Former LinkedIn sales professionals enabling organisations globally to master digital selling

Digitally selling since 2012

Today, LinkedIn is synonymous with Social Selling.

We were part of the team that pioneered the social selling revolution at LinkedIn,  implementing digital selling at Fortune 500 companies such as SAP, Hitachi and 3M.   

Whether you call it Social Selling, Digital Selling or Modern Selling, we have fine-tuned a proven methodology that will transform your sales organisations behaviours and drive success in the modern era.

Get in touch with us for a free consultation.

 

Why investing in your sales team is crucial

%

of sales reps who use social media in the sales process outsell their peers who don’t (LinkedIn)

%

of top performing sales people say LinkedIn is important in closing deals and is part of their sales strategy (LinkedIn)

%

The average frontline sales manager has seven direct reports but devotes just 9% of their time to actually developing them (Gartner)

About Us

We are former LinkedIn sales professionals with a combined experience of over 20 years in social selling, sales training and coaching.  We specialise in:

 

  • B2B Sales Training
  • Sales Coaching
  • Executive Coaching

Why

Blue Square Collective?

Blue Square Collective was launched by three sales professionals who worked together at the world’s largest professional network with a blue square logo – LinkedIn.

After helping Fortune 500 companies to implement successful social selling programs, we founded the business out of a shared passion to help B2B sales teams get the most out of LinkedIn for the purpose of growing a professional brand, building trust and developing business relationships.

Having worked with global organisations like SAP, 3M and Hitachi to implement and scale their digital selling programs, we understand what it takes to adjust habits and behaviours of sales professionals.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. No two customers are the same.

Only authentic, transparent and expert sales professionals will succeed in the long run.

Remote selling has become the new norm that sales professionals need to be accustomed to.

As former Account Managers, Account Executives and Customer Success Managers we have been selling this way since 2008 and coaching sales professionals on digital selling since 2012.

Get in touch to schedule your free consultation with one of our experts in Toronto or Zurich to start your journey to digital sales transformation.

 

 

B2B Sales Training

In today’s challenging business climate digital selling is the new norm.

A strong sales team is the engine which helps companies to stay ahead of the game.  Continuous improvement of your sales team and increasing efficiency and effectiveness is the key to the growth of any organization.

Are you getting the most out of LinkedIn to develop and nurture business relationships online?

 

Our Methodology

Understanding the status quo of your current digital sales journey

Every customer engagement starts by understanding the stage of your company’s digital sales transformation journey.

Together with your revenue leaders, our team will learn all about your business development strategy to understand where to add value in your sales process.

We work with your Account Executives, Account Managers and Sales Development Teams to drive success in new business acquisition and existing client growth.

Empowering your sales team to leverage LinkedIn for lead generation and thought leadership

We will apply our proven methodology to deliver the best remote training path for your teams, which is both hands on and practical.

We help transform your sales teams’ profiles to increase their visibility online, develop authentic business relationships and build trust.

Your team will learn a digital sales methodology on how to find, relate and engage with prospective clients on the LinkedIn platform.

Cementing newly learned skills, forming habits for long lasting business impact

In order to make sure the best practices are transformed into new habits, your sales representatives will have access to coaching after the core LinkedIn digital sales workshops are delivered.

Ongoing coaching will foster a growth mindset, generate insights and establish new habits that will sustainably improve your team’s sales performance.

Executive Coaching

We work with executives to help them gain self-awareness, define goals and unlock their potential. Therefore, coaching helps professional development and increases

 

  • Clarity
  • Focus
  • Accountability
  • Confidence
  • Decision making

Benefits of

Executive Coaching

Executive coaches build trusted relationships, listen actively and ask powerful questions to help clients gain their own insights to form new habits.

By providing a confidential and supportive environment for our coaching clients, we stretch your assumptions, help achieve clarity for purpose, and when required, offer advice.

While there are many variations, executive coaching usually involves a series of phases, starting with intake, assessment, goal setting, planning and actions. A typical duration of a coaching engagement can last between 3 to 12 months.

Click here to view our executive coaches to find out which background resonates the most with you.

The right match is key to the success of a coaching experience.

Book a free 30 min pre-coaching conversation to see if an expert at Blue Square Collective is a match! 

 

 What Business Leaders say about us…

 “I worked with Anita closely for 4 years, while SAP was rolling out it’s Digital Selling program. Anita’s keen sense of business impact, innovative ideas for engaging more of our internal audience and always cheerful manner made our working partnership a highlight in my week.

While working closely with Anita, we were able to go from a small program of 2000 LinkedIn Sales Navigator Licenses, to globally scale to 15000+ licenses, the largest deployment in the world.

