This was originally a guest blog post for Selling Power Magazine. I received some really positive feedback about the post, so thought we’d share it with the Social Centered Selling community also.

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Here’s a question for all the sales leaders out there: Why it is so darn difficult to capture, leverage, and pass on the success methodology of your sales superstars?

For the past decade, I’ve worked as a consultant with hundreds of sales leaders from top enterprise companies like Georgia Pacific, GE Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, UPS Capital Insurance Agency, Earthlink Business, Microsoft, and PepsiCo. They all say the same thing: there just doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get their top producers to share what they know with the rest of the sales team. 

Over the course of my 20-year sales career in the tech industry (during which I sold $1 billion total in products and services) I’ve personally felt this frustration many times. As the landscape of sales has changed, I think I’ve finally figured out why this frustration exists. Simply put, companies and sales leaders are not going out of their way to use technology to build what I call a “commissions community.” 

When I began my sales career as an individual contributor, the freedom of not being chained to a 9-to-5 schedule was heaven. I loved being responsible only for me. I knew that the extra effort that I put into my sales activities meant higher commissions in my pocket, and that’s exactly what I wanted. I’m betting that many members of your sales team feel exactly as I did. After all, top producers respond to three main motivating factors:

1. The potential to earn more money
2. High-level recognition
3. Awards

Sales management can talk all day long about the importance of team collaboration, but let’s face it: that isn’t how sales reps are typically compensated. And why should top performers be asked to carry the bottom twenty percent of the team? Before I got started in sales, I’d worked with peers who dragged their feet on the job, and I hated knowing we were paid roughly the same amount of money even though I busted my butt day in and day out. Rewarding sales performance simply on the basis of individual contributions runs counter to a collaborative culture. 

Another major stumbling block that I see — particularly among dispersed enterprise sales teams — is communication. Conference calls and email exchanges can only take a sales team so far. There’s just no excuse for this in an era where information travels in real time. Part of the reason I decided to co-write a book specifically about sales and social media is because I realized that many sales teams are failing to adapt to today’s selling environment. Your salespeople are selling amid constant digital disruption, and B2B buyers are relying almost exclusively on the social web to search for solutions before they make purchasing decisions. In other words, buyers are deciding what they need and why, without any interaction with a salesperson. “Customer 2.0” expects salespeople to have a global view of their organization and be well versed on their specific issues and challenges. This amplifies the need for team collaboration and support. Lacking a formalized process, platform, or location for internal knowledge sharing and retention, the sales rep is left to sink or swim. And the “I can do it on my own” sales performers who try to manage the customer relationship and sales cycle without internal support or guidance and mentorship from managers and peers may find they are losing more deals than they close.

Now imagine if you could help your top performers see actual, measurable benefits from their investment in a culture of collaboration. Imagine their reaction if they knew that sharing their knowledge with the rest of the team could open the door to earning higher commissions and winning more top awards.The problem is that many sales leaders are not taking advantage of the new kinds of social learning tools that would make these things possible for top performers. A social learning platform facilitates companywide communication in real time and also serves as a repository for valuable information that reps can tap at any time. For example, reps who are stuck in a code red, “I need an answer right now or I’ll lose the attention of this prospect” situation can quickly log on and conduct a search among information that’s been logged in by top performers or experts within the company, start a real-time chat with a peer (or even someone in marketing or customer service), or tap into a wealth of recorded training sessions to find a great answer without having to wait for their sales manager to get a free moment for a phone call or answer an email.

Aside from the intrinsic value of feeling good about coaching and mentoring their peers,how does the sales superstar benefit from taking time out to share experience and knowledge with others on a social learning platform? Some examples of what they might gain include:

• an increased potential to close their own deals more quickly (they can actually use the benefits of a social learning platform to enhance what they’re already doing well),
• larger commissions in their pocket,
• greater visibility with senior management,
• a handy way to retain their top spot in the sales organization.

