Focused Social Selling - Pre-Planning Part C

Continuing on from where we left off on Part B …

Define classifications & 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! Of your total number of accounts, “A” might be 20%, “B” 30%, and “C” 50%.

Maybe your “A” accounts will only be 15%. Much of this might be determined by your choice of recurring schedules. If you decide that “A” accounts need to be touched weekly, how many of those quality touches can you make in a week? 20% of 300, for example, is 60 people. Can you make an average of 12 quality touches per day? Examples of touch schedules might be “A” = weekly, “B” = monthly, and “C” = quarterly. You will need to decide this for yourself based on your specific business. Mind you, these are minimum touch schedules and are by no means indicative of the actual touches you will, or should, make.[Tweet “The #Leonidas#selling System requires careful planning prior to implementation. Here’s how!”]

And, who are your “A” accounts? Certainly your best recurring customers qualify for this status but, I would encourage you to think beyond who presently spends the most money with you directly. This might include heavily coveted target accounts as well as those who consistently refer business to you. When I was in the sign business, my “A” accounts included commercial realtors. While they never spent money with me directly, their clients that they referred me to sure as hell did!

Your buyer persona, something that we develop as we get into the actual system steps, will further help you to make these decisions regarding both your selected accounts as well as their classification. Do not be surprised to find out, following a close examination, that some of what you feel are your best accounts, might not actually be so. For example, it would be very simple to look at sales to accounts over the past 6 months and choose your top accounts from there. However, I don’t much care about what they have spent with me. I want to know how much they will spend with me. This is sometimes referred to at LTCV (life-time client value). The gift that keeps on giving.

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 manilla folders!

If you are a solo person, and LinkedIn is going to be your honeypot, you might make LinkedIn work but, it is going to be clumsy. A little known fact about LinkedIn is that your imported contacts, regardless of whether or not they are on LinkedIn and regardless of whether or not you are formally connected. can still be managed with tags, notes, and reminders for these people via the connections list. Of course, if you are a team, and even if you have a team LinkedIn account, I’m not so sure you can share this info with your other team members. You certainly cannot do this with any kind of individual account.

At the minimum, your system (CRM or SCRM) will need to include the following …

Contact and company records with pertinent information

The ability to add notes to records

A task and reminders feature. Recurring reminders are highly recommended

Fields for social profile and website URLs

A record of exchanged communications

Some sort of tagging system or another way to organize your contact records

Search and advanced search of records

What other tools might we use? I already have my SCRM, Nimble, and I will be using the social networks themselves including LinkedIn, Twitter, and maybe even Facebook. Your particular business needs (remember … where are your customers found) might mean additional networks. Still, there are a ton of other applications that are available for us to deploy. The question becomes, which one(s) will I use?

Beware of “App Creep”!

App creep is a lot like a hamburger. I ask for a burger and the waitperson replies … “Add cheese? Two patties? Bacon? Fries? Supersize?” Yes, yes, yes. yes, and ohhh yes! Do you see where this is going? The problem is that there are 100’s of excellent apps that have been designed for sales alone with 100’s more coming on every year. How can we evaluate, let alone use, them all? The simple answer is that we can’t. I believe that minimal tools, worked consistently, is the better solution. This system embraces and leverages this philosophy and, in the long run, you will thank me for that! You will probably thank me immediately.

Will you miss certain opportunities? Probably but, regardless of the number of apps that you have and use, you will always miss opportunities. I’m betting that the time that I save in not researching and trying out these apps will more than make up for that in terms of actual results vs. a hope and a prayer. However, this all being said, if the perfect app is available to meet your specific needs, knock yourself out but, do so with caution and only after a serious discussion regarding whether or not this is a want or a need.

Schedule daily, weekly, and monthly routines

This program requires consistent interaction and regular reevaluations. For me, this is my to-do list(s). The beauty of this system is that you will be able to work it in a time effective manner due to the fact that your focus will be directed toward a select group of target accounts. I might suggest that you …

Review the social activity of your accounts daily. This might seem like an unmanageable task and, if we were just to go to Twitter profiles, for example, and look at each account’s activity and then on to the next, it would be! However, with lists and circles we can easily filter these updates on Twitter, Facebook, and even Google+. LinkedIn is a little more challenging but, we will give you a couple of options for this network.

Make it a weekly goal to engage with those accounts based on their classification and recurring touch schedule.

Review your activities and, more importantly, your results monthly. Evaluate your success and your shortcomings and plan for your next month from there.

Every “A”, “B”, and “C” account should be reviewed quarterly. Should they be moved up or down in classification status or even out? Maybe they stay where they are.

This is a serious review and you are going to have to make some tough choices and do some honest soul searches. If they are not meeting your expectations, is that because of your failings or because of some other reason(s)? To throw somebody off the cliff because you did not do your part is nothing short of idiotic.

Finally, I would very strongly suggest that you have your tools, including your choice for a CRM, in place before embarking on this selling system and that begins with our next article.

To be continued …

Please note – 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. #FocusedSelling

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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!