Unsuccessful Sales Speak

John Dean - (JD) will inspire , enthuse and engage you and your team to become a more effective sales machine. 

We look forward to hear him speak next Thursday 17 October at our Innovation forum.

Below is a great article of his talking about Unsuccesful sales speak and the 5 things you can do to create more effective sales people in your team.

There is a language that unsuccessful sales people have. They use it to diffuse the scent, and ask management to suspend judgement about their performance. And for some reason Sales Managers fall for it, "better the devil we know, cost of finding someone else, upsetting the apple cart...." whatever it is it doesn't make sense!

The language can also be described as having a victim mentality. There is a tendancy to blame many things and never take responsibility for a lost deal. In talking to tens of thousands of sales people I have only ever heard once, one person say that they were to blame for a poor result.

Here are the signs your sales team are doormats that your prospects walk all over.

They tend to answer a question (about deal qualification) with such a long, and irrelevant answer such that everyone forgets the original question.

The pipeline is 10 x the sales target with mostly new opportunities that haven't even been met yet. (They will not sack me if my pipeline is strong).

Responses like..

• "They will buy next month..."
• "It was price, we were too expensive"
• "We lost on functionality"
• "We are just waiting for one more signature"
• "We need a better website" (I actually heard this in a sales meeting).

If you recognise this language what should you do about it? Every situation is different but here are some ideas...

1. Conduct a review of one opportunity. Ask them to tell you about any prospect. See how long they speak for. Rough rule, the longer they speak, the more they know, the better they are
2. Go on a sales call with them (coaching call), see how much they talk vs listen (As a guide, listening and questioning - 70%, speaking - 30%)
3.  Prepare a Performance Improvement Plan - a plan to help them improve the situation.
4. Buddy them up with a high performer.
5. Get sales training, or organise a coach for them.

Join us next Thursday with JD Dean 

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/bsi-innovation-forum-powered-by-bbg-tickets-50474712223

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Spark - the fuel for Business

Venture Capital in Australia: Spark - the fuel for Business: Some amazing Articles by Business Owners and Leaders keen to share their knowledge Which is your favourite article?

Great summary of how to 10X

16 types of posts that work well on LinkedIn

Mark White  shares his knowledge 

Foundation Posts

Foundation posts - or  "Pillar" posts -  focus on the key subject areas that you want to communicate to your connections and potential prospect.

 Given their importance, they are likely to be longer than other posts, quite focused in the content and, more often than not, will contain tips or practical advice centred around your main topics.

The post is a summary of the main post  and  should contain a link through to the full article ... perhaps added in the 1st comment if we are to play the algorithm a little!

2. Expertise Sharing

 Share information on important topics relating to your expertise, with each post focusing on a particular aspect of that topic.

Creates trust in your ability . 

3. Lists

Lists get a lot of information over in a short space of time. People can dip in and out as they see fit, so these are also the type of post that often gets referred to and shared across social media and beyond.

4. News Delivery / Reporting / News Breaking

On the spot and sharing  news and information that we have found with our connections. 

You want to become the go to person 

Try and add your own prrsoective to the story.

5. Guides / Instructional

“How to” guide is an excellent way of passing on information and creating something which has the ability to get real engagement. 

Dependent on what your topic is, the power of video is undeniable particularly if you are showing something practical, so think about whether a text based post or a video - or a mix of the two - would be the best format. If they are short, then you might post as a 'native video' which LinkedIn currently favours, but for longer ones, linking back to a nicely set up Channel page on YouTube or Vimeo can be really effective.  

6. Link Baiting

A  contentious or provocative post to incite people to read and comment - its sole goal is to provoke a reaction and generate comments and engagement.

7. Surveys & Polls

Facts and figures lend weight to an argument and by using figures from a recent survey or report and then adding your own commentary, can be really powerful.

8. Article Reply

So you've seen something that caught your attention on some one else's feed or website and perhaps even left a comment on it but you want to expand on that. The length of comments is limited on LinkedIn (though more than enough for most) but sometimes you may want to expand on those initial thoughts and embellish with images etc.

Great, write a post which references the original but then goes on to either develop and expand on the points it makes, or to counter them. You can then reference the original to engage with the author and, if you wished, also go back and edit your original reply and link to your own post.

9. Rants

Never get abusive or personal, but if you write about something that really bugs you and you believe is worth sharing, then this can come over very powerfully in a post. It adds to the 3D view of you, the person, and helps tell your connections or prospects something more about you. Hey, we also like a little bit of Victor Meldrew, letting off steam now and again.