Sales teams win more when they work together as a community. When sales leaders start embracing social learning, their teams will be able to share ideas and brainstorm approaches to winning sales opportunities. This is the key to unlocking the power of a “commissions community,” where everyone is motivated to put in their best effort to win on an individual as well as a team basis. But sales superstars need to have a clear understanding of the WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) factor.

Lately, I’m on a mission to clear out things that are gathering dust and that I don’t need. Several weekends ago, I went through this process, and I was elated after unloading the back of my very full Tahoe at Goodwill. Today, a friend’s Facebook post inspired me to do even more. After  three hours, I can confidently say that I’m happy with my work, but also achy and tired. Emotionally, it feels good to have let go of things that I’ve been hanging onto for years. In some cases, the items that I finally purged were collected during prior relationships. Though there was clearly no more use for them, for reasons unknown I kept hanging on. Until today.

What are you hanging onto that no longer serves a purpose today?

It is easy to become stuck in ruts, isn’t it? You churn through your day in the same way that you did yesterday, the day before that and the months and years slip by. The world changes, but you don’t. I see this quite often with salespeople, especially now. A blind eye is being turned to the potential that using social media offers them, because heck, they’ve been successful up until now, so why bother to change anything. It reminds me of the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but breaking old models and routines is exactly what’s needed.

Unless you are seriously living under a rock, you have to have noticed how the world of business is changing. Products like Pinterest and Instagram are giving people and businesses new ways to express themselves. Tools like LinkedIn and InsideView provide salespeople with the amazing potential to reach their prospects in new and more relevant ways. So, why the resistance?

I suppose people will tend to resist what they don’t understand. That lack of understanding leads to fearing the unknown, which leads to…sitting still. And that just might explain why companies like CSO Insights and others predict that again this year some 48% of salespeople will not hit their quota.

The new reality for salespeople is that buyer behavior has changed. Your prospects don’t care about your worn out sales pitches and tactics. They demand smart salespeople who understand their business. They expect relevance and results. Stop bombarding them with emails and cold calls that merely waste time, these buyers say. In truth, most salespeople aren’t listening.

Listen, I’m not suggesting that you ditch everything you’ve ever known about selling, but I am saying that it is probably high time that you did a little spring cleaning. Time to take a serious personal inventory of attitudes that may be getting in your way, or perhaps you are relying too heavily on sales approaches that used to work, but if you are really honest with yourself, you know they are not as effective as they used to be.

Clearing clutter kick-starts new energy and opens the door for new opportunities. As Frost said, “Two roads in the woods diverged – and I, I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” Which road will you take?

On a conference call recently, I was reminded of how often people confuse social media marketing with how to use social media over on the sales side of the business. I can understand why this happens. Just yesterday, I received an email from a company who is selling social media training and their blurb says that they can help you to increase revenue. But when you look more closely, the program focuses on helping you put a social media marketing plan together. That kind of messaging has confused people. Make no mistake about it, marketing and sales are different disciplines and how you apply social media to each of those disciplines is also different! Before you assume that you’ve got social media covered because someone in your company is responsible for social media management, be sure to look carefully at what they are doing. I’ll make a big bet that the focus is on marketing and not selling.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing in this way…

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Wikipedia defines sales in this way…

“A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation.”

While sales and marketing should have the same goal of generating sales, revenue and profit, the two departments are approaching the goal in very different ways. As a salesperson, I’m the one who meets with prospects, crafts an actual solution to their business problem and negotiates and closes deals. Marketing is doing none of that. Their efforts are largely campaign driven and while their role is vitally important to the process of generating revenue, they are not actually selling anything.

Social media can be applied to the sales process on the front-end of the sales cycle. Using tools like LinkedInand InsideView, the focus is on network and referral building, prospecting for new opportunities, conducting research that leads to identifying key business initiatives (or drivers) that may be the trigger for why your prospect should by from you, better pre-sales call research and more. In other words, using social media to drive sales opportunities is not marketing to build broad awareness, it is being used specifically to get to the right person with the right message at the right time, thus shrinking the sales cycle and moving more quickly to close.

