The Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges is the podcast for the modern marketer who wants to hear from their peers in the trenches and the occasional analyst or rock-star-influencer sharing strategies and tactics about what’s working in modern marketing. Show notes are available at http://bit.ly/MME-show
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Social audio has become very popular recently with the advent of Clubhouse. According to Edison Research 15% of social media users 18+ say they have used Clubhouse.
Podcasting is a form of social audio. And, it continues to grow as a content channel. According to Edison Research’s Share of Ear study, which began tracking audio consumption in 2014, podcasting’s share of all audio listening is now 6% of consumption. This level marks an all-time high for podcasting, up from 2% in 2014.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have launched or plan to launch social audio functionalities.
I’ve had a love affair with podcasting for nearly 10 years. In fact, I listen to many podcasts. MME is my second podcast. My first podcast ran for 49 episodes. I co-hosted it with a buddy of mine. We bantered about digital marketing topics. The big difference between my first podcast and my second podcast is that I didn’t have a strategy with my first podcast. I had fun recording them. But, there was no strategy.
We just horsed around, recorded them and published them hoping something good would come of them. In truth, some good did come from the first podcast. But, we all know that hope is not a strategy, right?
So, what is my B2B podcast strategy?
My strategy is relationship building. I set out to build relationships with marketing executives working at B2B brands.
The method is simple: I provide a platform to feature marketing executives. I interview each guest and share their experience and wisdom with my audience.
This relationship-building strategy in podcasting has a business benefit.
First, it starts with a human connection. I genuinely try to connect with each of the guests I’ve had on the podcast. I don’t mean just connect on LinkedIn. I mean, I want to make an authentic human connection with each guest.
So, what’s the benefit of this relationship building?
Life is all about relationships. People do business with people they know, like and trust and that is relationship-based. Some have become friends. And, some of my guests have become clients of Vengreso.
And, in some cases I was able to offer something of value to my guest in the relationship whether it’s an introduction to someone or an endorsement or whatever.
The purpose of the MME podcast is for me to build relationships with marketing executives at B2B brands – it’s that simple. And, if you’re thinking this strategy is over simplified, you’re right because it doesn’t need to be more complicated than building authentic relationships with no more agenda than that.
However, there is something I do behind the scenes that works really well for this relationship-building strategy. Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn what it is.
An Important Announcement
This episode is the last one of the MME podcast.
The reason is that I’ve accepted a new opportunity at a different company and the Vengreso leadership team has decided to sunset the MME podcast.
Vengreso has a sales-centric podcast called the Modern Selling Podcast, hosted by Vengreso’s founder and CEO, MMJr. He’s published more than 175 episodes at the time of this recording. It’s a wildly popular podcast and you and or your sales leader at your company should definitely check it out.
Additionally, Vengreso has a live show called the Modern Sales Mastery show, which is broadcast live every Friday at 11:30 am ET.
I tell all about my journey at Vengreso and my next steps in a blog post here.
Finally, I want to thank you, for listening to the MME podcast. I TRULY hope I’ve delivered value to you through the modern marketers I’ve interviewed on this show. It has been a privilege.
B2B Influencer Marketing for the Entire Customer Journey
Episode 299
Wednesday, May 19, 2021 • Duration 33:37
B2B influencer marketing is not the same as it is in B2C, where you have celebrities like top athletes and Hollywood actors endorse a brand and post on Instagram about it. B2B marketing leaders can leverage industry influencers in their marketing efforts with a solid plan.
That is the topic of conversation with my guest in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, Amisha Gandhi, SVP of Marketing at Tipalti.
Amisha is a groundbreaking B2B innovator with deep marketing and communications expertise across multiple industries and geos. She was recognized in PR Week’s Women to Watch 2020, Top 50 Influence Marketer by Talking Influence and Top Digital Marketer on LinkedIn. Amisha is also an accomplished speaker at multiple industry conferences including Content Marketing World, MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, and many others.
Listen to our conversation to learn how to find and work with B2B influencers.
What is a B2B Influencer?
Influencer marketing is the practice of engaging internal influencers at your company or industry who are experts, analysts, bloggers or public speakers who have active networks of influence. They can influence their audiences to help you achieve your business goals.
“It's about people,” Amisha says, “it's about community. B2B influencers aren't celebrities, but they could be celebrities in the business world. They've written books, some of them are even academics.”
Start by asking yourself:
Whose audience do you want to reach?
Why do you want to reach them?
What are you trying to convey and what is the outcome that you hope to achieve by working with influencers?
How to Find B2B Influencers
Amisha says there is definitely a process to identifying and selecting influencers. There are specific tools you can use, but you can start by using Google and search for the top influencers in your industry. Then use LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Clubhouse.
