Do you remember when products and services used to be “sold” in a physical sense? Or how about the time when salespeople were the subject matter experts when it came to everything there was to know about a sale? But these days, sales processes and sales management have changed thanks to rapid technological advancements.

Technology, like the opportunity to close a good deal, is everywhere. It impacts almost every facet of our day-to-day lives, both personally and professionally. In the sales world, customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce, Monday, or Zendesk are the platforms that help drive priorities, score leads, and recommend next steps based on previous activities. Learning and development processes, including skills training, has also received a digital overhaul.

The transformation from physical to digital sales is happening before our eyes, and we are at the pivotal decision-making point where we can either trudge along the way we have been or take the leap into the future of sales: Social selling.

Social selling allows for salespeople to target prospects, build a meaningful rapport within their network, and eventually drop the need to cold call. This is done by using social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Twitter, etc.) to locate and connect with prospects and leads, find common threads that can be used to build a relationship, and share information about your brand. The goal: Build a relationship with the prospect or lead until they’re ready to pull the trigger and sign the deal.

This digital transformation doesn’t take place overnight, though. Start by switching out a few manual or antiquated elements for digital sales strategies. Here are a few to get started:

Content Marketing
Content marketing means creating valuable, relevant content for a targeted audience as defined by the sales team. Ideally, the sales team would request specific marketing assets from the marketing team. Once completed, these assets would be used as a way to interact with prospects (he decision-makers or influencers) and lead in a less sales-focused environment. Encourage the sales team to work with the marketing team on creating educational, inspiring, or motivational content that is direct and to-the-point.

Dive-in to Social Media
Social media, concerning social selling, should become the salesperson’s best friend. Hashtag campaigns, individual hashtags, geographical targeting, or targets by industry are a great way to find prospects just outside your networking circle. Use this new focused group on social networking sites to share meaningful content, learn prospect wants and needs in terms of software solutions, and become their trusted advisor in that area.

Audits and Reporting
Digital tools, we can all agree, are great for deep-dive analytics and data that can be used to see usage, trends, or patterns. The information gleaned from this data can give your sales team the information they need in order to make certain decisions when it comes to understanding which of their techniques is working better than others. For instance, some of the salespeople on your team may work better in an in-bound sale situation, while others need to cultivate the lead and build the prospect through the existing process. Either way, the CRM software used to support the process and aid the sales team as they start and close deals will provide the current and historical data needed to improve the process and their skills along the way.

When it comes to transitioning your sales team from manual to digital processes, the content marketing, social media element, and data through reporting should be enough to sway the team. Clients or prospects are already on their way to a more digital way of working and connecting with vendors. Now’s the time to embrace the digital transformation for your sales team. Contact Insured Solutions to learn more.