10. Industry Commentary

You are going to be well placed to pass on information about what is happening in your industry and how events are likely to effect your connections and other players in it. So make sure that you become the person that people turn to when they want to get informed opinion about what’s going on by delivering posts which report on developments in your industry.

Clearly, you will quite possibly be aware of what's going on in any case because those are the circles you move in, but I also find that a simple tool like setting up a Google Alert for certain relevant keyword phrases is also a great way of listening to what is being talked about and reported. 

11. Conferences / Exhibitions / Seminars

A great way of getting across information and sharing with a larger audience is to take information from a conference and report back via a post or series of posts. This could be your own conference or one that you are attending as a delegate – beforehand, highlight that you will be there (and willing to meet up no doubt) and then feed back what you found interesting or particularly useful.

If you are in a position to also comment on say the keynote speakers, highlighting a couple of key takeaways for you from their talk then that again allows you to associate yourself with those ideas and will also be of great value to those who were unable to attend in person.  

(LinkIn the speaker and message him/her asking if that’s ok)

12. Company Specific

There may be some specific news about your company which will be of interest to your readers, perhaps new capacity, extra staff or additional clients, all of which reflect favourably on you and your business. A constant stream of these might be considered unimaginative and prove boring, but the occasional one thrown in adds to the information pool your readers have about you.

13. Press Releases

If you believe that it is relevant and interesting to your readers then there is no harm in putting PR information 

A recent additional to the functional side of LinkedIn means that you can also add a document to a post - simply text on a page doesn't work wonderfully well from a visual perspective but does allow people to download it which can have its benefits.

14. Links / Signpost Post

There's always going to be information that you have unearthed during the course of the week that you'd like to share and is useful to your readers, but which doesn't suit a full post on its own. So create a post with a series of links to articles, information sources, new stories etc. with just a short one line commentary on each.

(Ik - I have Spark - from paper.li - it’s really cool - https://paper.li/bsivc/1372196625#/

15. Reviews

A review might be of a book or white paper, or perhaps of a service or product which is relevant to your connections allowing you to give your own opinion on it and then open it to the floor and get your connections' opinions as well. 

Of course, as they give them they will also distribute the content to their networks as well which has great value too. 

16. Video or Podcast

It's become really easy to integrate either podcasts or videos clips into your posts and they are also a great way to offer something a little extra to your readers. Ideally make them your own but you can of course embed videos from sites like YouTube that you believe would be beneficial

. If you put commentary around them, potentially captions and a transcript for your own, then you'll take the value on the post up a notch as well.

Of course, a post doesn't need to fall into just a single category this one, for example, is clearly a list post but I would like to think also falls into the area of expertise sharing. At the end of the day, focus on what will appeal to your readers (you could always ask then what they are looking for!?) but hopefully you’ll find some ideas here to be going on with!

Using hashtags on LinkedIn

 by Mark White, LinkedIn Trainer

hashtags on LinkedIn have become a thing.

Benefits 

• Search Visibility: To help your posts get found because people search on a particular hashtag as part of their Content search. 
• Homefeed Visibility: To help your posts to get seen because some of your target audience is following a particular hashtag (the ‘Community’ element mentioned in more detail below) and so your post gets seen more highly on their homepage. (Get your car mummify to follow your unique hashtag)
• Key elements summary: Just like in normal hashtag usage, hashtags can also give a quick view of what your posts (or on occasions ‘you’) are about because they highlight key topic areas;
• Tracking: You can also use a particular hashtag to track certain specific posts either from a personal or a company perspective. I try to add in #TheLinkedInProfessional as a hashtag for a lot of my posts so that I can see where they have been shared allowing me to engage with the sharer;
• List Building: Along the same lines, if I want to provide someone with a list of my posts on a particular topic then I can send them a link which will bring all of those together. So for instance, to track all of the #TheLinkedInProfessional tagged posts the link would be:
  https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/thelinkedinprofessional/
• Event / Discussion following: if you are writing about an event or conference then using the associated hashtag for the event will again get you more visible and get your posy in front of people following that hashtag during or after the event. This is more prevalent on Twitter but can also be of benefit on LinkedIn;
• Humour: people do like to be funny with their hashtags sometimes and I see no reason why LinkedIn needs to be more straight-laced in this respect … though with the proviso that, as ever, you remember who you are talking to and don’t go over the top.

