How I Work It - Social Selling with Amar Sheth

With a grateful nod to Heinz Marketing, Lifehacker, Inc. Magazine and others who regularly publish “This is How I Work” articles, which I love to read …. welcome to “How I Work It – Social Selling”.

I try to watch and emulate others and you probably do the same. There is a lot of confusion, particularly with B2B, regarding how to implement social selling. Our hope is that these folks will inspire those of you are still on the fence and our goal is to share with you some of the best-proven selling practices that you might wish to emulate![Tweet “Amar Sheth of Sales for Life shares how he works social selling!”]

Today we are joined by Amar Sheth with Sales for Life. Amar takes the mystery out of social selling by consistently demonstrating key elements including …

Authenticity
Personalization
Uniqueness
A desire to share, educate, and to promote others

Welcome, Amar!

Could you please tell our readers a little about you?

Absolutely! I’m fascinated by all things social selling but don’t necessarily invest my time in all of them (stay tuned for more, this is a good thing). My desire for social selling really stems from the fact that I know that B2B buyers have changed. The evidence is all around us.

That’s why when I hear statements like the following, it’s disturbing.

My buyers aren’t on LinkedIn
My prospects don’t use Twitter
You can’t close a deal in 140 characters
Etc.

These statements ignore the shift in buyer behavior. They focus on the weeds and not on the trends.

Outside of this obsession, I love travel, spending time with my newborn daughter, and baking (seriously, I bake some mean desserts).

How about telling them a little bit about your business?

Sales For Life does one thing for one purpose. We help B2B sales professionals and marketing leaders implement social selling programs to better serve their buyers and markets. That’s it.

Seth Godin says that revenue is a byproduct of doing what you love. In our case, we teach organizations that if we focus on helping buyers on social and digital channels (of course in addition to what we’re doing already), you too can generate more pipeline and revenue.

How did you get started in selling and when did you begin adding social selling to your business?

I’m one of the first 2 million people that signed up for LinkedIn. To me that sounds amazing considering that we now have over 440+ million members. I always prospected on LinkedIn, followed prospects on Twitter, even tried adding them to Facebook.

But it wasn’t until I started refining my approach at Sales For Life that we truly started to see the possibility of how to do it correctly. There are many ways to correctly execute social selling but, unfortunately, the majority of the times sales professionals sell on social media the way they always do. And bad luck for us, that style doesn’t work.

So when I started to socially sell correctly, my results sky rocketed. I still generate an average of 20-30 net new prospect meetings/month just through social. It’s now a science for me; I know what levers to pull to cause the right results.

What are your social selling goals, objectives, and strategies?

My goal will sound really unrealistic to some people reading this: I’m always striving to help people. That’s my secret sauce. I’m doing this even at the cost of losing the deal. I view the relationship as sacrosanct. And my entire team operates like this.

Even quite recently we had a company call us interested in our training services. They just weren’t ready though. We ended up referring them to someone else. Did it hurt our revenue? Yes. But guess what? That individual was so appreciative she’s since referred us to two prospects that we’re in active discussions with now.

Our objective is exactly what I outlined above. Help the buyer make informed decisions by providing the right insights. I don’t shy from sharing my competitor’s content if I feel it’s helpful.

And lastly, my strategy in practicing and executing social selling can be defined by what I call The Law of Minimalism. Essentially this means that you focus on a few core steps and execute rigorously. Being blinded by all the new tools and their promises that attempt to capture our mindshare isn’t worth it. Evaluate them if you must but then discard what doesn’t work with brute force.

My time is valuable. It’s at a premium actually. Sorry if you find this “stuffy”, but I’d argue that this is the case for all of us.

If you’re interested to know my social selling tech stack, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I’ll share with you that there’s only a handful of tools needed.

Do you have regular routines?

Absolutely. Without a daily checklist of activities, I’d be lost in the wilderness. It’s the same mentality I have when it comes to working out. I know which days I’m focused on cardio and all the core muscle groups.

The Law of Minimalism dominates my thinking around this as well.

If you’re curious or want to get started on a simple and effective social selling routine, try this on for size. We’ve now tested it across 50,000+ sales professionals so we know it works. If you need something a little more “advanced”, contact me and I’m happy to help.

How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?

I integrate this through my cadence. This means that social steps are now executed alongside the phone and email.

In fact, one of our clients now sees that when they were engaging & nurturing by phone and email, it took an average of 17 attempts to move the prospect to some type of next step. With social in the mix, they’ve dropped the number of attempts to 7.

We’re going to publish a study on this soon but ultimately if commercial and executive leadership needed any more reasons, let’s add this to the mix.

How do you manage to stand out from the noise?

By reading and staying current. I never claim to be the smartest person in the room and I’m constantly learning. I take new learnings and ideas I develop and share with people and the market.

I find that sales professionals today are, surprisingly, quite inhibited. Seems like an oxymoron to say “I’m a shy salesperson” but that’s the reality for most of us. Given this, there’s a huge opportunity for those of us who want to share ideas and education with the market.

It positions us as thought leaders, brings visibility and awareness, which ultimately are great drivers of sales conversations.

If you’re in sales and not doing this today, you’re missing out on one of the biggest opportunities ever made available to us.

Could you please share with us a few of your favorite social selling tools?

I only use a few tools but use them with laser focus and have mastered them.

LinkedIn
Twitter
Hootsuite
Feedly

One tool I’ve yet to adopt into my cadence, but am looking forward to, is Nimble. In terms of getting to know your buyer from a social perspective, it’s massive.

How do you track your results?

We track all activity in CRM because it’s an existing practice. There’s no reason to track social sales results elsewhere.

However, the biggest challenge with this is sales professionals not using CRM effectively in the first place. There are tools in the market though that automate the capturing of social activity in platforms like LinkedIn directly to CRM. This does come at a price, however.

What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing salespeople as it pertains to social selling?

Fear. That’s the number one reason. It stems from trying something new, being challenged on status quo, realizing that times have changed, inability to navigate social tools, etc.

I can’t give a more concrete reason than this. Our inabilities to change always stem from fear.

What about their biggest mistake that salespeople make when trying to implement social selling?

Thinking that they know too much when not knowing enough or thinking they know too little. Let me provide an example, in the social selling world there has always been a myth that “younger” sales professionals (millennials come to kind) know more about social media than their “older” (Gen X/Baby Boomer) counterparts.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, recent data from LinkedIn empirically reveals that sales professionals that are 45+ have the highest SSI scores. Food for thought.

My advice to everyone I train is to never claim to be the smartest person in the room. This is when learning stops.

What is your “social selling superpower”?

I’d like to say my ability to listen. I’m not naïve enough to think that I know everything about social selling. I’m crowdsourcing from the best minds in the world at all times. My ideas are developed as a mixture of original thinking + real life experiences + observing the real life successes and failures of others in the market.

Secondly, it’s my ability to fail. I love it when I fail because it tells me the answer may be one step closer.

How can our readers get in touch with you to learn more?

Twitter: @AmarSheth

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/amarsheth

Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!

I’d like to hear how Laura Tarrant at Adecco works it!

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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!