“It just depends who you're trying to reach and how you would like to relate to your audience.” Amisha says. “You have to find out where your audience is and who they're listening to and who they’re influenced by. Look at the conferences, third-party associations and other places where people are speaking, you'll start seeing some names popping up.”
Digital Selling Tips for the Modern Seller
Episode 290
Wednesday, January 27, 2021 • Duration 38:10
What drives the success of a sales team today? Knowing how to engage the digitally savvy modern buyer. And modern buyers need modern sellers.
While digital marketing is a mature ecosystem with proven processes and practices, digital selling is still evolving. Many sales organizations were reluctant to implement a digital sales transformation until COVID-19 came and forced everyone into remote selling.
In this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine, I talked with Ed Terpening, Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group, who recently released the 2020 State of Digital Selling research report. This survey sought to understand the capabilities and key success factors enabling the digital transformation of selling among B2B businesses.
It was based on a survey of 506 sales professionals across North America, Europe, and China, and it offers a comprehensive view of how B2B sales teams are leveraging digital in their sales processes.
Listen to this episode to learn about the key findings of this report and how you can apply that knowledge to your organization.
The State of Digital Selling
Ed provided some great insights on the key findings from the report. Here they are:
1. Now, more than ever, selling is a team sport.
The customer is the center of experience in any business. Marketing is the front end of customer experience. They then go through sales and then they go through service and customer success.
So it's really important to connect all of those dots between those organizations and think not just about digital marketing but also digital selling and how they work together and then customer success and service.
2. Sales teams need to make the digital mindset shift. 3. High-touch, high-value cross-functional selling outperforms automated high-volume selling. 4. Top performers focus on the customer through customer-focused metrics, cross-functional teaming, and selling by vertical industry. 5. As teams build digital excellence, boundaries are likely to blur between sales and marketing teams. 6. Digitally mature sellers are outperforming less mature teams through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Social selling training is a key part of any modern, successful sales force. The team at SAP recognizes this fact and has put together a world-class social selling training program for their sales teams across the globe. The theme of this episode, number four in our series, “Savvy Social Selling, the SAP Way” is Social Selling Training & Enablement. Bernie speaks with SAP team members, Marco Cai - Global Head of Social Enablement & Training, Marco Argaez - Global Channel Marketing Director and Sales Enabler, Charrelle Robinson-Brown - Head of Global e-Learning & Gamification for Social Selling, and Phil Lurie - VP of Sales Technology.
SAPis the market leader in enterprise application software, priding itself on helping you streamline your processes, giving you the ability to use live data to predict customer trends. SAP has embraced social selling to enable its global sales team to engage with customers more effectively. This podcast series and companion case study explains how SAP is scaling social selling across the enterprise. How The Importance Of Social Selling Is Communicated In SAP’S Training
The SAP sales training team recognizes that there are many sales professionals who don’t understand the concept of social selling. As a result, they likely don’t understand how important or how effective social selling has become. For that reason, a training emphasis is placed on the importance of social selling.
At SAP, social selling training is not talked about in a generic way, it’s tied to the specific situations the team members being trained are dealing with. .
How SAPs Social Selling Training Encourages Behavior Change How Long Does It Take For A Novice Social Seller To Become Proficient? Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine
Alignment of Sales and Marketing for Social Selling Success at SAP
The global team at SAP has proven to be successful at social selling, and the sales and marketing alignment they’ve achieved is one of the main reasons why. To highlight how SAP aligns sales and marketing company-wide, Bernie is joined on this episode by Dr. Marcell Vollmer, Chief Digital Officer of SAP Ariba - Niels Hoogkamer, Sr., Field Marketing Manager at Concur, an SAP Company - Matthew Iacoviello, Head of Sales Technology & Support for SAP - and Phil Lurie, Vice President of Sales Technology for SAP. Each of these sales leaders speaks from their unique perspective about why sales and marketing alignment is vital for social selling success and how this mindset shift has been such a significant success factor for their marketing and sales teams to be effective at social selling.
SAPis the market leader in enterprise application software, priding itself on helping you streamline your processes, giving you the ability to use live data to predict customer trends. SAP has embraced social selling to enable its global sales team to engage with customers more effectively. This podcast series and companion case study explains how SAP is scaling social selling across the enterprise. Why Sales and Marketing Alignment Is Vitally Important at SAP
Traditionally, sales and marketing have had very different roles, but the advent of social media has blurred the line between the two. Marketing is doing more of the work sales used to do, and through social selling, the sales department is doing some of the work marketing used to do. That means the marketing and sales organizations have to be very closely aligned, providing the same messages to prospects and customers and working together to move sales conversations into the pipeline seamlessly. In this podcast episode , the SAP team shares how they are successfully making that alignment happen.