On the sales side, I’m not giving away an iPad to generate “likes” on the company Fan Page. That’s marketing. As a salesperson, I’m using social tools to:

-Create a targeted list of potential prospects to pursue

-Dig into my prospects LinkedIn and InsideView profiles to learn more about them. I’m looking for the best point of connection. Who do I know that they know? What have learned about their company or their industry that might lead to securing that first meeting?

-Participate in groups where my prospect is likely to be and then contributing to discussions to create visibility for myself and demonstrate my expertise in my field.

-Do detailed homework before the first meeting. I’m learning as much about their company as I can, which will demonstrate to my prospect that I understand their business.

As you think about how to put social media to work for your company, remember that you need to focus attention on both the sales and marketing side of the business. And always keep in mind that the goals and practical applications of social media for sales versus marketing should compliment each other, but the “how” you use the tools will be different and serve vastly different purposes.

Business partner, Kent Gregoire shared a blog post with me that was written by Greg Alexander over at Sales Benchmark Index. By now, many companies understand the concept of creating content that is compelling to move opportunities from awareness, interest and desire into action that turns into a tangible result. The blog post focused on helping a client to evaluate over 100 pieces of content to try to determine what content was moving people through the sales funnel. Interestingly enough, the content that was having the greatest ROI was in the middle of the sales funnel. At the same time, the company had very little content actually attributed to that portion of the funnel.

After the marketing folks climbed down off the proverbial ledge wondering how in the world they could rally the resources needed to crank out the content they most needed but lacked, a deeper look was taken to better understand if it was the content or the way in which the content was communicated that made the difference. Hint: it wasn’t the content!

This story got me thinking about how important it is to determine if you are taking the right sales approach, based on the changes we now see in buyer behavior.

Social media fits the sales funnel and has the greatest potential, I believe, on the “front end” of the cycle during the prospecting, opportunity qualification, pre-sales call research and get that meeting scheduled phase. Done correctly, you get in front of the right buyers faster and significantly shrink the sales cycle.

To be successful requires an innate understanding that slamming out a few LinkedIn status updates, Tweets or Facebook posts is NOT what it takes to move a sale from awareness to interest and meeting to close. With respect to succeeding with a social selling approach, here’s where a little strategic thinking comes into play.

The start of the social selling process all begins when your potential buyers are in the “I know that I have a business problem, who can help me solve it mindset”. This is the point in which they surf the web, search out options on LinkedIn and ask their colleagues what to buy and from whom. These buyers are not initially engaging sales people, but they will down the road if they like what they find.

This is why compelling presence and content is critical for today’s sales professional. If your buyer lands on your LinkedIn page and it’s devoid of anything relevant or compelling, game over. They are moving on and you probably don’t even know it.

Here is a 7-step process that I use myself, and I recommend that you and your salespeople follow suit.

Step 1: Create great content – or leverage what marketing has already done for you – and showcase it. If you are in B2B sales, your LinkedIn profile is ideal. Jazz it up with a SlideShare presentation, add a video, share white papers, press releases and case studies using box.net or host a book list. Check out the amazing array of apps available to you within LinkedIn with the FREE service. These applications do not require an upgraded account.

Step 2: Create a list of people you are targeting using “advanced search”. Next, save your search results and then week to week let LinkedIn do the heavy lifting for you. A saved search means that on a weekly basis you will receive an email listing the names of the new folks entering your network who match your search criteria. This is real-time information that gives you the ability to contemplate a strategy for engaging with them.

Step 3: Do some homework to determine what matters most to the people on your targeted list. What drivers are happening in their business?  What are the key initiatives that have been put in place to address the drivers?  Do you have a solution that could be integrated into the business environment?

Step 4: Based on your homework, evaluate the real potential for getting in front of a sales opportunity. Do some digging…does it look like they have budget? What do they have to gain or lose from taking action or not? Decide if moving ahead now will yield the greatest results. Ask yourself if the consequences your prospect faces are dire enough to warrant them taking action? If not, you are likely wasting time.

