Social Selling and Sales 2.0 Blog

How To Sell More, using Social Selling & Sales 2.0

6 Sales Strategies from Sales Hacker to use in 2015

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This looks like a goldmine of information on how to sell in today’s environment.

I love the concept of the Sales Hacker conference (and the concept of “hacking”) and I’m hoping to attend one of these conferences soon.

The most important thing that we learned at Sales Hacker Conference SF? At Sales Hacker last week, we listened and spoke with successful entrepreneurs that are finding ways to improve all parts of their sales pipeline by:

  • providing salespeople with tools to become their own personal marketers
  • testing inbound marketing strategies that can be implemented by non-techies
  • implementing customer success tactics that increase referrals, upsells, and cross-sells

Below are excerpts from our six favorite talks at Sales Hacker Conference. Whether you’re in an established business or growing a startup, these posts have tips to help you prospect, sell, and retain more customers.

Read the full post here

Salespeople, Do Not Send Me This

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I think I got the same email that Trish Bertuzzi got. Trish is spot on with this post about email prospecting (as always).

We live in a world awash with low cost Sales 2.0/Social Selling tool. If you don’t use these tools to customize your prospecting to the recipient, you are wasting your prospect’s time.

Nobody has time today (like nobody!) So you deserve to be shut out. Get smart people! Read More…

5 Best Practices For Building Relationships On LinkedIn

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Nice post by Melonie Dodaro via the Linkedin sales blog on the basics of using Linkedin to build relationships (i.e. sales!)

To the last point I’d like to add: Take the conversation offline if you really want to have someone as a real contact for the future. There’s a huge difference between a Linkedin connection and someone you have spoken to on the phone or even better had a coffee with.

Are you struggling to grow your network with meaningful connections on LinkedIn?

Perhaps you have hundreds of connections but have been unable to do anything productive (or profitable) with them.

LinkedIn is most effective when you use it as a relationship-building platform.

You can quickly grow a healthy network of relationships that will increase your sales lead generation by changing how you view your LinkedIn connections and by changing how you approach them.

Here are 5 essential best practices you need to follow when developing relationships on LinkedIn.

Read the whole post here

How to A/B Test Your Sales Voicemails to Improve Response Rates

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I love the concept of this post from Patrick Cahill on the Hubspot Inbound Sales blog.

It seems totally sensible to me that sales people should A/B test their calls the same way marketers A/B test web pages, emails etc. etc.

In fact sophisticated marketers live by A/B testing so why wouldn’t sales people learn this too.

The improvements are not necessarily one time either but they can compound. If you keep improving using an A/B approach you could dramatically improve your company (or team’s) sales. Something to think about…

After examining data from hundreds of thousands of dials, it turns out that voicemail can be adjusted, tweaked, and tested to improve response rates.

While there are many variables, these are “Three S’s” you can look at when testing voicemail messaging at a high level:

  • Structure: How you’re saying it
  • Subject: What you’re saying
  • Star: Who’s saying it

Read the full post here

Get a Call Back This Week for Halloween

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If you’ve read my stuff before, you’ll know I love handwritten notes–because they work!

So I love this tip from Lori Richardson at Score More Sales. It’s a note that has a great seasonal flavor. So cool (and effective)!

I’m sure if you thought about this for a while you could come up with similar (ly effective) concepts for other seasons. (Personally I’m a big fan of November the fifth.)

Have all your calls and emails to your potential buyer not been returned by them?

Have you had one conversation and perhaps some interest – then you call back and drop a few emails and get no reply?

Sure, it’s very possible your buyer just really isn’t into you – or your products and services.

On the other hand, they just might be really busy and need a gentle reminder that you can help them solve their issues or help them accomplish something they want and need in their career or company.

Read the complete post here

Sales for Startup Slideshare from Matt Heinz

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If you work in a startup, or are planning one, definitely check out this Slideshare from Matt Heinz.

There are some great points in here. I’ve added a few ideas to my plans from this deck.

For more of Matt’s great ideas go visit his blog. I’ve been reading Matt’s stuff for a while now and he’s got some of the best thoughts out there on sales and marketing in today’s world.