SAP’s Cultural Shift to Support Social Selling and Customer Resourcing The Future of Work: The Sales Role is Evolving in Tech Companies Like SAP Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine
Even the most seasoned technology sales professionals need to develop social selling best practices - but they can take years to develop. That's what makes conversations like this one so powerful. In this episode, Bernie Borges explores the best practices of some of SAP’s most seasoned and successful sales professionals. You'll hear social selling tips from Account Executive Alex Hunter, Gaston Edreira, Business Development Specialist of SAP Hybris, Neil Howarth, also of SAP Hybris, Digital Sales Demand Manager Georgia Rita, and Phil Lurie, VP of Sales Technology.
The tips and success stories these SAP team members share demonstrate what is possible when good social selling practices are consistently applied. Be sure to listen all the way to the end to hear some of their most encouraging social selling successes.
Social Selling Best Practices Depend on Quality More Than Quantity
One of the most practical aspects of the conversations featured on this episode is that Bernie asked each of the participants to share their favorite social selling best practices. As they did, a constant theme that rose to the surface was the power of meaningful social engagement, not the amount of content shared on social media. Their stories illustrate how significant it can be to a future sales opportunity for a sales professional to pay attention to the real needs of those they're trying to reach and make themselves an asset.
This example is one of the outstanding tips these five members of the SAP team share on this episode. Their experience along with the success they have attained demonstrates that .
The More Relevant And The More Personal, The Better The Connection Consistency, Relevance, Value: The Trinity Of Social Selling Best Practices Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine
Social Selling Impact! Why Managers Should Encourage Social Selling!
The sales world is changing, and social selling is becoming a powerful tool in today's sales toolbox. This episode of Social Business Engine introduces a multi-part series of podcast episodes we have entitled “Up Close: Savvy Social Selling the SAP Way: Best Practices that Win Customers.” This series of interviews will bring you the insights from some of SAPs most successful leaders and brightest minds.
In this episode, you’ll learn about the role managers play in encouraging social selling among their teams. Featured in this episode are insights from Marc Havercroft, COO/VP of SAP Success Factors - Enrico Palumbo, HR Director and Member of the Management Board of SAP Switzerland - Shailendra Kumar, Vice President, Chief Evangelist - and Phil Lurie, VP Sales Technology, SAP.
Be sure to download the case study that accompanies the podcast series - Social Business Journal Volume 11. It weaves together the narrative of social selling success factors at SAP. It’s available for download, ungated in the resources below.
SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, priding itself on helping you streamline your processes, giving you the ability to use live data to predict customer trends. SAP has embraced social selling to enable its global sales team to engage with customers more effectively. This podcast series and companion case study explains how SAP is scaling social selling across the enterprise. Selling Behaviors Must Change Because Customers Don’t Buy Like They Used To
The digital age has created many benefits for the consumer, like providing the ability to research and even try out products before they ever talk to a salesperson. That means the traditional approach to sales doesn't work in quite the way it used to. Social selling is the answer to these changes because it enables salespeople to become a trusted resource to potential buyers long before the buyer is willing to make a personal connection with them.
Social Selling Requires A Cultural Shift: Here’s How SAP is Making That Shift Even Though Digital Selling is a New, Level Playing Field, Don’t Forget Purpose Matters Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine
How Personal Branding Complements the Employer Brand Strategy at Merck & Co., Inc.
Every brand strategy is about gaining attention for the company, but it has to be done in a way that does more than simply talk about what the company is doing. It’s got to engage with real people over issues they truly care about. In other words, it needs to have a relational element to it. That’s exactly what Merck is doing with their highly effective approach.
On this episode, Bernie talks with John Graham, Social & Digital Strategy Lead: Global Talent Acquisition at Merck. You’ll hear how Merck, the global pharmaceutical giant is empowering employees to build their personal brands as part of Merck’s strategy to attract talent. The employees provide the "real life" component of what Merck is sharing on social which naturally attracts like-minded, competent candidates to the open positions available. Learn more on this episode.
A Whole-Person Approach Dictates the Brand Strategy of Pharma Giant, Merck
It's very common for large companies to hone in on the qualifications and experience of job candidates when trying to fill open positions. But John Graham says even though that is a very important part of the equation, it is still only one part. To neglect the rest of the things that make a person a great fit for the company culture as well as the specific job description is missing things that are vital to company culture and health.
