linkedin and social selling case studies - what lessons can we learn from the pioneers?
DESCRIPTION
Adding Social Media into the B2B sales toolkit is relatively new. Here are several examples of how early pioneers are using Social Technologies to improve their business results. I've identified several key messages for sales people, business owners and sales directors from these examples to help you focus on strategies and techniques that are more likely to deliver sales results, and help you make positive progress.TRANSCRIPT
Social Media Case Studies highlighting major B2B trends
Key lessons from the B2B Social Media pioneers
Part 2 of ‘Social Media – is it a Game-Changer for B2B Sales?
Mark Stonham
Twitter @MarkJStonham #LinkedWin
Internal Collaboration
IBM: let employees set up their own blog and Twitter accounts to service customers
There was no IBM corporate blog or Twitter account There were 17,000 internal blogs, 100,000 employees using internal blogs Up to 500,000 participants in crowd-sourcing “jams.”
Results showed: Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded for $100 million.
These generated $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin
Internal Collaboration in Corporates
EMC: B2B social media effort that achieved business transformation by creating a global company-wide social community, EMC ONE. This connected and increased collaboration resulting in double-digit revenue growth in more than 60 countries
ORACLE: Layered social networks on top of current communication channels and trained 25,000 partners, while reducing costs, boosting satisfaction and increasing PR.
Salesforce.com: Company Communities will be similar to Communities, except intended for internal use. The social collaborative and intranet space is booming, with targeted products from Microsoft 's Yammer, Jive Software, Socialtext, Igloo and others, like Microsoft SharePoint or IBM Connections.
pilot social selling program
7 Public Cloud inside sales representatives
Personalized Web, Twitter and LinkedIn pages
Content Library and short messages
LinkedIn connections from 535 to 3,500 in 6 months
Reach of messaging up from 54,000 to 1.3 million
It triggered 10 orders on the first day a 60-day free trial.
INDIUM: A company that
manufactures special alloys isn’t sexy; neither is convincing 14 of its engineers to start blogs.
It increased leads, prospects, conversions and sales by double digits
Plus it gave customers the opportunity to know the company’s employees personally.
Exhibition costs down 75%
Wild Apricot – 15% uplift in conversions
They tested: 1) a recent user
survey, 2) a link to an online
software directory and
3) a link to the LinkedIn product reviews, along with LinkedIn’s logo.
Showcasing LinkedIn recommendations on our home page raised conversions by 15%.
Started 1998 – now $40m 200+ employees. Give away free and valuable marketing advice Offer affordable direct-mail printing for small businesses
Create Compelling Content Establish your Face and Voice Build contacts and message them Join LinkedIn Groups and contribute Cold message contacts 600 leads, $72,000 business just from LinkedIn.
Mark Stonham £50k opportunities over a 3 month period via LinkedIn
Social Selling bid into major European company Interim Sales Manager role in Gloucester LinkedIn Training to Dublin based Call-centre company
Connection with Senior Sales decision-makers Partnerships – IT and e-learning Introducers – to help spread the word Website traffic – monitored via Google Analytics
Approaches & Benefits
Decide on Goals and Objectives
Pick a high impact business area
Leverage Customer Success
Learn from a peer group role model
Start small – pilot – test and measure
To learn more about how you can use LinkedIn to
generate leads and opportunities …
Contact Mark Stonham Email [email protected] Follow @markjstonham Connect on LinkedIn
Contact Wurlwind Wurlwind Website
Find and Follow us: Wurlwind on LinkedIn @wurlwind_li @wurlwind_scrm
#LinkedWin