Professional Diploma in Digital & Social Selling

The Introduction to Digital & Social Selling will help you understand the concept of digital & social selling, how it has transformed the sales process, and how you can leverage advanced tools and techniques to become a prolific digital seller.

You will understand the difference between traditional and digital & social selling methods and the benefits that can be gained from adopting a digital & social selling approach to your current sales activities.

You will explore the key concepts that will be covered in each module, how they relate to each phase of the sales process and, most importantly, how the learnings from each phase will inform the next.

Learners will also be introduced to the Digital Marketing Institute 3i principles - the foundation of DMI's Method for digital & social selling, which will help to develop a cohesive digital & social selling strategy.

Topics Include:

• Digital Selling Concepts
• Traditional vs. Digital Selling
• Opportunity of Digital Selling
• Digital Selling Implications
• Digital Selling Definitions
• The DMI 3i Principals
• The DMI Sales Framework
• Digital Sales Process Research
• Digital Sales Process Enablement
• CRM
• Social Content
• Messaging
• Engagement
• Social Account Management
• Leadership
• Strategy & Integration

The Digital Research module will equip you with the research tools and techniques needed to develop a well-informed digital & social selling strategy for your product or service.

Starting with your view of the customer, you will learn how to research both digitally and socially, to identify market trends and influencing factors affecting customers within your industry. This will help you to answer the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ for your target market.

From here, the module will show you how to conduct research in order to narrow down your customer persona and identify the companies and key decision makers you should be targeting.

Using social intelligence and social listening, you will learn how to monitor online interactions, read digital behavior and discover commonalities to later personalize your engagement.

Topics Include:

• Digital Research Introduction
• Establishing your brand capabilities & goals
• Audience Research Overview
• Audience Research Tools
• Audience Listening Tools
• Audience Research Dimensions
• Competitive Research Overview
• Competitive Research Tools
• Competitive Research Components
• Cultural Research Overview
• Cultural Research Tools & Components
• Industry Trend Research Overview
• Industry Research Tools
• Analyzing the data to find insights
• Creating a strategic statement

The Sales Enablement module teaches you about the advanced features and functionality of a range of social media platforms to enable your digital & social selling process.

This module will show you how to use your digital research in tandem with these tools and platforms in order to target key decision makers and capture vital information for your CRM.

Using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, you will be able to build trust in order to maximize subsequent successful engagement using an extensive network of contacts and information through social platforms.

The module will teach you the importance of building your personal brand and scaling your reputation as a thought leader within your target customer base to become a brand ambassador for your company.

You will discover how digital tools and social media platforms can facilitate relevant sales messages and content, making it easier to later offer the right solutions, to the right client, at the right time.

Topics Include:

• Sales Enablement Overview
• Accelerate Pipeline
• Target Audience
• Grow Network
• Brand Ambassador
• Lead Scoring
• Sales Enablement Tools Overview
• Gaining Insight
• Staying Engaged
• LinkedIn
• The Social Selling Index
• LinkedIn Premium
• Lead Builder
• InMail
• Team Link
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+
• Email Tools
• Insight Tools
• Engagement Tools
• Emerging Platforms
• Sales Enablement Measurement Overview
• Metrics
• Report Building

The Client Relationship Management module will provide you with a strategic view of CRM and how its social collaboration tools can make commerce a conversation.

The module will help you design and create business development campaigns, apply best practice methodologies to your sales cycles and most importantly, evaluate CRM data to inform your engagement strategy.

You will gain valuable insights into how the integration of social collaboration tools in your CRM can place the customer right at the heart of your sales opportunities, deliver shorter sales cycles and increase the quality of your opportunities.