In this conversation, John describes how the brand strategy Merck is using centers around the human elements of what it means to be an enthusiastic and integral part of a team. They not only want the talent they are pursuing to see them as a leader in the pharmaceutical industry, they also want them to feel that Merck is a great place to belong. You will hear John's description of how a Pharma giant is applying its brand strategy through an employee branding approach, on this episode of Social Business Engine.
The Search for Talent Has Shifted to Social. Does Your Brand Strategy Reflect It? The New ROI: Relationships On Investment Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine
Mobilizing Employees at Frontier Communications as Brand Advocates in the Face of Business Challenges
Every business, large or small could use brand advocates - those customers who trumpet the businesses praise and express their delightful experiences with the company to others. But it’s also vital that a company’s leadership learn to nurture that same attitude among its employees. The benefits of building that kind of culture among a working team can be incredible.
On this episode of Social Business Engine Bernie chats with Andy Malinoski, Manager of Corporation Communications and Government Relations at Frontier Communications. He shares how Frontier Communications, a U.S. provider of residential and commercial broadband, video voice, wireless internet data access and bundled service offerings, is empowering employees to be brand ambassadors in the face of 4 unique types of business challenges.
Employees can be the best advocates your brand has if you help them do it
The value of an ecstatic customer can’t be underestimated. Those are the people who make the business because they happily tell their family and friends about the great experience and feeling they have from dealing with the company. Take that thought and apply it to the interaction customers have with front-line employees of the company and you can easily see why those team members need to be brand advocates par excellence.
What are you doing to help your customer facing employees deal with customer issues and complaints effectively and in a way that delights your customers in spite of the problem? On this episode, Andy Malinoski describes how the Frontier Communications team is equipped with the information needed to answer customer questions, head off problems before they escalate, and disseminate answers to common questions via social media - all for the sake of creating the happy, loyal customers every business wants and needs. You can learn some valuable approaches to fostering an advocate mindset in your team members by hearing what he has to share.
Operational hiccups are a great opportunity for employee brand advocates to calm the waters Do you struggle finding and recruiting top talent? Enlisting employees can be a powerful approach Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine
Harnessing Propensity to Buy Data to Create Sales Ready Conversations
The typical MQL (marketing qualified lead) approach to measuring KPIs is fading out. What’s the new approach that’s replacing it? An account-based approach that considered the data that shows people’s propensity to buy.
On this episode, Bernie chats with Diana Eadington Reed, Director of the North America Small & Medium Business (SMB) marketing team for Oracle Cloud. Her team helps high-growth small and medium-sized companies leverage their infrastructure to innovate faster, get to market first, meet customer expectations, and keep costs in line with revenue.
Diana has a front-row seat to the changes that propensity to buy data is enabling in the marketing world. Her lessons-learned, which she shares on this episode, are valuable for any marketing professional to learn from for themselves.
Not all traffic sources are created equal. Therefore not all marketing-qualified leads are created equal
Every business is eager for its marketing department to do its job well - by supplying what we call “marketing qualified leads” (MQL). Diana says that several years ago the sales world would typically look at the volume of MQLs that marketing provided to the sales department as a primary metric of how the marketing department was doing. But that’s all changed.
Diana says her team has come to realize that not all leads are created equal and therefore not all marketing qualified leads are created equal. Some leads are likely coming to you via your website. Those are people who are expressing a greater interest in your solutions and are therefore of greater value as prospects for the sales team. But you may also receive leads through a download of one of your whitepapers from a 3rd party website (for example). Those are qualified leads, to be sure, but are not as ready to buy as the previous example.
Is your marketing team differentiating between core leads and non-core leads? If not, you could be missing some of the most valuable leads How the Oracle team uses intent to buy data to target and retarget their ideal customers Salespeople are not interested in MQLs. They want to establish an account. Marketing can now work hand in hand with sales by harnessing propensity to buy data Featured on This Episode Outline of This Episode Resources & People Mentioned Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine This episode was sponsored by
Then you have to look deeper at the content these people are sharing and the level of engagement their content has.
Once you have a list of potential influencers, you should assess which ones can help you achieve your goals in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Amisha says you should look at influencer marketing as a holistic practice that you can apply across the entire customer journey. For example, can you get some good top funnel content? Can you create some demand? Can you create a community of advocates?
“Once you find folks that are really influencing your audience, reach out to a couple of influencers, start talking to them, see if they’d like to work with you. Say, ‘we're thinking about doing this upcoming campaign, what do you think?’ And have a conversation, because they may tell you, ‘I don't think that's going to work for my audience.’ That will help you frame up your campaign and make it even better than what it is.”