Step 5: Figure out what groups or forums your prospect likes to participate in. Join those groups and observe and contribute. A client just told me a great story that relates to this point. They are trying to reach a prospect with XYZ title in the companies that they target. A member of the marketing team recently attended an event that included a panel made up of their targeted buyers. During the session, the panelists were asked what the best way to connect with them was and they said, “Don’t cold call us and don’t bother us with email. If you want to connect with us and demonstrate your credibility, join our LinkedIn groups and connect with us on Twitter.” Need I say more? Today, smart salespeople will adapt to the ways in which their prospects want to connect.

Step 6: Assuming all goes well in Steps 4 and 5, determine who you know inside the company that can “sponsor” an introduction or find out who has the strongest external connections that can “refer” you to your targeted prospect. Did you know that when a credible sponsor inside an organization introduces you, 84% of the time that business decision maker will take the meeting? It’s 44% for referrals. As you might imagine, things like cold calling drop into the single digits in terms of securing the right meeting. These 2 suggested approaches significantly reduce sales cycle time, so it’s a smart move to begin there.

Step 7: Let’s assume that you’ve secured a meeting. Put a plan together for what you specifically want to accomplish. This is not the time to deliver a boring; one dimensional sales pitch that is all about you. And while you are at it, skip the lame questions that you should already know the answers to. If you hope to have a shot at moving a deal forward, your agenda must focus on what matters most to your buyer. Buyers want to know that you understand their business and you need to show them that you’ve taken the time to learn as much as you can (refer back to steps 3 & 4).

Social media has implications on the back-end also, but that’s more in line with customer retention and loyalty, which is typically something that marketing owns.

For salespeople, focus your attention on the front-end of the funnel and integrate social media as a strategic approach that blends strong off-line techniques too. Today’s buyer demands a different sales approach.

How much longer will you wait to adapt?

I had the pleasure of speaking to room full of female entrepreneurs on Friday about how to best leverage social media and social networking to increase their pool of sales opportunities. It was a good discussion that I kicked off with the idea that selling is marketing but marketing IS NOT selling. Sharp crowd who absolutely understand that at some point you have to stop your marketing and sell something. Selling is what brings revenue in the door.

At what price does that revenue cost you?

During the meeting, we talked about the sales funnel, and I asked audience members where they were finding themselves stuck. Was it on the front-end moving connections to close? Or, were they getting stuck somewhere else, like in the closing portion of the sale. Several told me that they were having a hard time moving sales meetings to actual closed business. I wondered why. As I’ve heard women share before, it came down to being fearful about asking for the money. In addition to concerns about the money conversation, I have certainly noticed that many women tend to price to low from the very beginning. Both circumstances are obviously a problem. No sales, no revenue, no business. It is that simple!

Do you know what you are worth?

It starts with being crystal clear about the value that you bring to clients. I know that I do great work and always give more than expected! If I am negotiating a deal and someone tells me that my asking price is high, I say, “It certainly is; I’m worth it. My references speak for themselves.” It is very important that you stay focused on the value that you deliver and not get sucked into a price war. Can someone else do it cheaper? Maybe, but it won’t be you and the work will certainly not be the same as what you can deliver.

Beware of discounting.

This is where the power of NO comes into play. If you’ve submitted a proposal and your prospect asks you to reduce the pricing, are you willing to say no to the deal? The question was asked of me during our session. My answer is yes. Even if I’ve done the best possible job selling the value of what I offer and the prospect still wants to beat me down on price, I’m more than willing to walk away. I know that if price is the sole focus, there are likely to be issues down the road.

Conversely, I may be just fine to reduce my pricing, but I never, ever give them the exact same services as originally proposed. In other words, I might say something like, “I’m happy to consider reducing the price to support your budget constraints. What portions of the original proposal are you willing to get go of?” This creates a dialog about what they are willing to give up in exchange for a price reduction. If they aren’t willing to give anything up then perhaps want to rethink whether or not you’ll offer them a discount.

As an entrepreneur, I know how easy it can be to want to default to your prospects terms to get the deal even when it will likely not end up being the best deal for you. But experience tells me that if you don’t value yourself, no one else will either!

Sometimes…it’s better to say no.