Download WHITE PAPER Social Selling

Transforming Revenue Through
Data-Driven Social Selling
Introduction
Whether you’re selling to individuals or businesses, the buying process has changed for
your customers. Customers are more tech savvy, well informed and well connected than
they’ve ever been before. They aren’t easily swayed by a cold call and a sales pitch as they
prefer to do their own due diligence. With so much information at their fingertips, customers
are engaging with the seller or provider far later in the purchase process, only to discuss the
last few details before making a decision.
In order to stay relevant in this rapidly changing environment, the smartest sales
representatives are getting social. It’s more important than ever to reach buyers early to
engage prospects in the right way, with the right content, at the right time. Salespeople
must think more like marketers. They need to approach selling from a buyer’s perspective.
This means understanding and aligning your sales strategy to the issues, questions and
processes buyers have when making a decision.
NTT DATA welcomed Dell Services
into the family in 2016. Together,
we offer one of the industry’s most
comprehensive services portfolios
designed to modernize business and
technology to deliver the outcomes
that matter most to our clients.
Classic Sales Models
Next-Gen Sales Models
Cold
calls
Social
networks
Data
intelligence
strategy
Classic
sales models
Sales
demos
Next-generation
sales models
Qualify
leads
Education
Engagement
Figure 1: Data intelligence is changing the way we make sales as it enables new digital sales models and opportunities like social media engagement.
And this is where social selling comes
to the rescue. At NTT DATA Digital
Business Services, we offer social selling
solutions that utilize the latest digital
technologies and methods to conduct
core activities sales professionals have
always performed: research, networking,
prospecting and building relationships
with customers.
Priorities and challenges for sales and
marketing organizations due to changes
in customer buying behavior:
Strategic priorities
• Sales productivity
• Customer acquisition
• Customer retention
Challenges
• Increased complexity
• More knowledgeable customers
• Intense competition
• Reduce costs, especially travel
At Digital Business Services, we believe
that social selling is an uprising for sales.
Gone is the traditional sales model
based on cold calls, qualifying leads
and demos. The new sales model is all
about taking a business-first approach.
By educating prospects and connecting
with them through social media, sales
reps yield a more successful, contextual
engagement with buyers. To do this, they
need content to build credibility, provide
innovative insights and capture buyers’
attention and interest.
Sales should partner with marketing
during the transition from traditional to
the next-generation social selling model
as marketers should be able to provide
more insight into what works and what
doesn’t. They should work together
to create value for and build credible
relationship with buyers, which will help
them grow revenue in the long term.
Our approach to social selling
As the digital space and customer
expectations continue to evolve, the most
obvious change to the customer buying
process is the ever-growing dependence
on researching, exploring, learning,
buying and providing feedback of
products online. This means social selling
is now more relevant than ever.
2
Customers have become digitally
empowered, extremely informed
decision makers. Digital channels
help them discover deals, explore
products and services, and share
feedback — giving customers significant
market-making power.
The buying process
has changed. How
should marketing and
sales organizations
evolve and adapt in
order to stay relevant,
create value for
their customers and
improve revenues?
Social selling can optimize revenue,
return and results of the sales process
by utilizing social media for listening,
engagement and collaboration. The
next generation of marketing is all about
one-to-one or personalized marketing
and social selling, through a data-driven
social selling experience. This enables
sales and marketing teams to engage
one on one with prospects. It’s an
evolved form of content marketing.
The pillars of social selling
at Digital Business Services
Discover and relate
Sales and marketing organizations
discover potential leads by listening
to and monitoring digital channels
and social networks. Using our social
media command center, we map
out relationships within prospective
companies to determine who the
decision makers are, what they are
looking for, where they are spending time
and common topics of interest.
Like consumers, today’s businesses
openly express their objectives and
needs through digital and social media.
This allows us to discover shared
interests or relationships that can turn
cold calls into warm introductions. By
discovering more about a prospect
and learning how to relate those
discoveries on a one-to-one basis,
we can help sellers build a strong
relationship with prospective companies
through contextual interactions.
Engage and influence
Digital is a comprehensive process,
so we recommend a business-first
approach to engage with and influence
potential customers. Social media allows
sales representatives to connect and
contextually engage with influencers,
potential buyers and decision makers.
They can keep tabs on customers’
social profiles and get informed of
trigger events without bothering them
with follow-up calls that add little value
to either side. When an opportunity
for engagement arises, the seller can
reach out to the customer through
social media or another digital channel.
Sales representatives can engage with
potential buyers at every stage of the
customer lifecycle, help them make
informed decision and influence them
with contextual information or offerings.
3
Word of mouth
Engagement
Observation
InfluencerPoV
Compare
Discovery
Pay
Evaluation
Transact
Preference
Brand impact
Consideration
Purchase
Reflection
Experience
Awareness
Discover and
relate
Engage and
influence
Collaborate
Collabo ate
and transact
Validation
Emotions
Services
Exploration
Advocacy
Passion
Action
Loyalty
Re-engagement
Repeat need
New considerations
Allegiance
Figure 2: Three-step approach for social selling
Collaborate and transact
Digital and social platforms strengthen
the entire network of relationships
involved in sales and marketing, making
the selling process as collaborative
as the modern buying process. Sales
representatives can collaborate to
discover prospects, build referrals and
identify cross-selling opportunities.