Start with top of the funnel activities, like a podcast, to create awareness with their audience. Then you can go into demand generation content like co-authored ebooks or a webinar series where people are willing to give you their information.
“There are some influencers who are very speaker heavy and they don't do long form content. They are thought leaders and they do more podcasts. That's why you have a group of influencers. You're going to have some people that are going to do top funnel and events and some people who are great speakers and great on video. There are some people who are great only in voice and folks that do longer form content.”
Over time some influencers can become advocates. This happens when they keep talking about your brand even when not taking part in your marketing campaign, because they consider your content to be of value to their audience.
Listen to episode 299 for specific ideas of what you can do when working with an influencer and some of the pillars and best practices for co-creating content and sponsored content.
Finally, Amisha reminds us that customers can be our best influencers, so we should take care of them.
“All of the teams that touch the customer must have a consistent view,” Ed says. They have to understand what white papers the customers are reading from marketing, what service problems they're having, what kind of value propositions work in the sales process.”
Their research found that those selling teams that had a well aligned Marketing, Sales and Service teams always did better than others that didn't.
According to the report, a sales team with a strong digital culture will accomplish its objectives and perform better, as sellers trust the value of data and the tech tools they use.
“The technology industry really outperformed other industries when it came to digital selling,” Ed says, “because they have a digital culture, they're in this business and they're actually much more effective in this world and achieve higher results. Making that culture mindset shift is so important.”
The seller's mindset needs to really shift and think about engaging digitally through value.
Automation in sales has been rapidly growing in the past few years, but Altimeter Group’s research found that it underperforms when compared to other high-touch approaches, such as Account-Based Marketing and Account-Based Selling, which are more customer-centric.
Cross-functional teams that partner on key accounts are more effective in achieving revenue and customer success goals than sellers who rely on automation.
“This reinforces the fact that it's not just digital, it’s people teaming together and getting the highest results,” Ed says.
Listen to the episode to learn about the three models of selling they tested and which one performs better.
The fourth key finding was that top sales organizations prioritized customer satisfaction above metrics such as sales quota achievement, recognized and addressed the diversity of B2B buying committees and customized sales approaches by industry vertical.
“Successful companies are focused on the customer,” Ed says. “Digital sellers that were not as mature were focused on things like revenue growth, rather than leveraging existing customers and really optimizing the value from those customers. Instead, they tended to seek out new customers.”
Part of having the right focus is knowing that the modern B2B buyer expects sellers to understand their industry to the point that they become a trusted partner in their own success.
Digital marketing automation is a mature practice, while sales automation is evolving. Ed provided the analogy of left brain versus right brain to talk about this difference between digital marketing and digital selling.
“Marketing is sort of the left brain, very analytical, very focused on data to make decisions,” Ed says. “Versus the sales team that might be more about the gut feeling, more relationship-based. They're complimentary, of course, but as sales teams become more digitally mature, they rely more on data analytics technology and AI to guide their next moves.”
Altimeter found there was a very strong correlation between mature digital sellers and less mature sellers regarding their success during the pandemic.
Digitally mature teams have the enablement tools, the digital culture, the data, and the leadership alignment to succeed in a remote selling environment.
The pandemic has laid bare the challenges businesses face as they transition, such as finding cross-functional alignment to achieve seamless customer experience, made possible through leadership alignment.
Ed’s advice to marketing leaders is to get ready to help your sales teams succeed in embracing digital. Marketers should see themselves as partners of the sales team.
Don’t miss my conversation with Ed and don’t forget to download The 2020 State of Digital Selling.
This focus on relevance makes the importance and specific implementation of social selling come alive
There’s also an emphasis on the facts about the effectiveness of social selling. Trainees are shown how both markets and customers have changed through an ingenious exercise - they are encouraged to look at the way they typically buy, as consumers themselves. When they recognize how technologies like social media influence their own buyer’s journey, they are better able to see how their own sales practices need to change in order to effectively reach and help their customers.
There are many ways that SAPs sales trainers empower and encourage social selling behaviors within the SAP sales teams. First, trainers help trainees understand the goals of social selling. Next, it’s vital that they are taught how to update their own social profiles professionally. Trainees are equipped to develop a professional personal brand, are provided social advocacy tools and are shown how to use search engines to find customers and build their personal networks.
But SAPs social selling training isn’t only focused on salespeople. Managers are trained to understand the proper role of social selling in the overall sales process. They coach their teams to use social selling as an important tool, but not to neglect the traditional social skills and sales approaches that establish and nurture good customer relationships.
Naturally, even among SAPs sales team, the answer to this question depends on the person, their role, and their background in sales. But generally speaking, it takes 3 to 6 months for a person who is entirely new to social selling to learn the right approach and best practices that enable social selling success.
