Company: IBM, Armonk, NY
Nomination Submitted by: IBM
Company Description: The IBM Global Sales Enablement team is a group of over 200 professionals worldwide driving both education and enablement for an international sales force of more than 15,000 direct IBM sellers, as well as thousands of business partners around the world. The IBM Global Sales Enablement team is a group of over 200 professionals worldwide driving both education and enablement for an international sa
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Social Selling Initiative of the Year
 Nomination Title: IBM's Journey to Revolutionize Social Selling and Empower Sales Transformation
- Outline the nominated achievement since July 1 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 249 words used.
Solution
It starts with crafting a distinctive brand identity through our groundbreaking Personal Branding Exercise. It transforms strengths into a unique online persona. Uncovering values and skills, it guides sellers to project their brand effectively, ensuring their audience understands their identity, values, and why they outshine competitors.
Meeting customers on their platforms and delivering value is a tenant of social selling. Our approach to enhancing engagement centers on value-driven content, social listening, and active engagement. We've streamlined content sharing with a 5-Touch Solution expediting the discovery, selection, and personalization of IBM and third-party content; reducing a 15-minute task to 2 minutes, empowering our sellers to engage customers efficiently.
Dedicated to social selling, we launched the Social Connection Accelerator program, emphasizing not just content sharing but also fostering interactions. Today, 'likes' have transformed into a form of social listening. By actively engaging, adding thoughtful comments, and sparking interactions, sellers deepen connections and deliver impactful messages.
We strengthened our approach with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, allowing sellers to connect with customers on their turf. Focusing on social selling elements, we equip our sellers for navigation in the digital landscape.
- Social Selling Enablement Playbook: Pivotal elements to harness the power of social platforms.
- Sales Manager’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator Coaching Manual: A guide with questions and recommendations to their teams.
- Sales Navigator Playbook for End Users: Step-by-step guidance for leveraging this powerful tool.
- Use Cases for Specific Sales Objectives: A library tailored to sales objectives.
- Productivity Cards for Step-by-Step Guidance: Optimization of Sales Navigator.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 237 words used.
What our sellers are saying:
“…awesome recommendations for our Social Selling and use of LinkedIn as part of the 2022 Brilliant at the Basics series…helped make the team more brilliant and more successful!”
“…15 minutes is perfect, focused and easy to consume”
“…SHORT and very good to put into practice”
“…loved social eminence webinar, very structured on how to build it”
“…great session with examples we can leverage and highly relevant to creating meaningful relationships and opportunities through LinkedIn. Greatly appreciated!!!”
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated achievement since July 1, 2021, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Briefly describe the nominated organization or individual: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 200 words used.
The IBM Technology Sales Enablement team is missioned to create learning content on IBM and third-party technologies to support IBM products and customers.
IBM sellers maintain current skills and competence through ongoing learning. However, it can be a challenge for sellers to remain engaged with their learning while balancing other business obligations. To address this, the social learning curriculum was seamlessly integrated into Sales Job Role training, fostering a culture of continuous learning and motivation among sellers, emphasizing the practical application of newly acquired skills.
Challenge
The COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities for social selling. With lockdowns and the cancelation of in-person events, people are spending more time online using social media. As a result, the need to excel at social selling became even more critical for salespeople accustomed to in-person interactions to ensure they can meet customers where they are spending their time. Unlocking the full potential of social selling requires generating visibility, fostering relationships and creating value.
Becoming an expert is a long-term strategy. It starts by building a personal brand, posting thoughtful content that prospects care about, sharing knowledge and insight gained from experience and mastering LinkedIn Sales Navigator to reach and engage with the right audience effectively.
- Explain why the achievement you have highlighted is unique or significant. If possible compare the achievement to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 251 words used.
Outcomes
By integrating social selling principles and equipping sales teams with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, we've successfully fine-tuned our approach to social selling, elevating our customer engagement strategy to be highly efficient, effective, and results-oriented. Our comprehensive program, empowers sellers on a global scale, encompassed extensive worldwide training hours, garnered exceptional feedback, an impressive Net Promoter Score (NPS), and was enriched with inspiring anecdotes from accomplished sellers.
- Social Selling Enablement Playbook has significant engagement, averaging 2 views per visitor; 14,825 views since January 2022.
- One-third of our sellers completed the Personal Branding Exercise and enhanced their LinkedIn Profiles to project their brand effectively.
- Sales Navigator was the highest attended 2023 IBM Sales Kickoff Masterclass.
Enhancing learning and skills effectively:
- 2022 strategy consisted of 3 quarterly sessions focused on different skill levels (new, advanced, and sales management); 1 hour long with live product features and functions discussions; totaling 48 sessions with 870 attendees. Upskilled 51 sales ambassadors through these initiatives.
- In 2023, modified training strategy with shorter “Just 15 Minutes” focused weekly sessions. More than 2,700 attendees, 3X increase in participants in just 3 quarters; cumulative learning time of 675 hours.
- 2023 self-service learning courses launched within our Learning Management System. Courses were integrated into mandatory job role learning pathways and quarterly skills challenges, leading to a significantly enhanced skills and capabilities among our sales force.
- Our initiatives achieved wide-reaching impact and an impressive NPS of 71 highlighting a high level of satisfaction and a positive customer experience among our audience.
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