Having a keen eye for detail and strong analytic skills is the key to becoming a good detective. You need to work with the right strategy. The best detectives are ruthless at collecting, analyzing and deducing from information. It brings forth the importance of gathering as much information and data as possible.
Proving the value of social selling is no different. In much of the same way, you need to watch for, track down, and piece together all of the sales activities that are delivering a concrete return. And with the right tools and techniques, you can easily connect the dots and uncover information previously unknown.
To pave the way for a greater truth, we’ve rounded up 10 revealing quotes from industry leaders who have cracked the case on sales ROI:
“If you’re really looking at ROI and you’re looking at dollars for investment, then you have really got to track source of business as closely as possible and influence of social as closely as possible. And a lot of that is going to come down to are you using the right tools to track that? Because a lot of people will say, “Well, that might have closed anyway.” Well, where do they come from? Did you get a warm introduction from someone? Did you engage on Sales Navigator? And, was the first connection through a LinkedIn invitation? Was it outbound? Did they engage on something that you posted and you reached out to thank them for their nice comment, right? We’ve got to start tracking that and having the right tool in place is what’s going to show you ROI, which can be enormous.” - Brynne Tillman, Chief Learning Officer at Vengreso
“I always find that your KPIs have to be heavily focused on tangible revenue numbers to get taken seriously. Sales-focused organizations have one objective, and that’s getting sales to have more ‘conversations’ with the right ‘industry/title’ at the right ‘time,’ creating more ‘opportunities’ equating to more ‘revenue.’ Make sure you present social selling as one of the major tools to help you achieve that objective.” - Jack Kosakowski, President and CEO at Junior Achievement USA
“People are extremely busy, myself included. We don’t have much time to take long lunches to meet new people. Sales Navigator helps us make those introductions and get our foot in the door faster. It’s a much more focused approach to social media, and has already brought me five new projects with an approximate fee value of £130,000.” - David Reynolds, UK National director for JLL
“People who focus on ‘getting better’ goals (also known as Personal Bests) as opposed to performance goals have a much better chance of success.” – Matt Bertuzzi, Sales and Marketing Operations at The Bridge Group
“One very simple social selling metric involves monitoring engagement rates for each sales rep. To measure this, you can start by looking at the number of content pieces each rep shares over a particular period of time, in order to assess their commitment. From there, engagement can be measured, providing you with an idea of each sales rep’s social media influence.” - Monika Götzmann, Director Marketing EMEA at Miller Heiman Group EMEA
“I also suggest reps pay attention to their individual social engagement metrics. Are there certain times of day that tend to generate more comments, likes, or reshares? Do certain types of content perform better than others? If you’re using LinkedIn, you can track your social selling score with the SSI Index -- it measures your performance against four main benchmarks.” - Kurt Shaver, Founder at The Sales Foundry
“There’s a distinct difference in our success rate at setting up meetings and follow-up conversations depending on whether our prospects are engaged on Sales Navigator or not. Social selling as part of our outbound lead generation approach has been invaluable in securing meetings and driving toward the close.” - Mark Fellowes, SVP of Sales Development and Operations at NewVoiceMedia
“To prove the value of social selling, Incontact ran a trial with half of its sales reps. Within three months those that had been trained on social selling had a sales pipeline 160 percent bigger than their colleagues, and by the end of the year had realised 215 percent more revenue.” - David Moth, Head of Social at eConsultancy
“Before, our reps were doing an hour’s worth of research to get the right … information, to have that first touch with the customer. [They would contact] 8 or 9 [prospects on] any given day… LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s helped us… take that hour down to just minutes.” - Brad Rinklin, CMO at Akamai
“When I mentioned social selling in Europe three years ago, it was not appreciated, to say the least. That has changed since last year, as soon as I could present data that showed a long-term performance impact no sales leader could ignore.” – Tamara Schenk, Research Director at CSO Insights
If you’re serious about sales improvement, then tracking sales ROI is a must. With a little digging, you can uncover all of the information you need to prove the value of your social selling programs.
For more clues into how to grow your sales results, download our eBook, Proof Positive: How to Easily Measure and Maximize Sales ROI.
Topics: Proof: Meeting Sales Quota
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