I want you to look at your sales team and imagine this…
Look the sales productivity they have today. How many new prospect meetings are they booking a month right now?
Ok, I want you to now figure out your cost-per-lead, by dividing their salaries by the number of new prospect meetings they generated. You’ll probably be left with a numbers like $400, $600, $800 per lead.
Net new leads are precious right now… and XO Communications has rolled-out a Social Selling program with one simple task. After Social Selling Training, each sales rep is required to book 1 new meeting with LinkedIn right away. The result – 50% of the sales team booked a meeting nearly immediately!
Ronan Keane, the master behind the program said “one lady on the team had a cold calling blitz coming up… so instead of making all the necessary calls, she used our Social Selling training techniques. In one day, she booked 4 meetings! All from conversations she struck on LinkedIn!
Using this success, what do you think XO Communications is going to do??? They are rolling out Social Selling for every new business development rep, account managers and marketing. These leads have enormous ROI. For an organization that services the telecommunications for Fortune 2000 companies across North America, just ONE of these meetings could turn into a national account.
What is XO Communications doing different than most companies?
1. Understand the power of more tools in their “sales tool belt”
XO Communications sells telephony solutions… they know the power of the cold call. But the world has changed, and buyers are learning online. Ronan Keane was early to notice that his sales reps needed to start adding value with their clients & prospects very, very early – with CONTENT. The XO sales reps are sharing “Challenger” style content & starting LinkedIn conversations that push their buyers to think differently, and ultimately pushing their buyers OFF their status quo.
2. Leveraging sales reps as branding ambassadors and marketing MONSTERS
XO Communications has 280 sales reps around North America. Leveraging these sales reps to become thought-leaders in their respective Telecommunications space is absolute marketing horsepower. There is no faster way to have your companies ideas, strategies & value go viral than leveraging your sales team’s horsepower. Place on top of this – extra meetings being booked each month from simple conversations on LinkedIn, and you have a marketing monster.
3. Investing in their sales reps to increase sales & reduce churn
We mentioned a cost per lead of $500 – $1,000, can you imagine what XO’s sales rep churn costs are? The industry average is losing sales in a territory for up to 6 months, while a replacement sales rep is found. Instead of “churning & burning” sales reps, XO is helping make their reps become more successful. In the highly competitive (and often job jumping world of telecommunications), XO is looking to keep these sales reps and raise the baseline level of productivity.
Remember, Social Selling companies on average see a 20% increase in sales reps hitting quota. Sales reps that hit quota are MUCH less likely to jump to your competitors.
The Bottom Line
If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you really need to start to take action. The following blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out 42 LinkedIn Tips
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