2017 Social Selling App and Article Roundup #6

Every week it seems that I either run across, or I am introduced to, some really great new apps and articles that pertain to social selling. Then there are those apps that I have used for an extensive period of time and they are worthy of a shout out!

While I can’t do extensive research or a full review on each, hopefully you may find some gems for your own use that have been hidden inside this regular curation. Please note that I do not endorse, or represent, apps unless indicated. I do, however, feel that all are worthy of your inspection!

Apps

My offerings today are more tech related but, all three of these are proving to be invaluable to me. Two of them are critical elements in keeping this site running!

UpdraftPlus – This site is built on self-hosted WordPress. For someone like myself who is not particularly tech savvy, having your site crash can be more than a little disheartening particularly when you don’t have a backup. Less than a year ago I agreed to subscribe to a service offered by my hosting company that would create daily backups.

All of a sudden I was being hammered to upgrade my storage (more $) and nobody could seem to explain why (could not or would not) this was suddenly occurring. I finally told them to take their app and shove it where … well … you know where. At any rate, I did some research and verified by findings with my tech guy and now use free UpdraftPlus to do daily backups of both of my sites straight to Google Drive. Awesome plugin!

Wordfence – Just as bad as having your site crash is being constantly emailed by your hosting company that your sites are malware infected. Once again, I went with their recommended service and, while it worked, it was pricey for someone like myself. I agreed to a six-month contract and installed it on one site. However, I found the premium version of Wordfence and installed that on my other site.

This would be a six month test to see if $10 per month Wordfence would perform as well as $50 per month “other guy”. “Other guy” did perform well but, no better than Wordfence. In fact, there were things about Wordfence that I preferred so, after 6 months, both sites are now protected by Wordfence and … they work!

Google Backup and Sync – I’ll have to admit that I have drank the Google koolaid, I love Google Drive, Docs, all of it! I’ve used Carbonite for some time and have never really been comfortable with it. Backed up files are never where I expect them to be and it seems to slow down my computer at the least opportune of times. So much so that I even tried to test out doing manual backups simultaneously to a portable hard drive. That was a pain.

When Google introduced Backup and Sync, I said “why not”? It’s free although you may have to upgrade your storage but, even that is dirt cheap. I’ve been using it a few weeks now and I like it so much that I uninstalled Carbonite even though I had already paid for the next six months. Nothing against Carbonite, mind you. It’s just that, for me, Google is a better solution.

Articles

For some time now I have been curating “Ultimate Guide” articles. I’ve got a bunch of them so here are six to get you started!

Face-to-Face Meetings: The Ultimate Guide – Thanks to communication tools like Skype, chat, and email, face-to-face meetings sales meetings are less common than they used to be. But they haven’t grown obsolete — and may never. After all, nothing can replace the effects of sitting and talking to someone at the same table. Case in point: An April 2017 study from Cornell University found in-person requests are 34 times more successful than those made over email.

Sales Automation: The Ultimate Guide – Sales automation may just be the answer to all your selling woes. No, really. Have you ever:

Lost a deal because you forgot to follow up?
Spent precious minutes adding opportunities or leads to your CRM?
Overlooked an issue in your sales process for a dangerously long time?
Called leads in alphabetical order rather than best fit?
Went back and forth with a prospect figuring out a good time to meet?
Wasted half an hour digging through your files to find the specific deck or customer testimonial you needed?

If you can relate to any — or all — of the above, you need sales automation.

Sales Hiring: The Ultimate Guide – Your organization needs an effective sales hiring strategy to survive. Average annual turnover for sales teams is around 25%, meaning that if you have 10 reps, you’ll lose two of them within the year. The only way to maintain sales performance — let alone increase it — is to hire often and well. In this guide, you’ll learn the ins and outs of a successful sales hiring process.

Sales Hiring:

Step 1: Build a hiring profile
Step 2: Develop questions and techniques
Step 3: Write a job description
Step 4: Build your pipeline
Step 5: Measure and tweak
Step 6: Screen
Step 7: Have applicants do a mock demo
Step 8: Interview
Step 9: Make an offer

New Hire Training for Salespeople: The Ultimate Guide – The average ramp-up time for salespeople is between six and nine months. That’s a lot of lost revenue for your company. So how do you maximize the investment you’re making in sales new hires? Below is a guide to accelerated ramp-up time for your salespeople (along with some examples of how HubSpot trains their salespeople). It takes time. It might feel like you’re over-communicating. But the payoff is salespeople who understand your business, your customer, and your sales methodology — a wicked combination that leads to bigger returns, faster.

Social Selling on LinkedIn: The Ultimate Guide – LinkedIn is one of — if not the — most effective social networks for selling.While Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are valuable tools to learn more about your prospect’s interests and personality, warm them up before you reach out, and build your subject matter expertise, LinkedIn is typically the only platform that directly leads to new business.

You might connect with a prospect on Thursday, book them for a call the following Tuesday, give them a demo that Friday, and close before the weekend. But you won’t get those results without a stellar LinkedIn social selling strategy. So without further ado, let’s discuss:

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Sales
How to Prospect on LinkedIn
How to Research on LinkedIn
How to Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

How to Use a CRM: The Ultimate Guide – As your business grows, manually keeping track of your prospects and customers with spreadsheets and random notes in different places becomes, well, if not impossible … Extremely difficult. Not only is this type of system time- and energy-consuming to manage, things start slipping through the cracks at an alarming rate. Enter: CRM software.

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!