The Benefits of Social Selling:

Ready for the deep dive into the benefits of social selling? Let’s jump into the journey below.

While the definition of social selling is quite simple to figure out, we like to have our own defined version. That way we are all on the same page.

So, what is our social selling definition?

Social selling is about leveraging your social networks to attract the right prospects and to build trusted relationships. Ultimately, social selling is a strategy used to help you achieve your sales goals by answering prospects and potential buyers questions through thoughtful content and social interactions.

In a nutshell, social selling is the process of using tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to:

• Create relationships
• Define your reputation
• Gain visibility among your target market
• Deliver value to your target market
• Establish credibility

Being part of the conversation:

Through commenting, liking, or sharing content with prospects, salespeople become part of the conversation and boost their own credibility by showing an active interest in what their buyers are posting and talking about.

A team effort:

To be effective at social selling at an organization level, everyone needs to be engaged. Like many successful business initiatives, social selling is a team effort.

Sales may lead the charge, but marketing, communications, human resources, and other departments can all be an influence to social selling effectiveness. Here’s why more employees outside of sales should master social selling on LinkedIn.

What isn’t social selling?

Probably everything you’ve always associated with sales like locking down deals, cold-calling, and quota-building “magic” strategies.

How do I get started? Before diving in, make sure you and your team have social media accounts set up, mainly LinkedIn and Twitter.

For sales teams, your social accounts should not just read like a resume or contain lackluster information. Instead, provide value to your potential buyers in your social profiles and become a trusted advisor in your industry.

• Clean profile image
• Background image
• Memorable headline (not job title)
• Powerful bio summary that shows your product or service value
• Human interactions and genuine interest in others

Learning:

Once you have your social accounts set up to perfection (Profile banner, profile pic, etc.), you need to begin your research. What are your prospects or buyers sharing? Where do they hangout the most? Learn as much about them as you can.

Finding your clients:

After your profiles and research have been done, you’ll need to figure out where your buyers are-generally speaking for B2B sales you need to be on LinkedIn, Twitter, and possibly other outlets like Facebook and Youtube.

Related: always ensure you have a social media policy in place. It should be simple, to the point, and accessible for all employees. Download our social policy guide for examples, insight, and worksheets.

What tools should I use?

First, you’ll need social media accounts. Preferably LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook (XING if you’re in Europe).

Prospecting:

For help with prospecting, you might want something like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or SalesLoft.

Curating, sharing and measuring:

To help your sales team curate content, share that content via social, and measure their metrics via reporting, you might want a social selling platform like EveryoneSocial.

Training:

To train your team on social selling, you might want to hire a trainer like SalesforLife or Vengreso.

Genesys recognized the value of social selling a few years ago and how it can greatly improve their pipeline, win-rates, and deal size. They adopted EveryoneSocial as their internal social selling program. Learn about their amazing results and strategy in our case study here.

How it benefits the company:

• Increases brand visibility. When more employees are sharing content and optimizing their social profiles, their networks are clicking and engaging. Many times, these are people who are not familiar with the company or do not even realize the value they are missing.
• Drives more leads and higher quality as well. Just as brand visibility increase, so do leads and the quality of those leads. When you have a team of social sellers armed with content, they are educating their social connections. People on LinkedIn for example are especially more interested in this kind of information. Plus, people trust recommendations from friends, colleagues, and family over any other forms of marketing (ads, corporate handles).
• Boosts web traffic. As your brand visibility increases and more employees sharing company content and news, more people will click or search for the company website.
• Helps boost sales results: Besides the increase in quality leads that can help sales, social selling is also a great way to increase deal size and drive better win rates. Meaning more clients and customers and more revenue for your company.

How it benefits employees:

Naturally, companies gain the most from having most or all employees active in social selling. But, employees of various departments also reap the benefits by becoming active social sellers too.

• Builds their personal brand. Not every employee will care about creating their own personal brand, but sharing on social networks and optimizing their profiles can quickly and unintentionally do so.
• Peers see them as thought leaders. Similarly to personal brand, not all employees will care to be thought leaders. However, employees can become the go-to source for information and are the trusted resource to prospects, buyers, and customers.
• Future career opportunities. By optimizing their social profiles and actively being a social seller, more people will notice. This includes employers, recruiting firms, and talent acquisition leaders. It doesn’t just mean new future job opportunities but could lead to article interviews, writing gigs, etc. Of course, your company doesn’t want to lose employees, but you can’t stifle their growth either.
• Contribute to company success. Besides bringing their talent already to their specific job duties, employees are contributing to the growth and financial success of their company even further. This can help add more pride into their work and company. That, of course, can fuel them sharing more content and talking about the company they work for even more.

Now that you have some background into social selling, how do you get started? While it’s not hard to become a quality social seller, you want to ensure you set yourself up for success right from the beginning.
 

Be on the most relevant social platforms

Based on your company’s services or products and where your target prospects are most engaged, that’s where you want to be active the most. There are many social networks and more pop-up often, but it’s important to focus on where your target audience is most likely to be engaging. Research your targets, get to know their interests, and monitor the social platforms.
 

Optimize your social media profiles

Before you dive into social selling, it’s important to optimize your social media profiles to showcase the value you’ll bring. For example, your LinkedIn profile should no longer read like a resume but a glimpse into how you are helping people and organizations succeed. An outdated or incomplete social profile leaves your social selling efforts weak and disconnected.
 

Create social listening alerts

As a social seller, setting up alerts about customers, prospects, and target companies you want as customers will be key. It helps you stay on top of the latest news, insights, and what prospects are talking about that you might be able to help or just engage with in general. You can set up alerts via social channels, social listening tools, or social selling platforms like EveryoneSocial.
 