A key ingredient to successful training is that the trainers recognize the different learning approaches that are typical of the generations within the sales force. For example, Millennials often understand social selling and learn it faster, while those from previous generations are more reticent at first, but once they are convinced of the impact social selling can have on their pipeline, they adapt to social selling very well.
It’s also interesting to point out that salespeople who self-initiate social selling training experience a “deeper” learning of the concepts than some who are required to take the training. Self-initiators already recognize the benefits that social selling can provide to their own sales success and are motivated to learn and apply it to their sales approach.
Hear the details of how SAPs sales trainers equip their teams toward success at social selling, on this episode.
[0:50] How do you convince your sales team of the importance of social selling?
[6:24] What steps do you take to encourage behavior change toward social selling?
[9:16] How do you maintain momentum among those trained for social selling?
[13:28] Taking the beginning social seller to proficiency
[20:16] Dealing with the resistance to the idea of social selling
[21:42] How SAP has become one of the top social selling companies in the world
Be sure to download the case study that accompanies the podcast series - Social Business Journal Volume 11. It weaves together the narrative of social selling success factors at SAP. It’s available for download, ungated here.
is the market leader in enterprise application software, priding itself on helping you streamline your processes, giving you the ability to use live data to predict customer trends. SAP has embraced social selling to enable its global sales team to engage with customers more effectively. This podcast series and companion case study explains how SAP is scaling social selling across the enterprise.
These sales leaders have also discovered that the technology pieces involved in the marketing and sales process need to be synced so that the alignment of marketing and sales is smooth. This enables the sales team to focus on sales conversations and customer needs. Attention to these details has made sales and marketing alignment an area of strength for SAP. Hear more of how SAP works to keep the two aligned, on this episode of Social Business Engine.
There is a very definite mindset shift required to move from a traditional sales approach to the adoption of social selling. Part of that shift is realizing it’s not an either/or decision, it’s a both/and commitment. The SAP team has worked overtime to educate and enable their sales and marketing teams to make the transition successfully.
Some of the things that have been done to help their team make this mindset shift include:
Demonstrating how social is simply a new way of interacting with potential customers, as the phone and email have been
Showcasing the sales successes coming from social selling activities
Proving to salespeople that their sales results will improve by utilizing social selling practices
In this episode, the SAP team shares many additional steps they’ve taken to encourage this mindset shift - including social platform and best-practices training, social media interaction skills, and cross-pollination of sales approaches through SAP’s “Sales Academy.”
Though many of us can remember life before smartphones, they are an example of how our culture has shifted. Digital is here to stay. Changes of this nature impact the way we do things, including how companies go about evaluating and selecting enterprise software. Today, many aspects of the buyer’s journey are completely different than in years past. Examples are the ways people comparison-shop, search for product, and make final lists of suppliers before they even consider talking with a sales person. It’s no wonder the role of B2B sales must evolve to engage the modern buyer effectively.
SAP has made the switch, utilizing the platforms and technologies that have come to the forefront of the sales process, yet maintaining the personal touch that always has to be present in any successful sales interaction. SAP is an excellent example of a company that’s effectively aligning marketing and sales for social selling success. You can hear how they are doing it, on this episode.
[0:48] How does SAP see sales and marketing alignment as being so important?
[9:09] What other departments at SAP should be aligned with social selling.
[12:48] How the SAP team makes the cultural shift that increases social selling and resources customers
[25:46] The future of work: How the role of sales is evolving in tech companies like SAP
Be sure to download the case study that accompanies the podcast series - Social Business Journal Volume 11. It weaves together the narrative of social selling success factors at SAP. It’s available for download, ungated here.
is the market leader in enterprise application software, priding itself on helping you streamline your processes, giving you the ability to use live data to predict customer trends. SAP has embraced social selling to enable its global sales team to engage with customers more effectively. This podcast series and companion case study explains how SAP is scaling social selling across the enterprise.
the SAP approach to social selling is a model any B2B brand can follow
When it comes to applying the very best practices in social selling, it begins with a mindset that understands the goal is not, first of all, to secure a sales conversation with a buyer. The first level goal is much more personal than that. The SAP sales team understands that there are real people behind each transaction, individuals who have particular interests, desires, and needs.
That perspective is key to being able to truly add value to the person through social by discovering those needs and making an effort to be helpful. It's that kind of genuine interest that sets the stage for the SAP salesperson to propose business solutions to the prospect down the road. The more relevant and the more personal the salesperson can be in attempts to connect with the prospects they want to meet, the more attention they can get. Learn more insights like this from these outstanding sales professionals from the SAP team, on this podcast episode.
