Shade's Mills Group
 By Tom Fournier
I have grown fascinated by the shift to social selling, digital marketing and content marketing in the environment of Business to Business selling. One of the more active arenas for this activity seems to be LinkedIn. Once a job seeking/recruiting platform, it is now very much a business knowledge and networking platform. I will readily admit to experimenting on myself. I have been less selective around connection requests. I have signed up for interesting blogs/newsletters. I have requested and downloaded appealing articles and research papers. It has been really interesting to watch the types of responses that this activity motivates! I will happily share some of these experiences and classify them in some categories:
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 By Tom Fournier
LinkedIn had long been viewed as a place to match up prospective employers and job seekers. Perhaps that was once the case, but now it has also become a very active business community. There are interest groups that match up like minded individuals in specific industries or on specific business topics. It has also become a critical tool for connecting prospective customers with potential vendors. This comes into play with social selling, digital marketing and networking. It is an excellent opportunity for an individual to establish credentials as a subject matter expert and perhaps to showcase a portfolio of work. Sellers are checking out their prospective customers but customers are also researching their prospective vendors.  The development of approaches around Business to Business (B2B) selling has continued to progress and has evolved in its concepts, strategies and practices.
This sees closer alignment between sales and marketing with an emerging emphasis on content and digital marketing which in turn supports the shift from outbound to inbound selling. Buyers are now very proactive in doing their research online. They are also very resentful of disruptive or interruption selling efforts (traditional cold calling). Are you ready to jump in and be part of this shift? Is it time to train your sales representatives on social networking and social selling skills?  By Tom Fournier
It is strange how you gather a number of similar experiences and begin to sense a trend. For me, all of sudden I have encountered situations where sale representatives either do not like to sell or are not capable of selling! I will offer some thoughts but I would really like to receive some feedback to hear peoples’ thoughts on why this occurs.  Box of Donuts By Tom Fournier
Through years of working in business to business sales, many of these years as a sales representative and many out working with countless other sales representatives, I came across many sales representatives that considered themselves the relationship seller. They were the route salesperson who would regularly check in with their customers, with ready access to the customer’s store room to see what needed to be reordered, they always had time for a chat, they were quick to share a funny story or joke and for a really good customer they would bring in a box of donuts.  By Tom Fournier
Having a sales pipeline should be a given for any sales representative and monitoring pipeline health should be an absolute for any sales manager. It should be, but it seems it is not. It reminds me of the old joke/adage, “the problem with common sense is that it is not that common!”  By Tom Fournier
Now is the time to be thinking about your approach to sales! The world is rapidly changing and amongst those changes are shifts in how business to business (B2B) customers are looking at sales people. I share some shocking statistics from a study published by Forrester Research: 60% of B2B Buyers prefer not to interact with a sales rep. [1] 68% of B2B Buyers prefer gathering information online on their own[2]  Anatomy Image An organization’s sales manager is an extremely critical role. It may be one of the most difficult jobs in an organization but it is often the one role where there is no training investment. When there is a need for a sales manager, an attempt is made to promote the best sales representative. Often the top performing sales person does not want the role as they view it as too much responsibility and aggravation for too little pay.
What should a company expect from the person put into a sales manager’s role?  Photo by Rolf Gollin November 3, 2018, Tom Fournier
This will likely be more in the form of story-telling but it does offer some insights into ideals that have guided my own leadership development journey. There are courses, books, blogs and countless websites that all talk about how to develop leadership. To me, the best way to develop leadership is to put yourself into positions where you will need to exert leadership but it is not a work role! I will speak of two of my more formative experiences and I believe they both follow the same theme. That theme is to give and to be in a leadership role without the impact or influence of a “boss card”.  October 26, 2018, Tom Fournier
This post excites me for a strange reason. It is because I get to use a photo taken on the hiking trails in the Shade’s Mills Conservation area! I do think it is an appropriate image. For a business to succeed, there must be alignment. Different functions and different aspects of the business strategy must align or there cannot be success. Let us take a quick look at some areas that come to mind. |
AuthorTom Fournier, founder of the Shade's Mills Group, history enthusiast and happy walker! Archives
March 2019
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