Connect with customers and prospects on social

Start building your social networks with customers and prospects you want to engage with. Follow them or connect where they are most active, like LinkedIn or Twitter for example.

When asking to connect with others on LinkedIn, don’t leave the default message. Add some personalization to it, which can be fairly simple. And avoid going for a direct sales pitch right away or even after the person has accepted your invite, it’s a great way to be ignored and start off on the wrong foot!
 

Share relevant content and insights

While you might not be an employee content creator, you can still be a curator who shares relevant information to your networks. Content like industry insights about your prospects, interesting news, case studies relevant to them and your business, etc. Mix it up between your own organizations content and third party content.
 

Monitor your engagement and how people interact

Sharing and creating social content is certainly important, but do not neglect leaving comments, liking, or re-sharing insights that your prospects are sharing. It’s a great way to show appreciation, create value, and start a genuine conversation. And monitor your own results from things you post, it can help you tell what content is resonating most. Plus, you should be replying back or liking to acknowledge when others are leaving comments on your content.
 

Use the appropriate tools to help you win

What tools your team or company provides you with will vary in different organizations. But in order to truly succeed in social selling, you’ll need the right technologies to improve your results. Social media platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook), social selling and engagement platform like EveryoneSocial, LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find prospects, etc. That simple combination gives you amazing leverage. However, the sales tech stack is evolving and growing, so there may be different products you want to utilize.
 

Be consistent with your social efforts (it takes time)

While social selling results may happen relatively quickly, everyone experiences this process differently. It’s important to not expect massive impact overnight. Instead, social selling requires you to be consistent with your efforts and blend in this strategy with the other sales tactics you utilize. Overtime, you’ll find some great impact on your prospecting, deals, win rates, and genuine relationships with customers and prospects.
 

Related: Interested in how brands leverage EveryoneSocial to improve social selling? Learn how Qualtrics engages 1,000+ employee advocates with EveryoneSocial to boost their social selling results.

But for long-term success, there are some important social selling tips to make note of:

• Understand what you’re selling, and why
• Be human and personalize, personalize, personalize
• Help employees build their personal brand
• Highlight the people behind the business
• Create an appropriate funnel for where prospect should go
• Provide value, always
• Keep it positive
• Create good content that people [actually] want to share
• Provide guidance
• Listen first and stay gracious

• Companies with consistent social selling processes are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals than non-social sellers. (SalesForLife)
• Half of revenue is influenced by social selling in 14 common industries, including computer software, healthcare, and marketing and advertising. (LinkedIn)
• 80% believe their sales force would be more effective and efficient if they could leverage social media. (Sales Management Association)
• 90% of decision-makers never answer a cold call, but 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions. (LinkedIn)
• Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels. (Social Media Today)
• According to IBM, when a lead is generated through social selling or employee advocacy that lead is 7X more likely to close compared to other lead gen tactics. (Vengreso)
• On average decision-makers consume 5 pieces of content before being ready to speak to a sales rep. (CMO Council)
• A social selling program can drive 16% better win rates, 2x pipeline, and deliver 48% larger deals. (EveryoneSocial)
• 25% of executives say they prioritize social selling, however, only 18% of sales pros agree. (HubSpot)
• 54% of salespeople who use social media can track their social media usage back to at least one closed deal. (A Sales Guy Consulting)

You can read more in-depth about social selling statistics for sales teams here.

If you are interested in starting a program at your company and getting a platform in place, our team is ready to show you more. Schedule your demo here.

Lastly, before we complete this content, we thought it was worth sharing with you some additional resources and content that will be useful to expanding your employee advocacy knowledge.

• 6 Important Steps for a Successful Social Selling Strategy
• The Getting Started Guide To Social Selling
• Why Genesys Invested Big In A Social Selling Program
• The Complete Social Selling Kit

What does social selling mean?

Social selling is a strategy used to help salespeople achieve their sales goals by answering prospects and potential buyers questions through thoughtful content and consistent social interactions. This means building real online relationships and showing genuine interest, not spamming products or services.
 

Why is social selling important?

Social media is where your buyers are looking for information and solutions to their challenges. Here is why social selling is important for your company and sales team:

• Increases brand visibility
• Drives higher quality leads
• Boosts web traffic
• Improves win rates & deal size
• Builds personal brand

How do I start social selling?

In order to get started, you should follow some important social selling tips first. Like understanding what you’re selling, be human and personalize, help employees build their personal brand, highlight the people behind the business, always provide value, keep it positive, create good content, provide guidance, listen first and stay gracious.
 

What are some social selling tools?

Besides being active on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, there are some social selling tools that will help your efforts. Some include LinkedIn Sales Navigator, EveryoneSocial, Nimble, Buffer, and many others your team could consider.
 

Does social selling really work?

Yes, social selling does work if you implement a strategy and take the time to build online relationships with your prospects and customers. This means engaging with their content, providing meaningful insights that are not a sales pitch, sharing content relevant to their pain points, and more. People you want to engage with are already on social networks and consuming information, so be present where they interact the most.
 

What is a social seller?

To be considered a social seller, it means you are developing relationships through social media to boost the overall selling process and results. You begin building trust and value directly with prospects — whom your product or services could be most beneficial, without having to cold call or us bland cold email outreach.

What is social prospecting?

Social prospecting is part of the social selling process and it means using social media and online networks to add more relevant people, potential buyers, and information to your current pipeline. Your social prospecting efforts can include things like company research, learning about your prospects needs before reaching out, or reaching out to your network for introductions to one of their connections on social media.