SAP succeeds with social selling

SAP has invested in enablement programmes that have taken social selling from a novel concept to a quantifiable business driver. Here’s how they did it

Changes in buying behavior, a social economy, and increasing competitive pressure are disrupting traditional approaches to sales and marketing, opening up opportunities for agile companies. Taking advantage of these opportunities required SAP to fundamentally change how it interacts with its customers. The increasing impact of technology and social media sparked conversations across sales and marketing around how to use the concept of social selling to thrive in a situation where power is shifting from seller to buyer. 

SAP recognised social selling required collaboration across organisations to be effective. Employees from all parts of the company can add value, leveraging their personal brand and online network to guide buyers in the modern business landscape. SAP has turned its vision into operational strength. Its transformation to a social selling organisation may have started as a sales enablement programme, but it has ultimately transformed and changed the way the company executes across business functions. Today, social sellers across SAP achieve 32 per cent more revenue and are 10 per cent more likely to achieve quota. 

Social sellers

To get employees on board and to fully embrace the opportunities of social selling, SAP has used a holistic approach that combines the right tools and processes with a change in culture. Here are the four cornerstones of the strategy: 

1. Break down silos: The traditional sales-to-marketing funnel has changed. Employees from different areas of the business can influence a buyer’s journey that is controlled by the customer. It required a very conscious effort to come together as a company to serve the customer, irrespective of internal organisation boundaries. 

2. Combine best-in-class tools and training: SAP has invested in LinkedIn Sales Navigator to turn social selling into reality. It gives sales reps a very effective way to get in contact with prospects and engage with their customers, leveraging their network in an entirely new way. But SAP quickly realised that it is not done with a tool alone. A pilot comparing a team that went through a training programme along with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator licenses, versus one without training, showed a big impact: within nine months, the trained team generated seven times more pipeline than the comparable team that only had access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. SAP decided to scale and expand this effort, launching a multi-tiered programme including community building, coaching, easily accessible online curriculum and company-wide campaigns.  

3. Changing mindsets: SAP has also invested in a culture change. Without changing behaviours and attitudes, organisations cannot fully leverage the opportunity. When SAP shifted its mindset from ‘selling’ to ‘knowing and supporting’ its buyers, it saw a rapid change towards a truly customer-centric organisation that has added tangible value and results to its relationships.

4. Measure and motivate: In a sales-driven environment, change can only happen if people believe it will lead to short-term results. The first pilots were, therefore, focused on delivering proof points that would prove the value of these initiatives and motivate sales leaders and teams to invest. 

According to Kirsten Boileau, director, SAP experience innovation at SAP: “We focused on making sure frontline sales managers were really involved from the very beginning – when we go to a team to actually train them. If you don’t have that sales management buy-in, you’re missing out on the key influencers for that team.”

The result came quickly. In addition to the pilot generating seven times more pipeline with the combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator licenses and the new training programme, another team generated $1m in pipeline during their training week, ultimately growing the entire pipeline of its market unit by 44 per cent within a year after initial training.

What’s next for social selling?

For SAP, social selling is a change management process, requiring highly skilled change agents who are willing to work with local teams over a period of time. A recent ‘Train the trainer’ programme produced 80 certified trainers in less than four months, setting the stage for a social selling launch to all SAP sales employees at the 2016 field kick-off meetings happening right now in Q1.

Malin Lidén, VP SAP experience innovation at SAP, said: “Social selling is not a choice for us to make – the choice has already been made by the market, and by our customers. Our choice lies within leveraging the opportunity to become transactional or transformational. Social selling is much more than a sales enablement programme – it is a survival strategy in the social and digital economy. Only companies that can come together and break down internal silos will win this game.”

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