Two-Minute Sales Masterclass: Jill Rowley
As an experienced sales professional and social selling guru, Jill Rowley knows a lot about working in sales, with marketing teams, and with customers. In this installment of our Two-Minute Sales Masterclass video series, Jill explains social selling, improving professional networks and discipline.
How would you explain the mentality of social selling?
We are a digital, social world and buyers are doing their research before they engage with sales. They are checking out who their salesperson is. When they go to your social profile, does it actually demonstrate that you have solved similar business issues for similar customers in the past? Look at your LinkedIn profile through the lens of your customer. How does your customer see you when they look at your LinkedIn profile? Do they feel like you’re someone who can help solve their problems, or do they feel like you’re a QUOTA CRUSHER?
Buyers want to work with people who can actually create value for them and solve problems.
As salespeople, are there tips on how to improve our professional social networks?
I stop and think about it through the lens of the buyer. Does the customer want to be closed? We have to change how we’re thinking about our networks; not that we’re always closing people but that we’re making connections with people. And that we’re having conversations with people. Don’t take old-school tactics and apply them to new-school channels.
How do I succeed at integrating social into my sales tactics?
A discipline to have is “always be connecting.” You’ve got to create a habit. You have to embed social and digital into your existing workflow, into your existing daily routine. Meaning, I hear someone’s name, I go to LinkedIn. If you can build that into your routine, that’s success.
In this video, Jill talks about improving lead quality, finding buying committees, and managing personal brand.
What’s the most important question salespeople should be asking themselves?
Who is your ideal customer? A lot of times in sales you’re having the conversation but you’re having the right conversation with the wrong person. How do you figure out who the right people are within the organization? Oftentimes it’s not a buyer, it’s a buying committee.
In 10 minutes, how can a salesperson improve lead quality?
If I had 10 minutes to improve the lead quality over quantity, I’d spend that time with customer success. As a sales professional, I’m only going to engage with companies and people who look like our ideal customer.
How do you manage your personal pipeline?
As a sales rep, one of my practices is “every deal every day, every day every deal.” I’d look at my forecast in my CRM system and I’d say for each deal, have I identified all of the influencers of the buying committee, have I identified everyone on the buying committee, and what is it that that person needs to know to advance their purchase process? And only be focused on calling the folks who have a propensity to buy your solution.
*How do I gain a competitive advantage as a salesperson?
Every salesperson, no matter what you’re selling, is selling change. Are you effective at selling change? The best salespeople know more about their customers, they do more for their customers, and they care more about their customers.
In this video, Jill covers leveling up, professional relationships and common traits of successful salespeople
How can we maximize a free 10 minutes a day?
Ten minutes a day - we need to level up. As we’re leveling up, and having bigger conversations with people at more senior levels, we need to have business acumen. We need to speak the language of our buyers. We need to speak and frame things in terms of how they care about and make decisions. This business acumen is really important.
What’s the key to building professional relationships?
Probably the most important for leveling up is customer acumen. The individual people within that buying committee, you need to know them, you need to know how they fit into the rest of the org, what are their company initiatives and what is that company going through from an industry perspective?
What’s a common trait all great salespeople have?
Relationships are developed over time. I want to be doing things for people, buyers, potential buyers, that way when I need to ask for the business, I’ve earned that right. I’ve helped that person so much that they're willing to help me when I need help. In 10 minutes, we’re going to level up.
A key to great salespeople is they look at things through the lens of the customer. They are so close to the customer, they know their customer better than anybody else. Great salespeople know what makes customers successful, and they care about their customers’ success!