How I Work It - Social Selling with Larry Levine

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 “Learn how Larry Levine does social selling!”]

Today we are joined by Larry Levine with Social Sales Academy. Larry 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, Larry!

Could you please tell our readers a little about you?

Sure thing Craig. First of all, I am honored with this interview. Often times I refer to myself as an old school sales guy with a modern twist. I am a baby-boomer who absolutely enjoys socially connecting. I enjoy the art of building relationships based on authenticity and just being myself.

I have been in sales my entire 28-year working career all with the office technology space (copiers). I stumbled into selling copiers right out of college to grab that 1 year of sales experience so I could go onto becoming a pharmaceutical sales rep. Well, I guess you say I have toner in my blood as I never left the copier industry.

Outside of work I enjoy going to the gym, voraciously reading everything about sales, Santa Barbara County wine snob (sorry) and I enjoy giving back to the community by volunteering.

How about telling them a little bit about your business?

The Social Sales Academy equips business-to-business technology sales professionals to successfully incorporate LinkedIn, brand building and social sales tactics to grow revenue. We help sales reps layer social selling strategies into their existing sales techniques to grow net-new business.

The Social Sales Academy is very unique as I have walked in the shoes of a copier sales rep, having been one for 27 years. Inside the academy I bring purpose, passion and the knowledge integrating real world stories of how LinkedIn transformed my ability to connect with C-level executives.

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

I stumbled into selling copiers right out of college in 1988. I doubled majored in Health Science and Marketing with the goal of becoming a Pharmaceutical sales rep. Unfortunately, I had no outside B2B sales experience so no Pharmaceutical company would hire me. With a strong kick from my dad he suggested I go sell copiers as a way to get some hard-nosed sales experience.

What I didn’t realize is I would parlay that choice into a 28-year career. People who know me well know I am very opinionated when it comes to social selling. I am a firm believer social selling isn’t this new “sexy” term that over the last few years has fallen out of the sky. I was integrating social selling into my sales process back in the late 1980’s. To me, the core social selling foundation is the art of building relationships and driving conversation. Back in the 80’s we had no computers, no internet just the good old fashion phone and our face to face encounters. We integrated the use of social with what we had available at the time. I guess you can say I have been social selling for 28 years.

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

Everything we do with the Social Sales Academy drives toward increasing revenue through net-new business and cross-selling additional services into current accounts. We understand you can’t afford to throw out everything that has made your sales reps successful up to this point. Our goal is simple, we integrate the social aspect of selling into proven copier and B2B sales tactics. It is about integrating traditional sales with social sales.

Our objectives and strategies include:

Helping to facilitate cultural changes to infuse and integrate social sales strategies into the sales process
Helping sales reps to increase net new sales opportunities
Helping sales reps to position and brand themselves online as subject matter experts
Helping sales reps master digital sales skills
Providing the knowledge set as to why socially surrounding their current account base is important to client retention
Helping to support major account sales reps

Do you have regular routines?

I do have regular routines both professionally and personally. Yes, call me sick as this is 3:30 AM daily. For an hour I read every day then go to the gym. My work day starts at 6:00 AM PST and ends at 5:30 PM PST. I am extremely focused on regular routines as this translates right into integrating the use of social into my sales process. I never deviated from my own personalized and customized sales process but as time went on I infused daily social aspects into it; research, follow, connect, nurture and meet is what I frequently added into my process.

Some of my regular social routines revolve around:

Respond – respond to messages and invitations to connect
Review – review updates on my home page and within groups
Recommend – give or request a recommendation
Research – research potential prospects and companies

How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?

I am a firm believer what’s old is forever new. Traditional selling methods are still alive and well I have just made the adjustments to integrate modern methods of business development into the sales process. I have modernized the core foundation of traditional selling methodologies and incorporated social sales strategies. I learned the art of listening to what my clients and prospects were sharing on their social channels to engage in a different level of conversation with them.

In doing so, I found two things started to happen… I was able to fill what I refer to as a “relationship funnel” to help ensure my sales funnel was full. Integrating social aspects allows me to create a steady stream of new opportunities inside my sales funnel.

Integrating the use of social selling inside the traditional sales process has provided more consistent sales opportunities, deeper relationships, built my online credibility immensely as well as consistently staying top of mind to my clients and my prospects.

