Like any change, downtime needs to be factored in when upskilling your sales team to operate digitally. Speed is key: all the time they are finding their feet in new ways of working is time that they’re not on the road, not talking to customers, identifying opportunities or building their pipeline.
Remember, this change is happening in response to the buying process evolving for the modern age. Buyers have already changed their habits. As sales professionals, you need to catch up and be ready to build the right relationships and be ahead of your competition when it comes to serving up information and content that can convert.
In order to be effective at selling online, your sales team needs to be able to engage, enable and establish a new online habit. Getting used to their new sales environment is key if they are to build their skills in this area.
There are several skills needed to create a high-performing digital salesperson. We’ve split them across two of the key platforms used by most sales teams: LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.
Our 5 LinkedIn Digital Sales Skills:
1. Advanced Searching
Using Boolean search strings is a far more efficient way to filter people and find the targets you are looking for. They narrow and focus your search and reduce the need to keep refining the data that your search returns.
Your team needs to be familiar with this process and how to get the best out of it. Here’s the official LinkedIn help page for Boolean searches.
2. Finding Content
In order to build digital credibility with their prospects, your sales team need to be sharing content which will help them learn, help them understand or solve their pain point, or add value to their decision-making process.
According to LinkedIn, 75% of B2B buyers said the winning vendor’s content had a significant impact on their buyer decisions. There is an art to finding great content and it is essential that your team builds this skill.
3. Digital Networking
Just as social selling is all about adding value for your audience, digital networking should also be value-based. Your sales team need to consider quality, not quantity. This isn’t about getting the most connections, it’s about understanding when to send invitations to people, how to customize messaging, and when to accept or reject incoming invitations.
Networking is about people and relationships so authenticity is critical if you are to build an online network that can truly bring opportunities.
4. Measuring Impact
Understanding what works and what doesn’t comes down to knowing how to measure the impact of your digital approach to selling. LinkedIn makes this easy to do with the opportunity to track your Social Selling Index (SSI), see who’s viewed your profile and who’s engaging with your content.
5. Reacting To Triggers
It’s the different between selling and stalking: knowing how to identify a trigger and when to engage with a prospect. Over-reacting or reacting too quickly will just annoy your target. Seemingly being in the right place at the right time will differentiate the service you can offer.
Our 3 Sales Navigator Digital Sales Skills
1. Building Lead Lists
It’s common for salespeople to search using Sales Navigator and then revert to offline techniques to build their lead lists. However, if they do this online, within the Sales Navigator platform, they can monitor the activity of their targets. Much more powerful and time saving.
2. Writing InMails
There’s a skill to writing InMails and copying and pasting isn’t it. To be effective and guarantee a response, you need to understand your audience and consider their needs before spending time to carefully craft an InMail that will get your message across.
3. Running Advanced Searches
Digital sales experts will understand how to identify accounts and leads, what search criteria to refine and how to use the spotlight bar in Sales Navigator to target the right accounts and connections effectively and efficiently. This is all about knowing how to get the best out of the advanced filters on LinkedIn properly and it is key to success in digital selling.
Digital transformation is now more of a necessity than a choice for any large organisation. Don’t get left behind, get started on upskilling your team.
