Focused Social Selling - Less Really is More

At the start of this year I wrote an article about my goals for 2015 where I discussed increased revenues, improved SEO, and the elevated use of media. I never said that those were my only goals. My other major objective was to create improved focus on engagements and relationships. I have been thinking about this all year and am now ready to act. My plans for doing this may strike some as being highly risky, maybe even idiotic but, I’m betting that they aren’t and I’m all in.

King Leonidas led 300 Spartans and 1,500 or so Greeks against 150,000 plus Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae. These warriors succeeded at their objective to delay the Persian advance through their deployment of discipline, focus, strategy, and teamwork. Despite eventually succumbing, their battle put a serious hurt on their enemy and ultimately helped to save Greece. Can the few defeat the many? Yes, we see it everyday! Since I admire the pluck of the Spartans, we’re going to call this project … Leonidas and the underlying tenets for my initiative will be that …[Tweet “In Social Sales, can the few defeat the many? Ask 300 Spartans!”]

Less really is more and this starts with focusing on fewer connections.

Continuing, and growing, relationships = Sales

Traditional and Social Sales not only work well together but, in fact, they are one and the same. Same old rules, just new tools.

Now, I have something like 7,500 existing social connections and my first thought was to disconnect from everybody in order to start fresh. However, discretion being the better part of valor (plus my original plan could prove to be extremely short-sighted), instead I will work within my existing contacts and I will digitally cull (organize and separate) that herd.

Will my solution be perfect? Hell no but, what is? Frankly, I will be venturing into a lot of technical areas that are uncharted territory for me. There are also a number of limitations, some enacted fairly recently, that are unfortunate aspects of the individual social networks themselves. Still, what I have in mind will be light years ahead of how I am doing it now. I’m sure that there will be a lot of very smart people who will insist that I’m not very smart. Perhaps but, in the absolute worst case scenario, at least I will be failing forward.

As we get farther into this, the need to limit your targeted contact base will become more and more apparent. Quality and personalized consistent engagement will trump quantity mindless activity but, doing a quality job will require a concerted and persistent effort on my part and this just can’t be accomplished, at least by me, with an overwhelming quantity of active connections.

Before I get started, there are some questions to be answered. If you plan on following the progress of this program and perhaps you will be implementing it for yourself, I would suggest that you think about these since I can answer them for you.

What do I want to sell? – I actually have a fairly diversified set of services and each of those might be delivered in-person, online, or even in a group or open workshop setting.

What am I going to give up? What I am going to cut out and/or trim? – You are going to need to make some choices on where you are going to invest the only 24/7 that you have available.

What are my ultimate goals and how will I know when they have been achieved? – We will need to articulate where we want to go, establish benchmarks, and define our metrics.

How am I going to approach it? What is my objective, my strategy, and my tactics? – What do I need to do? Activities might include blogging, sharing, engaging, podcasts, and videos.

How can I gather and parse the most important info on each contact? – A simple Google search of most people will uncover an unbelievable amount of information on folks. We need to distill this down to the good stuff and they store that for easy access … someplace.

Create touches and taps – What are my weapons of engagement and when and how will I use them?

Define the engagement procedure step by step up to and including securing a business opportunity – I’ll give you three hints … it has to be personalized, targeted, and it has to be progressive.

Schedule daily, weekly, and monthly routines – This program requires consistent interaction and regular reevaluations. For me, this is my to-do list(s).

Create and clearly define A, B, C classifications and recurring touch reminders – A, B, C has been around forever because … it works! Your best customers are your “A” customers, “B” are second best, and “C” are probably too early to tell. There is also “D” and that stands for “Delete”. Each has a schedule for recurring touches. You will need to be able to classify each of your contacts and then establish that touch schedule. We will tell you how to do both!

How will I track activities and results? – I don’t know about you but, I don’t want to keep all of this on post it notes even if they are in manila folders!

We will be looking much closer at each of these in upcoming articles. All posts in this series will be tagged FocusedSelling. You will be able to click on that tag at the bottom of any post in the series and all posts in the series, most recent first, will be listed for you. So, if jump in the middle and you want to get started, work from the bottom up. Cutting in line and skipping steps would definitely be ill-advised.

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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!