http://www.salesforlife.com/blog/15-insights-that-prove-the-value-of-social-selling-infographic
Social selling is leveraging your social network to find the right prospects with whom to build trust, nurture relationships, and achieve sales.
is about finding ways to authentically engage with people on social media who have a problem that you can solve, or a solution you can sell. The key is to allow people to engage with your brand on the platform of their choice.
The traditional golden rules of selling still apply to social. You need to understand your sales lead and their business challenges, you need to have a solution that can solve their challenges, you need to be able to recognize a good lead from a bad one, and you need to be able to articulate why your company is the better choice.
People only buy from people they trust. You need to prove to your sales leads that they can trust you. By building a strong professional brand across your target social platforms, you can reinforce your integrity and industry expertise. You want your sales lead to believe that you’re the go-to person in your niche. As true with all branding, you need to make sure your professional brand is authentic and is consistent on all platforms.
Part of building your professional brand is about positioning yourself as an authority who has value to contribute to your industry. Actively participate in your industry. Seek out speaking engagements, guest blogging, attend industry events, learn new things, and document and share your knowledge and experience. When it comes to social selling, you should always lead with value.
Whether B2C or B2B; they want to be helped, they want to have their problems solved and they want to live a happy, successful life: conversation and building rapport are essential.
LinkedIn helps you build your brand, distribute valuable thought leadership content, and prospect new leads.
Most people put up some of their resume on their LinkedIn profile and call it a day, but if that’s all you do, you’re really missing out on a huge opportunity to build your brand. Expand on the summary section right under your name – tell people who you are and what you do, include your unique selling proposition and testimonials. Add any and all kinds of media to your profile: interviews, podcasts, articles, videos, etc.
Prospects are researching you as much as you’re researching them – you need to make it easy for them to learn about you and want to engage.
If you’re rebranding or starting a new business, LinkedIn provides the opportunity to test your message. If you already have an active business, it allows you to promote your new book, event, product, service, etc.
Share content on LinkedIn publisher:
- Include calls to action that drive people back to your website, landing page, lead magnet, or wherever you need them to go to get them in your funnel.
- Include your contact info. If someone takes the time to read your article, and maybe even click through You could also add a link to a scheduling tool, so they can book a call or meeting.
Use Sales Navigator
If you’re in sales and marketing or are a business owner, you need to have a Sales Navigator account. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to identify the person who’s your ideal lead, and then provides many ways to engage with them. Sales Navigator helps you find exactly the right people and build relationships with them.
With Sales Navigator, you can start generating a private list of potential leads by searching company, industry, location, title, company size and more. This is why it’s extremely important to have clearly defined customer personas, and know who your ideal buyer is. As the saying goes, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable”.
Facebook can lean heavily on the personal side while still delivering strong ROI for businesses. And with 2 billion active users, the power of Facebook for social selling (even B2B) cannot be ignored.
Since some people don’t want to mix their business interests with their personal lives, setting up a Facebook business page to engage with customers and prospects can feel less invasive and more professional.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook lets you create ads where when a user clicks on it, it immediately opens up a Facebook Messenger window and allows the user to start chatting with a company rep.
Once the user starts that conversation, Facebook has artificial intelligence respond and give options on creating a sequence to engage with the lead. They can target conversation with people based on information Facebook has been gathering for years down to your likes, hates, everything you’ve ever done.
You can also drop a link in an email or text that opens up a Simply link to m.me/yourfacebookpagename (eg: m.me/digitalmarketer) and it will jump straight into a Facebook Messenger.
Facebook groups
You may belong to some Facebook groups for your personal interests but niche Facebook groups can also be powerful tools for social selling.
They can help you build your brand, establish yourself as an expert in your industry, provide a vehicle for sharing content, promote new products or services, and drive leads.
The key about using Facebook groups, like all social selling, is to provide value to others. This isn’t the place for blatant self-promotion where you’re just talking about yourself and your company the whole time. You need to give before you can receive.
Customer Engagement
You can set up a Facebook group that provides additional value for your customers, like tips and tricks, sneak peek on upcoming new product releases or features, and access to special content.
It’s a great way to keep your customers engaged with your brand while providing you with intel on what they’re interested in, how they interact with your product or service, new ideas for features, and potentially source upsell opportunities.
Engage with other businesses on Facebook like you would your friends. Like, comment, and share useful content. Maybe cut back on the cute cat video links, but share your content, share their content. Find ways to engage that can nurture a relationship, and potentially grow your network and your audience.
Stay engaged with your followers. If they comment on a post or write something on your page, always, always respond, even if the comment is critical.
Twitter is particularly effective in social listening. Like in all sales interactions, you need to listen to understand what the conversations are about, and then you can strategize about how best to be part of them.
Creating lists can help you monitor what’s happening with your various target audiences, like your existing customers, your sales leads, and even keep your eye on your competitors.
Your Existing Customers list should help you stay engaged and in tune with what’s happening with your existing customer base. Seeing what they’re talking about provides intel for opportunities where you can jump in to like or comment on their tweets, and provide extra value. You are selling, not stalking so be authentic and judicious about what and when you respond.
By creating a private list of sales leads and prospects (you don’t want your competitors to see who you’re following!), you can keep on top of the challenges they may be facing in their business or industry so you can tailor your solution.
Instagram is more than just pretty pictures. With Instagram DM (direct message), it has become a powerful social selling tool, delivering valuable networking and lead generation opportunities.
First, selling 101: you need to find the right accounts to target, as in your target audience.
With Instagram, you can search by keyword hashtags, users, or location.
With hashtags, search for terms that are common in your industry or niche, like #podcasts or #marathonrunners, or #digitalmarketing.
With users, you can search for specific influencers, partners, or potential customers you want to connect with.
And, if your market is local, or you want to build opportunities specific location, you can filter your searches by city. So maybe #marathonrunners in Birmingham.
Don’t get caught up on the number of followers each account has. You want quality over quantity in terms of the kind of engagement this account receives. You don’t necessarily want someone with 75,000 followers if their content is low quality, they post infrequently, and there’s not a lot of interaction between the account owner and their followers. You want active, engaged, and engaging accounts.
Once you’ve found some accounts with real potential, reach out to via Instagram DM. But remember the rules of social selling: you need to provide VALUE and you need to be authentic and human in your approach.
Don’t go in with cold outreach to sell your product or service. This is about nurturing a relationship and the DM is just the very first step. Approached the right way, it could turn into a lucrative business opportunity.
There’s no reason to be intimidated by social selling and there are lots of reasons to be doing it.
It’s really no different from the sales best practices you follow now; you’re just applying them in different contexts with potentially more effective results.
Social selling allows you to connect with your leads when they want and need, rather than interrupting them with annoying cold calls and forgettable emails. It’s all about sparking a well-timed and placed conversation that can lead to a mutually beneficial relationship.
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