Addressing Challenges and Changing Culture with Enterprise Social Sales Programs

Subscribe to Social Business Engine

Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play

Social sales is becoming a common sales approach in more and more types of businesses. Bernie’s guest on this episode demonstrates how true that is by revealing how social selling is being implemented in a very traditional business - banking. Jason Schober is the Social Media Campaign Manager at US Bank. He’s not only tasked with the creation of B2B social sales training programs and their implementation, he also oversees and makes adjustments as the team progresses in their actual sales duties.

On this episode of Social Business Engine, Jason and Bernie chat about how the implementation of his programs has required both a culture shift and a process shift - and why one without the other won’t work. He shares how his teams are improving in both areas as well as the places they still need to improve. These lessons-learned from the field are something you'll want to hear and apply to your own social sales program.

As Businesses Grow, Sales Relationships Must Grow Also

The aim of every business is growth, which requires that processes, procedures, and roles become more clearly defined and complex over time. In this conversation, Jason Schober points out how sales professionals (relationship bankers in his context) must become skilled at navigating the ever-changing but vital network of relationships within the companies they are hoping to secure as customers.

In this conversation, Jason highlights how the US Bank team is using social selling to establish, nurture, and open the door to those customer relationships, how they train their relationship bankers to use social effectively for those purposes, and how they’ve managed the culture shift necessary to make it all possible.

Intentional Social Sales Training To Fuel Sales Success

It’s one thing to tell a sales team that they need to be using social media to establish relationships, but it’s quite another for them to implement that directive effectively. Jason Schober and the US Bank team knew their relationship bankers would need training around how to use LinkedIn for prospecting and how to identify triggers that enable them to initiate conversations. What did they do? They created a program that teaches their bankers those skills.

Jason says intentional social sales training enables their relationship bankers to do a number of important things:

#1 - They are able to begin relationships they can build over time.

#2 - It establishes them as thought leaders and experts in their field and local community.

#3 - They learn to network with the centers of influence in their community on a regular basis

Learning the nuances of their particular communities and creating trust and identifying next best actions with those individuals are keys to the US Bank strategy and great insights into what makes up effective social selling training.

What can you take from Jason’s lessons-learned to apply to your social sales programs?

The Power of Culture In Building An Enterprise Social Selling Program

Social selling at US Bank is used to accomplish many things. Among the most important is the establishment of US Bank and its representatives as the most trusted choice among clients and partners so that future customers view them as a trusted resource as well.

One novel approach toward that goal is in the use of AI to identify next best actions based on how their customers are using US Bank services currently. Social selling comes into play by training the US Bank relationship managers how to use the data to open the doors to conversations, address needs they see and provide recommended solutions.

 

Jason points out the importance of leveraging technology in combination with good old-fashioned relationships to create a win-win scenario, and how social selling is an integral part of the formula.

Featured on This Episode Jason’s profile on LinkedIn Jason on Twitter: @JSchobes US Bank Small Business Outline of This Episode [0:30] Bernie’s introduction of Jason Shober, Social Media Campaign Manager of US Bank [4:01] Jason’s explanation of B2B Business Lines within his organization [5:58] Comparing sales roles in the banking industry to traditional sales roles [8:08] The social sales program at US Bank [10:21] Best practices discovered by the US Bank social selling team [14:01] The importance of culture in social selling programs [17:58] Keeping the sales team engaged and executing consistently [23:10] Transparency among sales teams with marketing activities and best practices Resources & People Mentioned

Be sure to download the case study that accompanies the podcast series - Social Business Journal Volume 11. It weaves together the narrative of social selling success factors at SAP. It’s available for download, ungated here.

Social Media Marketing World DreamForce Einstein AI LinkedIn Sales Navigator 5 part series with SAP Centrica Business Solutions - Karen Avites was on episode 185 Grab your copy of “Savvy Social Selling the SAP Way” In Social Business Journal Volume 10, Lithium’s SVP of Marketing Dayle Hall, drops a ton of wisdom around the top 5 most influential topics in B2B marketing. The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine https://www.facebook.com/socialbusinessengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://twitter.com/sbengine

Subscribe to Social Business Engine

Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play

There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast. You can click the PLAYER BUTTON at the top of this page… or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through the podcast subscription links above.