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Take a B2B salesperson, put them on LinkedIn and ask them to ‘grow their network to generate business’!
What will he tend to do, spontaneously?
In fact, we're going to observe. 2 typical types of behaviour, and often the behavior will vary according to the age of the commercial, to which generation it belongs (if it is a " native digital "he will be less shy, for example; he may also be a commercial caves) ; but also depending on the business model…
For example, if you're dealing with a "farmer" type commercial
That is to say who does not make Conquest, "hunt", which essentially must strengthen the fidelity of active customers, develop sales with them, get additional sales / up-selling (make them buy even more of what they already buy) or cross sales / cross-selling (buy of product B in addition to the product A or C that they already buy)
...or if we're dealing with a commercial "hunter", "hunter", who must devote himself essentially to pure conquest, approach and seduce new customers! The seller says to the door-to-door, for example, is a very good example of the commercial hunter.
Typically, the younger the salesman and the more he belongs to the "hunter" category, the more he will tend to go straight to the goal.
In concrete terms, he searches for the names of his customers – and especially of his prospects – on LinkedIn, he immediately invites them without wondering, and often with a rather unwelcome commercial "color" (see the example below), and as soon as the invitation is accepted, he calls them to get an appointment! He will not be afraid of volume, he will seek to have as many contacts as possible LinkedIn, and above all he will tend to go there directly, frontal, to go very quickly in "phone" mode. It's not Social Selling, or rather it's really basic Social Selling; the commercial who adopts this kind of approach actually confused LinkedIn and contact database / prospect file!
On the other hand, the more senior a businessman is, the more "farmer" he is, the more he will tend to favour quality over quantity. It will eventually have a very limited LinkedIn network, perhaps 100 or 200 relationships (which means it will not have " digital resonance box", which is one of the fundamental levers of Social Selling), and above all only customers – practically no prospects therefore, since it is not his mission – that he really knows well! And then he won't really serve LinkedIn, his customers he has them in his contacts, certainly, but will not seek to hire them on LinkedIn, in other words, interacting with them. He relies on old-fashioned relationship building and believes everything happens through real conversations by phone or, better still, face to face. For him, LinkedIn is a sideline, an external address book, almost a gadget whose usefulness he cannot quite see. He will not be doing social selling either. In both cases, junior or senior, these behaviours and practices ultimately fail to produce results; In both cases it's not Social Selling!
Author: Antoine Jambart