Much of what makes the SAP global sales team successful when it comes to social selling is their implementation of these three principles: consistency, relevance, and value. Let's look at each of those in turn.
Consistently sharing great content in the social feeds of a prospect gives that person time to become familiar with the salesperson and the expertise they possess. When that content is relevant to the prospect, it demonstrates that the salesperson has taken the time to learn about them and to take an interest in the things they are concerned about. That sets the salesperson up to add valuein ways that matter to the prospect.
This triune way of approaching social selling has proven to be a hallmark of the SAP team’s success. You can hear these three principles expressed over and over by the five participants in this conversation, in a variety of ways. Take the time to listen and learn. The insights shared on this episode have many anecdotes to back them up - you can learn the principles and see the proof all in one episode.
Sales organizations must shift their mindset to implement social selling as a consistent practice. This episode draws out the best practices of leaders from SAP regarding how they train their teams in social selling, how they keep the momentum going after the training, and how they empower and equip them to engage in ways that are genuinely beneficial to potential customers.
This episode highlights four different leaders from the SAP team and their responses to some questions relating to social selling. When asked how they are helping their teams make the shift from analog thinking to digital thinking, these were the points they shared:
Mark Havercroft says he encourages his team to look at the world around them from the perspective of the individuals they want to serve as customers. They need to observe how people engage with the digital world around them and even use their personal consumer journey in the digital world to reflect on what they can do to become a resource to others. The goal is for the salesperson to become part of a network of trusted advisors in advance of the transaction, via social media.
Enrico Palumbo explains that he begins the cultural shift the first day of training with new team members. He helps them understand how the things they post and recommend on social media are a reflection of the company. He desires to help them fine-tune their messaging and sharing practices to improve their personal brand and promote the company in a positive light.
Shailendra Kumar encourages his team members to spend more time on social media, getting used to the platforms and practices so that they can directly communicate with buyers. He says that little things like paying attention to birthdays help his salespeople connect with clients in an informal way that creates a mindset shift in the client and the team member.
Phil Lurie views the final goal of social selling to be the same that it has always been in sales - to become a trusted advisor to future customers. But social offers a distinct advantage: it enables his team to use social media to listen to the things potential customers are concerned about so that they can then position their personal brand as an expert who can answer their concerns. They do that through sharing articles and resources relating to those areas of concern. He says that when team members can learn how to combine effective social listening with helpful resources and messaging, they have found a winning combination.
One of the most important concepts shared on this episode centers around the reality that digital selling is a new and level playing field for everyone. So everyone has the opportunity to shape their position and message on social media to meet the needs of their particular market. But the end goal is not just to sell products; it's to help the buyer make a decision that achieves the outcome they're looking for. Keeping that in mind enables the salesperson to become the expert resource customers are looking for.
Make sure to set aside some time to listen to this episode. It is filled with great insights from some of the best leaders in modern sales.
SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, priding itself on helping you streamline your processes, giving you the ability to use live data to predict customer trends. SAP has embraced social selling to enable its global sales team to more effectively engage with customers. This podcast series and companion case study explains how SAP is scaling social selling across the enterprise.
John has found that his role of locating and recruiting global talent for Merck has required a different sort of approach than corporations typically take. He's come to the realization that the search for talent has shifted to social media. Under his leadership, Merck is making the pivot that enables them to make the most of that trend.
In this conversation, you’ll hear details of the amazing and unusual content strategy Merck has implemented. It uses the stories of their own employees as content pieces that engage with and attract outstanding, talented people to the company. Rather than a cold, "about us page" these stories expose candidates to the culture, values, and purpose of the company in powerful ways. As John is fond of saying, they’re not fighting the war for talent, they’re fighting the war for attention - and Merck’s new brand strategy is securing both. It's a very insightful approach to social media that few corporations the size of Merck understand, much less know how to implement. John's insights will be valuable to your company, so please take the time to listen.
ROI, as it has traditionally been understood, is about the amount of return that comes from the time, energy, and money invested in a particular approach. John says the same approach holds true in the content marketing strategy Merck is implementing, but it's a different ROI. What he is measuring doesn't have to do with dollars and cents, it has to do with relationships. For John, ROI = relationships on investment.
In this episode, you will hear how the Merck team spent over a year planning out and testing their employer brand strategy to highlight open positions, why they decided to use employee stories, and how the team has learned to track engagement from the first social media post all the way to the final interview and hire. As companies like Merck lead the way with this kind of strategy, the talent acquisition landscape is changing for the better. You won’t want to miss this episode.
