Social sales is becoming a common sales approach in more and more types of businesses. The 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, where he’s not only tasked with the creation of B2B social sales training programs and their implementation, but he also oversees and makes adjustments as the team progresses in their actual sales duties.
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, 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're hoping to secure as customers.
Schober also highlights how the US Bank team is using social selling to establish, nurture, and open the door to those customer relationships, and how they train their relationship bankers to use social effectively for those purposes.
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.
Schober and the US Bank team knew their relationship bankers would need training around how to use LinkedIn, for example, to boost their prospecting efforts, and how to identify triggers which enable them to initiate conversations. What did they do? They created a program that teaches their bankers those skills.
Schober says that intentional social sales training enables their relationship bankers to do a number of important things:
- They are able to begin relationships they can build over time
- It establishes them as thought leaders and experts in their field and local community
- 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.
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 towards 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 on how to use data to open the doors, address needs they see and provide recommended solutions.
Schober 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
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