So, make hashtags mix of a couple of specific ones about the topic in question, plus a couple of generic ones that hopefully lots of people will be following (to get visibility) and, if there is space, my tracking hashtag which is TheLinkedInProfessional so I can ensure I can follow up and also create a list of them. 

PTN (Points to Note) as a couple of reminders;

1. Hashtags are not case sensitive – we are!
   So create hashtags in a way that the system can still read but makes them more accessible to us – your readers – as well. Write them with relevant capitals in there so that it’s easier for readers to understand at a glance – I believe it’s called ‘Sentence case’. Generally people find that #thelinkedinprofessional is less immediately visible than #TheLinkedInProfessional.
2. How many to use?
   Personally, I try to keep numbers down and would not exceed 5 – it’s not that it’s particularly bad but it become distracting and in some extreme case unreadable;
3. Where can you use hashtags?
   Primarily in a post / update that you share from your homepage but also in the long form articles in the Publisher section. Within the text, any work can be turned into a hashtag but it will get distracting and also lead people away from your post so proceed with caution!
4. Add some popular ones!
   Not all hashtags are created equal … well actually they are, but some gain a bit of a following over time. Adding in a couple of those might help your posts visibility as mentioned above so check out the list of popular ones and see if any match your needs!

Using hashtags as a reader

It helps us influence (even alter!) the make up of the newsfeed that we see on our homepage. Following hashtags mean that posts containing that word or phrase will be much more likely to appear higher up your page with the relevant hashtag (or hahstags) in question being indicated at the top of the post – this is particularly true on the mobile at the moment. 

It also gives us the opportunity to follow certain topics that are of particular interest. We can build up a list of these and they are displayed on the left hand side of your homepage under the banner Communities – this seems to be a developing area for LinkedIn and they look to be creating a type of dashboard for us to access the areas and information of particular interest.

What you currently have there will depend on where LinkedIn is in rolling out this feature, but it looks like it will contain access to Company pages you control, Groups you belong to, Events that you have been invited to attend and hashtags for topics of interest. These could simply be areas of particular value to you or ways to identify posts where you can engage with people interested in and writing on certain topics, or content with career focus according to your preference.

How to use the hashtags area of the new Communities section?

LinkedIn will probably have added some initial hashtags to your area to get things going but there is no need to stick to these or even leave them in that area. Think which topics are going to be of most interest to you and start from there but you can change them at any point.

To remove the initial hashtags or ones that you add later but decide against keeping, then the easiest way is probably to click on the hashtag in your list and go to the page in question before then hitting the ‘Following’ button which will remove it from the list.

Searching for and Adding Hashtags

Searching for hashtags will no doubt get cleaned up a bit as there are a few different elements which currently make it a little bit cumbersome in places. Nevertheless, building up a list that are relevant to you will certainly help you to follow topics more easily and will slowly allow the off putting mix that is LinkedIn’s homepage feed to become more useful all round. much like the Sales Navigator one is.

i) If you do search for a hashtag that LinkedIn recognises then all is good – as you search in the top left hand search box, then it will display the existing hashtags as a drop down menu with a new ‘#’ icon next to them – clicking on these will then take you to the relevant page where you’ll have the opportunity to follow it.

ii) If no specific link appears button appears then don’t despair – proceed as you would normally do for a search and when the results appear, click on ‘Content’ to focus in on that area and you should get results containing your chosen tag.

At this point you can of course just go ahead and read them (funnily enough) but if you wish to follow the hashtag and add it to your list, then in many cases there will be a nice big ‘Follow’ button at the top of the page whcih will do the job for you.

If it doesn’t appear, then you will need to go into one of the posts, identify the hashtag that you have searched on in that post and click on it. This will then open up the list of posts with that hashtag again, but this time with a ‘Follow’ button at the top. Hurrah!

iii) LinkedIn also provides a list of what they consider to be some of the most popular hashtags – you can access this list at the bottom of the dashboard section on the left hand side of your homepage section where you will see “Discover” at the bottom – clicking on that gives you a page of results as below:

Just choose the ones that particularly tickle your fancy … so to speak.

Organising your hashtags

There’s no Lists option, so to speak, but you can pin certain hashtags to the top of the list which allow you to prioritise them. Just click on the blue ‘edit’ symbol, click on your preferred hashtags and they will get their own space at the top of the page.

PTN (Point to Note) – and, in case you wondered what the ‘blue dot’ next to them is, it means that there are more new posts with that hashtag waiting for you to enjoy!