Sounds reasonable enough, but before you dive in ask yourself this: what’s the difference between Social Selling and Sales Social Engagement?
We’re all familiar with the former: someone connects with you on Linkedin out of the blue and then immediately pitches their product or service.
Mary Shea (PhD) VP of Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach asks, why are people still doing this ten years later? Cameron’s response (of a hypothetical scenario) is worth visualizing: would salespeople do the same move in person face to face at an event?
Of course not. So why do people cold pitch so often on social media? And how could they do better?
This is where Sales Social Engagement differs from mere Social Selling. Instead of pushing a square transactional peg into a round hole, socially engaged salespeople build relationships in a community that is relevant to their territory.
In this episode Mary and Cameron explore:
- The tenets of Sales Social Engagement
- How personal values factor into buying decisions
- Bridging the Sales Execution Gap
- The top-three places buyers want to meet
- What the future CRO and CMO look like
- Exploration, Consolidation, Platformization
- The importance of one source of data truth
Watch the Full Episode
Three valuable lessons to remember:
Key takeaway 1: social is now table stakes for selling
However you want to call it, salespeople engaging on social media has been formally recognized as a proven strategy since at least 2011.
What began as perhaps supplemental to building pipeline and generating deals, the reality is simple: everyone is on social media now. Your buyers, your competition, your coworker’s dog.
Any company that doesn’t arm its sellers with a social engagement tool is putting themselves at a big disadvantage. And to avoid the aforementioned faux-pas of cold-pitch “Social Selling”, training is imperative to rise to higher ground of Sales Social Engagement.
The core tenets are quite simple and apply to more than just sales: deepen and extend the relationships in your community and contacts. You’re not selling, you’re growing trust.
Equally true for marketing and recruiting as well, social engagement involves curating content that resonates with your communities. Interact with your buyers, engage, educate, and most importantly: do digital good deeds!
Key takeaway 2: invest in platformization now
What are sales teams going to invest in during this recession?
As companies tighten the belts right, consolidation and driving efficiency and effectiveness will be imperative.
Time is not your friend as a salesperson, which is why social engagement tools like EveryoneSocial enable sales teams without tripping up your daily cadence.
Speaking of the crunch, Outreach has found that sellers are spending only 23% of their time actually in selling, and managers are only spending 14% of their time on coaching.
This is why closing the gap for high-value activities is such an important and proven way to drive up revenue, and often very quickly if done effectively.
For execution, Outreach is leading the pack amidst the “Sales Tech Mayhem”, providing a full suite of capabilities across the entire revenue cycle.
If you’re like Mary, keeping a light touch almost exclusively via your mobile device is often enough to make an impact and stay engaged with the communities that matter to you.
Key takeaway 3: authenticity drives revenue
Cold pitching on LinkedIn is still a frustration we all encounter more than we’d want, but progress has occurred on another front: the acceptance of authenticity.
Sharing your fully authentic self is not only permitted in a way it may have been frowned upon a decade ago, “personal performs” as Cameron puts it.
Being authentic and creating personal posts also involves sharing your values.
Mary explains in the episode, 77% of buyers said they would consider not moving forward with a supplier if their values did not align.
As with any relationship building, Sales Social Engagement depends upon sincerity and a genuine presentation of oneself.
If your sales team isn’t currently engaging on social media, feel free to reach out and we’d love to talk about how to fully enable your people.
