The Modern Day Social Seller: Buyers Are More Empowered But So Are You!

The research and the reality: B2B buyers are more knowledgeable than ever before and they are using readily available information about your company, products, services, customers, team, history and competitors to propel themselves toward a purchase decision. 57% of the decision process is complete before prospects engage sales. (Source – CEB, The New High Performer Playbook, Arlington VA, 2012). If you are in sales today, this poses a challenge. Here's how the top sales teams are dealing with this new reality and turning it into a higher win rate, and quota-busting performance.

Internet research works both ways: High performing sales teams are using the internet to educate themselves on their buyers' organizations: their challenges, corporate objectives, personnel, financial performance, competition, leadership profiles, solutions, clients and so on. In addition to websites, they subscribe to their prospects' and clients' twitter feeds, scour the financial reports on Yahoo Finance and set up Google Alerts for real-time info on their activities. When the clock starts on the remaining 43% of the process-where the rubber meets the road-they are ready, well informed, asking leading questions, delivering insights and properly positioning their solutions to match up with prospect challenges. 

Deliver Insights that are NOT publicly available: When your prospect picks up the phone to call, the high performing sales teams have a well stocked arsenal of insights to provide which the prospect has likely not heard before. This is a value ad that the empowered sales exec leverages to her advantage. Where do these 'proprietary' insights come from? Marketing organizations are deploying tools and advanced technology to glean information from prospect visits to websites and sales conversations. They then aggregate these key metrics which the high performers are using as insights in their ongoing conversations with buyers. In a recent article, "Acres of Diamonds", Alinean CEO Tom Pisello and VP Mark Schlueter detail how insights can be mined right in your own "backyard": http://bit.ly/11vPHJm . Sales tools like Alinean's ValueStory   http://bit.ly/11tPCVP  capture key data from all client and prospect conversations and deliver them back to sales and leadership in real-time. High performing sales teams are analyzing this up to the minute intel on buyer behavior and delivering them as insights to their prospects.

Sign Them Up! Today's top sales performers are leveling the playing field by doing in depth research on their buyers, properly planning their sales strategy and personalizing and leveraging 'proprietary' insights to establish credibility, earn the right to continue the relationship and advance on to more closed deals.

Note: I join Tom Pisello, Alinean's CEO to deliver a  deeper dive on this and other critical issues on his successful 'ROI Guy" Blog (http://blog.alinean.com/) check it out!