The third edition of the French Social Selling Forum was held in early December, which saw Author of “Social Selling Mastery” and CEO of Sales for Life, Jamie Shanks, take the leading role as keynote speaker.
– Perfect timing to read his book, which quickly became a popular reference in the area of B2B Social Selling.
I believe it is fair to call Jamie Shanks a pioneer of the Social Selling playground. But before calling him a Social Seller, Jamie should be acknowledged as an entrepreneur, who should be praised for remaining close to his roots. A man who doesn’t hesitate to share his business failures with his audience as well as declare how tenacity, dedication and intelligence (plus a supportive family) supported him to become the successful entrepreneur that he is today- traveling to all corners of the world to share his vision and help companies get money out of Social Selling, through a long-term and sustainable approach.
90% of customer buying decisions are starting online.2011 by Forrester Research
In this book, Jamie Shanks describes the full digital transformation process; from traditional selling principles to a powerful and fully aligned social selling-based business model, from level 0 to 6. Right after Jamie Shanks describes those six stages to digital transformation, he explains that this book is going to serve as a guide and road map to reaching what he calls “Level 3: Social Selling Mastery”. I want to share with you my thoughts on whether the book fulfills this mission.
After reading the first 50 pages of the book, it became pretty clear to me that this book would fulfill its mission indeed. What made me believe this? Among the literature I have read on social selling, in the last months, Jamie Shanks’ view is one of the most concrete vision I have faced so far. The author is certainly using some buzzwords, but in a clever and documented way. In this book the author is not trying to sell you a sort of magic social selling success recipe, he is just sharing documented and tested examples of success and failure in the area of supporting sales with social media.