Learners will gain a solid understanding of the major concepts and applications of CRM and Social Collaboration and how those concepts align to core activities in the sales process including:

• Territory management
• Digital Business development
• CRM Pipeline management
• Opportunity management and review
• Forecasting
• Reporting

Topics Include:

• CRM & Social Collaboration Overview
• CRM App Intro
• Social Collaboration Intro
• Set Up
• Accounts
• Contacts
• Opportunities
• Campaigns
• Reports
• Territory Management
• Contact Management
• Opportunity Management
• Pipeline Management & Forecasting
• Creating & Analyzing CRM Dashboards
• Digital Business Development
• Social Collaboration through the salescycle
• Opportunity Methodologies

The Social Content Module will enable digital sellers to engage potential and existing buyers with relevant, informative content that will drive them into action.

You will learn how to determine what kind of content is needed for different customer types and how to establish the most appropriate tone, style and method of distribution for your content.

The module will teach you how to use a variety of content creation tools that assist with the complete content creation process, from researching topics, to creating text and graphics, and proofing and editing your content. You will also learn about Content Management Systems and how they can facilitate enhanced content, personalization, responsive design and other elements that can guarantee positive customer experience.

You will learn how to develop content that is tailored to detailed customer personas and underpins every stage of the customer journey. You will be able to identify the difference between content creation and curation and the value of both. The module will explore the increasingly effective practice of blogging and you will learn how to quickly and easily create and implement a content calendar.

By the end of this module, your content strategy will have garnered a strong collection of both curated and self-created content to enhance the effectiveness of your digital sales messages.

Topics Include:

• Social Content Overview
• Developing Content around Customer Personas
• Content Creation
• Content Curation
• Blogging
• Content Calendar
• Content Distribution
• Content for lead Gen. & Nurturing
• Integrating with the overall sales process
• Content Management
• Content Strategy

The Digital Sales Messaging module will teach you how to strategically craft communications to ensure all contact with buyers is relevant, personalized and aligned with their personal or business objectives.

You will learn the importance of content segmentation when choosing content for customers and the importance of marrying B2B and B2C content types with the correct social media platforms.

This module will focus on the different considerations that affect digital sales messaging and will explore the best practices for successful email communications. You will be able to describe how and why you should adapt a different tone and style depending on your target audience and content type.

The module will teach you how to leverage style guides and story-boarding to strengthen your digital sales message and ensure successful engagement.

Topics Include:

• Digital Sales Messaging Overview
• Choosing content for digital channels
• Choosing content for customers
• Strategic Writing Concepts
• Guidelines for Successful Writing
• Style Guide
• Strategic Writing - Email
• Storyboarding components
• Telling a Story
• Strengthening a Story
• Formatting & Style of a Story

The Engagement module will focus on building relationships with leads in the most effective way over an entire customer life-cycle, from an initial introduction and nurture of cold contacts, to hot prospects that are ready to buy.

You know how to target the right contacts by categorizing them based on demographics and behavior, now you will learn how to engage with these groups of contacts at the right time, with a message that matters to them.

You will learn how to apply learnings from Social Content and Digital Sales Messaging to pre-qualify contacts, warm up lapsed or slumped customers, close new business, cross or up-sell to existing clients and also retain customers.

The module will reveal the best strategies to manage large prospect and client bases with minimal effort in terms of personalized mass mailing, via tools such as Eloqua for Sales, Microsoft Outlook and Google Docs. You will also be shown engagement techniques to move contacts into the next tier and learn how to handle sales objections throughout the customer journey.

The module will equip you with easy to follow examples and insights that can be easily applied to your current sales strategy. You will learn about the importance of relevant engagement and that not every communication is a sales message at heart.

Topics Include:

• Concepts Overview
• The engagement process
• Making Introductions
• Nurturing Prospects
• Handling Sales Objections
• Channels & Engagement Overview
• Channel Usage
• Engagement Channel Guidelines
• Influencers
• Slumped Contacts
• Closing
• Post Sale
• Retention
• Measurement

In the Social Account Management module, you will learn about how social media has transformed the concept of customer service, posing both challenges and opportunities when it comes to interacting with prospects and customers. Upon studying this module, you will understand what is involved in creating and maintaining a meaningful dialogue between you and your customer.

You will learn how to carry out prioritization exercises and filter social messages to differentiate between high and low priority interactions. You will be able to align this prioritization with your digital & social selling objectives while navigating a multi-channel customer service environment.

