Yield Real Results With A Social Selling Strategy

Today’s buyer’s journey has a strong demand for social selling, which is a key utilization method of technology to enhance the human touch for clients. That’s one of the main reasons we use it internally. By connecting to prospects and leads through social platforms and sharing branded content and thought leadership, our sales reps develop new avenues for authentic engagement and build relationships with prospects that convert to higher quality leads.

All the platform’s a stage

To start, your sales team members should be active on LinkedIn and use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to give them an extra edge on which prospects to prioritize. While LinkedIn is where most of the action takes place, Twitter is another platform that can be used to “listen” to prospects and engage. Employee advocacy platforms—EveryoneSocial, Bambu, Grapevine6, etc., — provide company branded content for employees to easily share on their social accounts. When used properly and consistently, these platforms help amplify your voice in the market to share the stories, knowledge, and success of your company to a vast audience.

It’s a buyer’s world

The landscape in which buyers are looking for information has changed. Buyers have more information available to them than ever before and they thoroughly research before reaching out to a sales person. Using social to put your company and sales people in front of buyers helps them during this research stage. You have another channel to connect with buyers and learn more about the person—personal interests, initiatives at work or problems they are trying to solve—prior to any interaction. By sharing content that is relevant to their industry, your sales team can provide value, build trust and be seen as a subject matter expert.

Social selling = social success

Since prospects are less likely to respond to phone calls or emails these days, your sales team needs to properly communicate with prospects in a way that resonates with them, hence social selling. Social sellers outsell colleagues who don’t use social media by 78 percent. Set your sales team up for success with the right tools, training and content with these tips and tricks:

• Be authentic and mindful when engaging with a prospect. This is not another avenue to come in with a cold pitch.
• Personal brand matters. Posts should align with your company brand as well as the individual brand as a subject matter expert for what matters to them.
• Consistency is key. Make sure that what is shared is consistent across social platforms. Hint: It’s also a good idea to use the same profile picture on all platforms.

Social selling is a must-have for every sales team and produces real results. The amount of leads generated skyrocketed for one our clients who implemented social selling with their sales development reps. Through social selling, our client created $2.2M in opportunities within the first six months.

Social selling is one of the best tools we have today to reach out to prospects in a personal way and in a timely manner. By empowering your team with the tools needed to successfully connect with prospects on social media, you’ll build brand awareness and drastically increase leads.