Digital Transformation of Global B2B Sales

Campaign Objective

Build the social selling program for the global sales teams and demonstrate ROI.

Challenge: The competitive nature of B2B sales engagements has been causing an ever increasing decline in the efficacy of traditional sales channels. At the heart of this declining trend is the fact that information is not easily accessible. As a result, prospective clients are reaching out to sales much later in the decision cycle and are far better informed than before. This paradigm needed to be changed.

Company: Learning Tree International is a global publicly traded company that has been providing IT training and thought leadership for over 40 years.

Synopsis

Learning Tree has a global sales presence on three continents but was severely lacking in its ability to compete beyond its currently serviced accounts. In addition, the social selling trend was increasingly being leveraged by our competitors. It was clear that a solution was needed urgently.

To remedy this shortcoming in our sales function, I built and managed the social selling program using LinkedIn Sales Navigator as the primary platform. Twitter and Facebook were used as secondary platforms. The social selling program I had designed was piloted on 12 people in the US operating unit, and within 6 months it had expanded to four additional global operating units with over 90 sales persons actively participating.

To implement this program, I put together a five part boot camp in social selling for our sales teams — the boot camp aimed to increase their Social Selling Index (SSI) score, develop functional awareness of the social media space and an integration of social selling into the sales processes.

I developed a second phase of the program at the 6 month mark which incorporated more advance tactics and strategies for account based marketing, understanding target markets, and countering competitor programs.

Apart from the training, setup and the implementation, I managed the program directly and was the point of contact for all global sales units regarding question, campaigns, content support and road map updates to the platforms.

The end result was a global adoption of social selling methodologies, an increase in the company's SSI score from 32/100 to 68/100 within six months which was higher than any of our competitors and opening at least five marques accounts within the test period just in the US operating unit.

Specific channels used:

  • Social media channels
  • Social media curation sites
  • Competitive intelligence tools
  • LinkedIn InMails

Key Deliverables:

Social Selling Guide

This was the main guide I developed for the social selling initiative to be used by the global sales organization.

I built this guide from the ground up and was the basis for the boot camp program that I managed. I also made variations of this guide for the product management teams, executive team and subject matter experts.

This was extremely well received and used extensively by the organization in transforming us into a social selling competent company.

Social Selling Playbook and Training - Complete 8.16.16.pdf

Social Selling Basics - Video

As part of the social selling program, I developed over a dozen videos to help the organization transform and adapt social selling as a standard form of sales engagement.

I made this video to showcase the basics of social selling practical application.

It was used by all operating units and extremely well received.

Content Curation Video

As part of the social selling initiative, I needed our sales function to understand and practice curating content as a normal part of their day.

To meet that goal, I developed this video to assist sales professionals and the organization as a whole in understanding what is content curation and why it is so valuable.

I built this video from scratch and was used extensively by all operating units.