This module will teach you how to evaluate, engage and execute with customers according to the circumstance or sentiment. You will be able to use your social listening skills to monitor relevant social mentions, conversations and opportunities.

The module will teach you how to devise and implement a crisis management plan to deal with conversations and interactions that may attract negative attention in a public forum.

You will also be able to establish Key Performance Metrics that relate to the measurement of your social customer service so you can leverage results to increase efficiency and assess opportunities that benefit your digital & social selling efforts.

Topics Include:

• Social Account Management Concepts
• The Client Lifecycle
• Social Account Planning
• Digital Upselling & Cross Selling
• Social Account Management Channels
• Social Account Management Tools
• Listening & Insight Tools
• Team Tools
• Tracking & Measurement Tools
• Engaging Customers
• Scheduling Tools
• Social CRM
• Digital Brand Management
• Digital Crisis Management
• Metrics
• Report Building

The purpose of the Digital Sales Leadership module is to empower and guide managers and aspiring leaders as they transition from a traditional sales to a digital sales strategy. It will help you to understand the importance of adopting a digital & social selling approach to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving sales landscape.

The module will show you how to gain executive sponsorship by building a business case for digital & social selling within your organization. You will learn the methods of educating, training and supporting your sales force to leverage their networks and build relationships to accelerate sales.

You will learn how to become a social leader through building and maintaining awareness of your digital & social selling strategy.

The module will explore how you can implement effective communication strategies to keep employees motivated and accountable for their individual digital & social selling strategies.

By monitoring the social footprint of your team members and using social KPIs, you will be able to identify and measure if your team are adopting the correct digital & social selling behaviors, building the right networks and creating a professional and consistent brand.

Topics Include:

• Definition of Social Leadership
• The role of the digital sales leader
• The key pillars of the digital social selling strategy
• Misconceptions & Considerations around building an effective program
• Recognising the importance of setting the right goals
• Establishing personal leadership
• Identifying the parameters for your digital program
• Gaining executive sponsorship
• Building a long term strategy to help your organisation cross the chasm
• Build your team
• Train your team
• Motivate your team
• Embed digital selling into an organisation’s culture
• Metrics Management
• Benchmarking
• Reporting to stakeholders

The Integration & Strategy module will teach sales leaders and those aspiring to a leadership level, how to research, construct and integrate an effective and optimized digital sales strategy within an organization.

You will learn how to conduct an all-inclusive analysis of your territories, identifying information such as key trends in geos and top prospects. You will be able to leverage this research to clarify what drives customers to buy, to understand their needs and motivations, and use this insight to determine your selling goals and objectives.

By conducting competitor analysis, you will be able to identify their solutions and offerings, and use this information as a benchmark to adapt and refine your overall digital & social selling strategy.

This module will teach you how to forecast effectively and establish targets based on a comprehensive assessment of your digital sales pipeline. This will allow you to identify gaps in your pipeline and tailor a plan to address them.

You will learn how to develop digital client coverage strategies that will enable you to maximize your time and resources across entire territories. You will also be able to consolidate an execution plan that will enable you to achieve targets, generate qualified leads and improve conversion rates.

By the end of this module you will be able to measure the ROI of digital & social selling, align it to the overall goals of your organization and use it to gain further executive support.

Topics Include:

• Digital Sales Strategy Concepts
• Concepts of Situational Analysis
• Digital Research
• Digital Prospect Analysis
• Digital Competitor Analysis
• Digital Territory Analysis
• Digital Sales Forecasting
• Objectives
• Objective Setting
• Action Plan Concepts
• Sales Enablement
• CRM
• Digital Sales Messaging
• Engagement
• Social Account Management
• Budgeting
• Digital Metrics & KPI Concepts
• Social Metrics
• Website Metrics
• SEM Metrics
• Mobile Metrics
• Customer Service Metrics
• Sales Performance Metrics
• Digital Channel Performance Metrics
• Using your findings
• Review