By providing value in relationships,
we establish a connection, create trust
and foster loyalty. Sales reps can be a
credible source of information for buyers
in their buying process.
A peek inside our social
selling process
At NTT DATA, we strongly believe that
social selling starts with social data.
Through our robust 5-R Methodology,
we help companies understand
customers, gather insights by
analyzing empirical data, and define
an engagement plan with buyers on
social channels. Using automated
data consolidation, a 360-degree view
of customers, and engagement and
marketing strategies, we extend social
selling solutions into a cross-channel
marketing powerhouse.
Data-driven social selling has also
transformed sales and marketing
outcomes. Through social selling, sales
and marketing representatives can:
• Expand sales and marketing efforts
across customer touch points
• Enable personalized marketing
• Influence relationships at scale
• Automate outbound sales programs
Social selling maturity model
The benefits of social selling are
significant. As our social selling maturity
model shows in Figure 3, selling teams
who fully embrace, integrate and optimize
their social selling activity can expect to
see top-line improvement of 15–20%.
Business and sales leaders should
approach social selling as an
organizational journey. It is larger
than any one tool, project or initiative.
But social selling also requires sales
professionals to change their behavior,
which may be a challenge.
Stage 5
Optimization
Stage 4
Integration
Digital
Stage 3
Training
Digital
Stage 2
Policy
Stage 1
Random acts of
social
Digital
1–2%
Sales lift
Random acts of social are
characterized by a complete
lack of coordination. At this
stage, reps are on their
own when it comes to
social selling.
Digital
Increase to
Digital
7–8%
1–2%
(No change to lift)
At this stage, companies
make important structural
changes that clear the way
for future social selling.
They write and distribute a
corporate social media policy,
and establish processes for
monitoring employee use of
social media.
At this stage, these initiatives take
the form of training. Whether
delivered via e-learning or
classroom, outsourced or internally
staffed, these trainings educate
sales teams on the basics of
social selling.
Increase to
10–15%
At this point, companies
advance beyond training
as a one-off initiative and
weave social into every
aspect of their selling
process.
Figure 3: The social selling maturity model
Measuring success
Social selling is not hard to measure.
Based on sales and marketing objectives,
organizations can build their own
measurements framework. Breaking
down sales and marketing signals
into their logical areas makes sense
— organizations can then measure
engagements and effectively determine
impact on the overall sales
pipeline (marketing- and sales-qualified
leads) and revenue.
4
According to LinkedIn, businesses with
successful social selling strategies:
• Have 45% more sales opportunities
• Are 51% more likely to hit
sales quotas
• Outsell 78% of peers who
don’t use social media
At NTT DATA, we’ve found that
businesses can see up to a two- to threetime increase in marketing and sales
qualified leads and up to a three- to fourtime increase in outbound yield over cold
calling with social selling techniques.
Increase to
15–20%
In this stage of social selling
maturity, sales organizations
analyze empirical data on past
success to guide future actions
on social. These organizations
move beyond generic
best practices to close the loop.
Conclusion
About NTT DATA Digital
Business Services
This shift in buying behavior is driven by anywhere, anytime access to resources and
online stores in the new digital era. Organizations need to adapt and use social selling
to help buyers make informed decisions — or risk losing their sale completely.
Digital Business Services enables
digital transformation for clients by
taking a business-first approach. We
use a robust consulting methodology
to create digital strategy roadmaps
for organizations, enabling new
revenue models, exceptional
customer engagement and superior
operational excellence. Our services
use digital technologies, such as
analytics, mobile, social media,
cloud and the Internet of Things,
to deliver end-to-end client solutions.
To tap into the changing buyer reality, sales and marketing teams should utilize social
data insights to support customers throughout the entire buying lifecycle. Marketers
also need to understand what pieces of content are working best in which situations
and with what segment of buyers. This will improve a buyer’s journey by giving them
the timely content, increase the number of sales- and marketing-qualified leads, and
effectively bridge the gap between digital buyers and sales representatives using
data insights.
With a data-driven social selling strategy aligned to the customer buying cycle,
organizations will see noticeable brand and sales pipeline impact. Stop struggling with
revenue figures and sales performance today and learn how to transform the selling and
buying process with social selling solutions from NTT DATA.
Author Biography
Mukesh Kumar
Digital Marketing Consultant
NTT DATA Services
Over the last 12 years, Mukesh has developed an impressive portfolio of experience
in digital marketing. Recently, he’s applied his extensive knowledge and skills as a top
digital marketing strategist for Fortune 500 brands across the globe, helping them grow
through innovation and optimization. Mukesh works across a wide range of industry
sectors, providing strategic direction and concentrating on return on investmentbased, data-driven and cost-effective digital marketing as an integral part of the overall
marketing, sales and business strategy. His strategies focus on enhancing clients’
digital presence as a mechanism to increase revenue and profitability.
He has broad, proven expertise in customer experience and engagement programs,
cross-channel digital marketing, social media, marketing campaigns, search marketing
(organic and paid), lead generation, marketing analytics and marketing automation.
Visit nttdataservices.com/DigitalBusinessServices to learn more.
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© 2017 NTT DATA, Inc. All rights reserved. November 2017 | NTTD1163 - Social Selling Whitepaper.indd | Rev. 1.0