social as well as Social Selling. He has been called "an innovator and pioneer" of Social Selling and in the recent Onalytica list of the most influential Social Sellers globally, Tim was named as number 1.

Tim can be contacted on Twitter @timothy_hughes where he has some 180,000 followers or [email protected] 

Digital Leadership Associates 

Digital Leadership Associates is an agency to help companies move to digital and social. Set up by Social Media guru and bestselling social media author, Adam Gray @agsocialmedia and myself. 

Digital Leadership Associates is a team of world-leading Social Media experts. We bring a breadth of experience honed by working with some of the world’s biggest brands to you, delivering a shortcut to your social journey. We help you to achieve your key business goals through three unique programs; Social Strategy definition and implementation, Social Selling training and mentoring and Social Presence management. We will help you define a Social Media strategy and whole-business understanding of your social vision, we equip your sales team with the tools and knowledge to become skilled at Social Selling and we offer deliver partial/whole management of your social presence. 

DLA provides advice and guidance to companies, given by actual Social practitioners, that is people with actual experience in social media, social and digital transformations.  Check out our website or contact me at [email protected]