In this week’s roundup, we’re sharing articles from both the LinkedIn Sales Blog and SiriusDecisions. The first blog by Alex Hisaka covers how to leverage social selling to identify key decision-makers including advanced searches, LinkedIn groups and more.
In the second article, Amanda Jensen of SiriusDecisions makes the analogy that skills transformation is similar to mountain climbing, both need a lot of preparation and planning. She dives deeper into the five necessary steps you need to take for a skills transformation effort.
Identify Decision Makers Through Social Selling
Identifying key decision makers is much more effective when leveraging social selling. In LinkedIn Sales blog, Alex Hisaka discusses five ways you and your sales team can identify the right people by tapping into the power of social selling.
These five ways include:
Getting specific with searches
- Use LinkedIn’s search function to identify specific criteria for your buyer. This can include job titles, functions, company sizes and more.
Following the clues in profiles
- By looking at a decision-maker’s profile, you can uncover some key insights. This includes what content they’re sharing and frequency which reflects on how receptive they are to social engagements.
Using LinkedIn Groups
- Visit the LinkedIn Groups your respective buyers would interact with and join the groups where you can provide relevance and value. This will allow you to initiate or continue conversations within the groups.
Scouring company websites
- A company’s website can provide many clues including a leadership page, recent articles, news and interviews. By understanding where to navigate on a company’s website, you can correlate specific insights like a recent article post with a decision-maker’s involvement.
Working your network
- Tap into your existing network, or your sales team’s network who may already be connected with a specific decision-maker. Once you’ve identified a warmer connection, reach out for an introduction to engage further.
Preparing For Skills Transformation
Skills transformation and mountain climbing have more in common than you may think. You’d think that mountain climbing requires solely athletic preparation, however, a lot of research, project planning is required. In SiriusDecision’s recent article Five Steps to Skills Transformation, Amanda Jensen discusses the necessary steps for a major skills development effort from preparation to launch.
As the B2B sales and marketing landscape continuously develops, transforming current skills is mandatory for keeping up with emerging trends. Amanda breaks down a skills transformation effort in five logical steps:
- Determine the skill areas you need to transform on the basis of the organization’s goals and strategies, the size of your team, and major concerns about ability to execute.
- Conduct a customized skills gap assessment using best-in-class competencies
- Develop a prioritized learning curriculum mapped to the individual team members needs identified in the assessment.
- Provide organization and team leaders with the research, tools, models, frameworks and data to accelerate substantive change across their teams
- Launch the entire organization into the skills transformation effort at once.
Ever heard of the phrase “Measure twice and cut once?” Well, this holds true for skills transformation as preparation is critical for adopting new skills.
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