Founder and CEO at Mindset Digital
After investing millions in social platforms over the past three years, business leaders are still asking the same questions.
“How many of our sales people are on the platform…. and how many are actively using it?”
The answer is often the same. Not many.
At Mindset Digital, we argue that it’s time for a radically new approach. Getting real ROI from social selling isn’t about driving more sales teams to social platforms. It’s about making sure social platforms drive more clients to your sales teams.
We’re not talking about just posting canned content. No one ever said, “Hey Mike, I loved your post. Can I buy something from you?”
Sure, posting content is a good start, and necessary. But it’s not enough. As sales leaders have always known, what gets measured—and rewarded—gets done. The same is true for social selling.
That’s why, after training more than 150,000 professionals around the world, we changed our own approach, too. It was tough to admit, but as passionate as we are about designing engaging sales training experiences, we came to recognize that even amazing training does not a new habit make.
To spur measurable results, we spent the last year developing and testing a new high-performance coaching program that combines micro courses with game-based competition, weekly quests and fun rewards. (Hail to the leaderboard.)
It’s a formula that works.
In a six-week pilot with financial advisors at MassMutual Miami, for example, our high-performance coaches leveraged quests, tracking and rewards to help 34 advisors generate nearly 400 sales appointments through LinkedIn—a 177 percent increase.
In the first week, just 23 percent of advisors had used LinkedIn to get new sales appointments. By the sixth week, that number had jumped to 80 percent.
What do our coaches know that others don’t?
It comes down to habit development. To instill new habits, you can’t just offer your teams a few one-and-done webinars or a good help desk. Teams need great, tech-savvy coaches who check in weekly, support them when they struggle and celebrate when they win.
Because great coaches inspire great teams. Teams that get inspired, get engaged. And teams that get engaged, get results.