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!
Today we are joined by Scott MacGregor with SomethingNew. Scott 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, Scott!
Could you please tell our readers a little about you?
I grew up as the poor kid in an affluent town which made me hyper competitive and extremely motivated. I knew very early on sales was going to be my profession once the delusion of a professional sports career had become clear. I’m a passionate student of sales and marketing who believes in building long term relationships by trying to always be a resource. I relate almost everything back to my competitive athletic background and really think that business and sports are joined at the hip in nearly every way.[Tweet “Learn how Scott MacGregor does social selling!”]
How about telling them a little bit about your business?
SomethingNew was born out of my frustration with the recruiting world as a VP of Sales & Marketing for many years. We set out to solve the problems I faced and build a better mousetrap and through allot of planning an amazing team and a little luck have been blessed with a ton of success pretty quickly. Our first year in business we won the American Business Award for “innovation” followed by being named the “talent acquisition” mentors to the companies in the NYU incubator but, most importantly, we have received an overwhelming outpouring of incredible support from our clients and candidates. Our approach is completely unique and I think it is what the market wants and needs so our story is resonating.
How did you get started in selling and when did you begin adding social selling to your business?
I worked in my dad’s gas station from age 10 so I was up-selling a gas fill up to an oil change along with buying and selling baseball cards etc. I started my first professional sales job 1 week after graduating selling office equipment by door to door cold calling. I think I was doing a form of social selling before there were platforms like LinkedIn. I was sending handwritten congratulations cards to people who were in our local paper as “People on the Move” and cutting out articles from newspapers and magazines and mailing them to prospects and clients from my first job on. As one of the first million people on LinkedIn in 2004 I was definitely an early adopter. When I first saw LinkedIn I couldn’t believe how valuable it was. I think I did my first LinkedIn training for my sales team a decade ago when LI was only a few years old.
What are your social selling goals, objectives, and strategies?
The goal or objective is simply to build real relationships and to leverage technology to scale that without losing sight of the fact that I want true relationships not just connections. I use LinkedIn because it’s where all of our clients and candidates are and I use Twitter and Instagram to a lesser extent.
Do you have regular routines?
Every morning I recognize birthdays, work anniversaries, job changes on LinkedIn with personalized messages as well as liking, commenting and sharing peoples posts on all platforms. I also post things every day that I think people will find useful and interesting. Most people think I spend much more time doing this stuff but the reality is that even with nearly 8,000 LinkedIn connections I probably spend less than an hour doing all of the aforementioned. I also typically will connect with people I find inspiring or interesting every day with a personalized message. I’ve never once sent out a generic connection request.
How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?
I think they’re the kind of the same. Social is just a way to automate and scale your sales methodology.
How do you manage to stand out from the noise?
Everything is personal and tailored to each person who I am trying to build a relationship with. Also, I’m very consistent in using the tools to build relationships. I don’t think I’ve missed a day in 12 years using LI in particular.
Could you please share with us a few of your favorite social selling tools?
LinkedIn to me is the granddaddy of them all because nearly 100% of our clients and candidates use it. Instagram is great for humanizing our brand.
How do you track your results?
If good things are happening, from relationships to revenue, I know we’re getting results.
What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing salespeople as it pertains to social selling?
They don’t use it to build relationships. They use it to sell.
What about their biggest mistake that salespeople make when trying to implement social selling?
They use it to sell instead of build relationships. For example, I get 10-20 connection requests every day and sometimes a lot more. 99% of them are generic, which is inexcusable, and most of the times when I do connect I immediately get a three paragraph “sales pitch”. It’s a complete turn off.
What is your “social selling superpower”?
I don’t try to monetize relationships. I just try to build relationships with extraordinary people by being a resource to them. Magic happens when you have a real servants mentality and give with no expectation for a monetary return.
How can our readers get in touch with you to learn more?
Connect with me with a personalized connection request on LinkedIn, e-mail me, write me or call me. All of that info is on my profile or can be found with minimal effort.
Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!
I’d like to hear how Mark Birch works it!
Scott MacGregor
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- How I Work It – Social Selling with Scott MacGregor - January 4, 2017