Those in sales will say there simply is no silver bullet that guarantees you always will make your quota and secure a spot in the coveted president’s club. Still, social selling has emerged as a powerful tool to combine with traditional sales tactics.
In a world where digital information dominates, social selling clearly has its place. Forrester Research says 74% of today’s B2B buyers conduct research online before making a decision. LinkedIn confirms what sales reps experience daily: 90% of decision makers no longer respond to cold calls or emails. Looking at sales results, Aberdeen Group finds 72% of salespeople using social selling outperform their peers and those same social sellers also exceed their quotas by 23%. All of that is unsurprising when you consider buyers trust their professional networks and prefer to work with vendors recommended by someone they know (76%) and with salespeople recommended by someone they know (73%).
Value for Communicators
Since social selling sits at the intersection of marketing communications and sales, it is a great opportunity for communicators to drive social selling adoption and help close the gap between sales and marketing. Another benefit for communicators is that social selling lets us directly measure our influence on business results, sales and bottom-line revenue.
For communicators to make this work, it’s important to have a knowledge base. Taking sales training classes so you can absorb the basics and argot of sales is critical. You will be better prepared to show your sales colleagues how they can be successful with what you teach them: relationship-building, content development and thought leadership.
A word of caution: Social selling can be great, but for many sales reps, adoption will be slow. Consider social selling a complementary sales tactic, not an immediate replacement, for conventional selling.
First Decide on Goals
Ask salespeople to think first about their goals and what they want to do via social media: discover customers, build reputation, meet mentors, expand networks to increase the number of people with particular titles? Whatever the goal(s), focus your and the sales teams’ actions accordingly.
Next, urge sales personnel to research which platform its customers use: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are choices that will cover most businesses. Facebook and Instagram are great for consumer brands and end-users, while LinkedIn is geared toward B2B audiences. Twitter works for B2B and B2C alike. But urge sales not to neglect Facebook just because you’re at a B2B brand. Many times customers will praise or complain about brands on Facebook, for example. So make sure sales monitors all relevant channels and is ready to respond to complaints and thank customers for praise, no matter the platform.
Three Keys of Social Selling
Social selling consists of three key steps: building your profiles and establishing your professional brand; networking and listening via social media as well as prospecting; and content sharing, development and engaging with insights. All three steps will be covered in future articles.
Building profiles seems basic, yet many mistakes are made here. For example, if the link to a sales profile contains numbers and is not personalized, the account settings should be edited so the salesperson has a “vanity” URL that shows the person’s name or business. Complete all sections of profiles to ensure a high search rank. Urge sales personnel to use recent and professional photos across all profiles. Always use a background photo in all social profiles. In the bio, expertise, services offered and maybe the brand’s handle should be shared. Also include personal information, such as hobbies.
On Twitter profiles, use the background photo to showcase something that relates to the business. Spruce up the bio to include keywords that describe the business, products or the salesperson’s passions. On LinkedIn, don’t just use the person’s profile headline for the job title; instead tell visitors what value the salesperson adds and why they should speak with him/her. Add contact information to the summary section, to make it easy for people to contact the salesperson. When using a Facebook page professionally, reconsider its content. Go easy on strong political statements or emotionally charged material. Salespeople can and should show their personality, just consider that customers or prospects also will see this side of you. Sales should be familiar with Facebook ads and analytics to take full advantage of the selling opportunities the platform provides.
When Developing a Content Strategy
As communicators, we know ideas and content need to be tailored for each social platform. Facebook is colloquial and personal, while Twitter is precise and LinkedIn’s content is geared toward business users. While convenient, it’s therefore not a great idea to use a content syndication tool that automatically pushes Twitter content simultaneously to Facebook and LinkedIn.
It’s not only important to watch the language used on each platform—the frequency of posts also is different. Publishing dozens of posts on Twitter generally is not an issue because users often follow many accounts and the flow of information is rapid. Yet posting three to five times daily on Facebook or LinkedIn likely will get you blocked as a spammer.
Now that you have established your professional profiles, the next step is to set up your system for networking and listening via social media and prospecting.
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Profile Tips
- Include your value proposition, passions, hobbies
- Hashtags for key competence areas
- Twitter handle of your brand
- Link to LinkedIn profile
- Use headline to say how you help others and add value, not for your job title
- Experiment with graphic elements to stand out
- Complete all elements of contact information
- Add contact information in summary section
- Include keywords in summary that will help you to be found
- Describe three situations when someone should contact you
- Completely fill out the “about” section, but don’t fill out relationship status
- Add links to your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles
- Be careful with too much detail on interest categories, religious or political views
- Add your business or employer’s web site
- Use “details about you” to share value proposition and why someone should contact the salesperson