How do you manage to stand out from the noise?

I did it as a sales rep and I do it now… I simply remove my “sales” hat and put my “help” hat on. Sales reps today do not take the time to build real authentic human relationships. They bypass this crucial part and make it all about them. I learned many years ago it is extremely difficult to sell something to somebody if you don’t take the time to get to know them.

You get what you get with me. I don’t hold back and say what is on my mind. I stand out because I don’t sugar coat anything. I remain true to myself.

The more you offer to help and educate the more inclined your prospects will engage with you. As a copier sales rep the best way I rose above the “noise” was to drive prospects right to my LinkedIn profile. I knew my profile was better than 99.9% of the sales reps out there. By driving prospects right to my profile I could leverage my social proof, social visibility and build credibility thus creating immediate unique differentiation.

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

In no particular order…

LinkedIn – Single best branding platform I have seen for sales reps
Twitter – Great way to follow current clients and prospects to learn more and engage in top if mind conversation
Buffer – Great way to bring some automation into my daily routine. Sales reps can load up buffer in the morning with content thus staying top of mind. An excuse remover for I have no time to post content
Canva – best free site I have seen to help create social media posts and banner pages for LinkedIn profiles

How do you track your results?

Inside the Social Sales Academy, we are avid HubSpot users. All activity is entered into our CRM within HubSpot. We track everything through HubSpot. As social became more integrated into my daily sales process as a copier sales rep years ago I employed the following to help me stay on track… I still use these today within the Social Sales Academy. I call them my 4C’s

Connections – number of new 1st degree connections per week. I dissect who I connect with a drive them in filters/tabs
Conversations – number of online discussions
Conversion – number of online discussions I took offline
Commission – deals won

I leverage KPIs and benchmarks constantly to help drive my behavior and foster personal growth.

Other indicators I use to simplify things for me:

LinkedIn profile views
Engagement within LinkedIn
Content shared
Connections per account both current and prospective
Recommendations

These are just a few but I think you get the idea… benchmarks and personal KPIs must be incorporated to help drive behavior and consistent sales activity.

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

Not letting “go” of their egos and their “know it all behavior”. What has worked in the past may still work today albeit with different results. A wing and a prayer may have worked in the past but the buyers today are more astute and more educated than ever before.

The biggest challenge I see is themselves. Salespeople in general have little patience to integrate “social” into their sales process. One simple reason… it takes time to see results, you must have due diligence, education, and perseverance. Sales reps in general are “heat sinking” missile’s and have a hard time digesting the fact a deal may not happen for months or possibly years down the road. Another challenge is learning how to manage a relationship funnel as well as their sales funnel. If you are not building new relationships the sales funnel will soon become anemic.

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

They have no patience! Integrating social selling as a sales rep is a mindset and skill set change. As sales reps we are inherently social to begin with as we have to be able to drive conversation. What sales reps don’t understand is some of this has transitioned online. This equates to behavior change as we now must leverage social tools to allow us to do our jobs more efficiently. All too often, I hear I am already social selling (this is fun to peel back) and I know how to use, let’s say LinkedIn for example… First of all their profiles suck and furthermore all they do is mine a connection and then beat someone over the head to get an appointment. I guess you can say they have adapted to becoming digital cold callers.

The biggest issue I see is getting them to check their egos at the door and keep an open mind that they don’t know everything. I always say, “You can’t effectively become successful in sales without building strong relationships. So, the biggest mistake I see is cutting corners socially just to get someone inside “their” sales process.

What is your “social selling superpower”?

I absolutely love building relationships and getting to know people. I guess my social selling superpower began in 1988 selling copiers. With no computer and no internet, my selling power was my ability to listen and to ask great questions, engage in non-salesy normal conversation leading to building relationships which then led to sales.

Moving the needle forward to what it means today… my social selling superpower remains the same though it incorporates my online presence to do the same thing I must do face to face.

We tend to complicate and over think things way too much with social. This is just another avenue to help sales reps drive more sales revenue.

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

I can be reached through LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/larrylevine1992

Twitter: @larry1levine

Email me: llevine@socialsalesacademy.net

Engage with me as well within the Social Sales Academy www.socialsalesacademy.net

Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!

I’d like to hear how Scott MacGregor works it!