Anita’s guidance on that aspect of our program was invaluable! Thanks to Anita’s keen sense of story-telling, SAP’s Digital Selling program is widely recognized as one of the most successful sales enablement programs across a wide variety of industries and geographies.

Overall, Anita’s calm, friendly manner and well-developed customer success acumen was a huge impact on our program’s success.

Kirsten Boileau

Global Head Digital Transformation Enablement, SAP

 “I worked with Ville during his time at LinkedIn were he was Hitachi Vantaras’ Enterprise Relationship Manager in London.

He was always very responsive and proactive to our client needs as we developed our social selling strategy as a business. Ville was quick to understand our business goals and to provide the support needed to accelerate our teams understanding of Social Selling.

Ville is very straightforward to work with and I enjoyed the time that we worked together on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator platform where we saw great success in working with our EMEA based sales teams”

Nick Laurence

Senior Director Marketing EMEA, Hitachi Vantara

 “In my former role with 3M as UK&I Corporate Sales & Marketing Leader, I worked extensively with Anita & Marc.

From understanding the company’s needs around digital transformation, through to strategy development, deployment and change management, they actively supported the business every step of the way.

Anita & Marc recognise that social selling is an ethos, not simply a case of deploying LinkedIn Sales Navigator to sales professionals or only doing the basics on LinkedIn. Working side-by-side to create the buy-in and engagement of senior executives, whilst creating the roadmap to take us on the journey of true business transformation.

By deploying over 250 Sales Navigator licenses in the first wave, together we changed the way 3M sales and marketing professionals do their day-to-day job forever, leading to better outcomes and accelerated business growth across multiple divisions.

Damian Doherty

Head of Corporate Marketing & Sales UK&I, 3M

Our clients at Blue Square Collective

Our clients at LinkedIn

Executive Team

Anita Windisman

Anita Windisman

Co-Founder

Ville Westerberg

Ville Westerberg

Co-Founder

Get in touch

Contact us to maximise your sales teams use of LinkedIn to achieve your business goals.

Toronto, Zurich

Please fill out the form below to schedule your free consultation. We will get back to you in no time.

Anita Windisman

Specialising in sales training, employee advocacy and professional branding. An early adopter and LinkedIn trailblazer who is LinkedIn member number #34,445.

marc baladi

Anita has over 20 years of digital marketing and sales experience.  She was the Director of Marketing & Communications – Canada for the former Quebecor World and has worked with companies and brands such as Levi Strauss Canada, Toronto Hydro Energy Services and Royal LePage.

At LinkedIn, Anita blazed a trail being the very first Customer Success Manager hired globally, providing strategic direction to senior sales leaders how to implement Social Selling Programs in their organizations.  She spent over 5 years working with leading global accounts such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, IBM, 3M, Vodafone and others – overseeing the deployment of over 25,000 Sales Navigator licences.

Being on LinkedIn since 2003 as member number 34,445 puts Anita the super “early adopter” category – especially when you consider that there are now over 700 million members on LinkedIn worldwide. 

At Blue Square Collective, Anita’s expertise is guiding sales teams to make the leap to digital selling and as a result, enabling them to achieve their sales quotas.  Her practice areas include sales training, professional branding and employee advocacy. 

With a passion for teaching and training – she teaches at two programs at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto where she graduated with an MBA. 

Ville Westerberg

Passionate about mentoring, coaching and career development of sales professionals and executives.

marc baladi
Ville has over 10 years of sales experience working for companies like LinkedIn and Lagardere Sports for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Pioneering digital sales transformation since 2014, Ville was the first ever sales professional in the DACH region for LinkedIn Sales Solutions, developing the business of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and implementing Digital Selling programs with brands like Hitachi, Lyreco, Leica Geosystems, Teradata, Atheneum Partners and Oerlikon Leybold.

After leaving LinkedIn in 2018, Ville found his passion working as a HR consultant, to date having helped many IT & Sales professionals to find their ideal next career move with innovative companies across Europe.

At Blue Square Collective, Ville is truly passionate about helping people develop professionally and finds coaching and mentoring genuinely rewarding. He is a Results Trained Coach certified by The NeuroLeadership Institute in Brain Based Coaching and enjoys coaching current executive and future leaders who want to invest in their professional development and unlock their full potential. 

Ville was born in Finland, grew up in Switzerland and graduated with a MSc in Sports Management and Business from Birkbeck College at the University of London. Passionate about playing and coaching football, he enjoys hiking, snowboarding, cycling, golf, swimming and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.