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.