Many times when things go wrong with a company’s services or systems, the biggest problem both customers and the business in question have is communication. Here’s the reality: Customers are usually OK with temporary glitches or outages in service because they know technology is not foolproof. But they need to know what’s going on in order to maintain that calm demeanor.
In this conversation, Bernie and his guest, andy Malinoski of Frontier communications discuss some of the ways the leadership at Frontier has worked to engage employees as part of the response team to system outages or issues. The company has dedicated employees who provide social media content for everyone to use to inform their customers, clear the air, and help everyone rest easy. Think about what the Frontier team does in light of your industry. What can your company do to engage employees as brand advocates? As you listen to the ways Frontier has done it you’ll probably come up with ideas of your own.
When it comes to building an all-star team of employees, from the C-suite all the way to the entry-level position, it’s powerful to remember that high quality people usually run with high quality people. That means equipping your employees to be recruiters on your behalf can enable you to find the people you’re looking for, faster.
This conversation with Andy Malinoski highlights the approach the Frontier Communications team takes to recruiting, particularly as it relates to making existing team members advocates for the company as they relate to those in their networks. Andy explains how all-star teams can be built by making connections through existing employees, so be sure you take the time to listen, learn, and apply what the Frontier team has modeled so well.
In this conversation Diana explains how her team is transitioning from the typical MQL model to a more account-based model based on people’s propensity to buy. It’s a fascinating pivot and a very helpful conversation. Be sure you listen.
The new approach Diana and the marketing team at Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure Solutions are taking is learning that there’s a big difference between what they call a “core lead” and a “non-core lead.” She says their focus now is to try to increase the volume of core leads because they’ve been proven to be bigger contributors to their business success. It’s not that they abandon the non-core leads - they still need to keep the sales funnel full - but they have discovered that there are only a limited number of prospects in their market at any given time who truly ready for a sales conversation.
Diana says it's helpful to think of the approach they are taking along the lines of the 80/20 rule. In a best-case scenario, they believe they can drive 20% of their leads through “core” activity and 80% of their leads through the more broad-scale sources. This is just one example of the insights marketing receives by looking at the propensity to buy data now available to marketers. Diana’s experience in this new approach is valuable for anyone in marketing in sales, so do what you can to make time for this episode.
The advances in data-based technology over the past few years has opened all kinds of doors for marketers that simply didn’t exist even 5 years ago. Marketing professionals can now access intent-based data - also known as predictive data - that enables them to identify certain keyword-based behaviors of people online. Through that data, they can look at the digital behavior of their target market and match themselves with the behaviors that parallel the solutions they are offering.
It goes even further, companies can now use their customer profile, or even company lists that they want to get to know and engage with to identify whether there are people within those lists who are showing digital activity, based on their keyword search behavior, that matches their solution. From that, the marketing department can serve more relevant campaigns to them or do digital retargeting to try to reach those individuals.
Fascinating. And compelling. Take the time to learn how Diana’s team is making it happen - and about the results they are getting.
Diana Eadington Reed says that if you talk to any salesperson, they are not interested in selling a product to an MQL (marketing qualified lead). They're interested to own an account. So, if they want to win 10 new accounts in the coming half or the fiscal year, they're going to be looking at it from an account perspective, not at the MQL perspective. That means if marketing pivots to an account-based strategy (as she’s suggesting through the use of propensity to buy data), it requires marketing to align itself with sales in order to understand who's on that target account list for the year or the upcoming quarter - and who are the most important accounts that sales wants to open the door to. That's how marketing can work hand-in-hand with sales to build engagement and open that door for a conversation with the sales organization.
As you can see, simply by the nature of this propensity to buy model, marketing is better aligned with sales, which drives a more effective and streamlined process. Near the end of this conversation, Diana gives a real-life example of a vendor who helped the Oracle team put together a successful campaign that proves the power of these intent to buy strategies. Listen to what Diana has to share. It is the future of marketing and sales - and the alignment that has to happen to be truly successful.
[2:53] Diana’s role at Oracle: to drive demand for Oracle’s cloud-based solutions
[4:19] The success Diana has been experiencing with traditional inbound marketing
[9:21] How the Oracle marketing team came to consider “propensity to buy” data
[14:37] Adapting this new propensity to buy data model to a high volume environment
[17:10] The technologies that enable this intent to buy approach
[19:43] How these new technologies help align sales and marketing on a human level
[22:04] A campaign example that has been a huge success
[24:45] Diana’s thoughts about the future of this new account-based strategy
[34:25] Bernie’s biggest takeaway from this episode: propensity to buy data is a powerful way to discover leads that are truly ready for a sales conversation - and the biggest winner is the customer
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