What is social selling?
Social selling is the use of social networks in the sales process to generate leads (inbound marketing). This technique is particularly well suited for B to B interactions because it is more effective and less daunting than traditional sales methods such as emailing or telephone prospecting.
According to a Forbes study, connected salespeople are 20% more efficient than others.
Social selling is part of a long-term approach. Do not invest time and money if you expect immediate results: you may be disappointed! On the contrary, the more effort you make in the long term and on a healthy basis, the more efficient you will become.
How to set up a social selling strategy?
- Optimise your profiles
Your different profiles (personal and business) are your showcase. If the elements are not up to date or not informed at all, e.g., your opening hours, the URL of your site or the mission of your company, you lose credibility.
This information may be up-to-date today but not tomorrow! Why? Because the platforms are constantly evolving and you may have missed out on new information to communicate. Remember to regularly return to your profile settings to make sure you have no new fields to update. - Rely on your team
The more you have, the stronger you become! Your employees, and especially sales representatives, must feel that they have a mission. What should motivate them? Positioning themselves as an expert in their field and having an engaging and more visible profile will increase your chances of finding new sales opportunities.
Remember that one of the keys to success is the close collaboration of your marketing and sales teams. Most of your communication passes through your sales representatives as they are active in the field and in contact with the clients. The marketing team will be able to transmit information, company news, establish a communication plan or support the sales representatives in writing content. - Monitor and share content
Setting up a monitoring system to follow the news of your field of activity will enable you to detect opportunities for content to share with your network.
Keep in mind that it’s better to share quality content that might be of interest to your target audience once a month, than posting non-value added content ten times a day. You risk to wear out your network, or even worse, have them unsubscribe from your news. - Identify contacts/prospects
Subtle techniques exist to identify qualified prospects. Finding the director of a company you are targeting is no secret to anyone. But it is necessary to sometimes bypass the social network common search engine system to go much further in the search. We are not going to reveal everything here because these are tricks that we evoke during our LinkedIn workshop: How to boost your commercial prospection on LinkedIn? - Interact with users and engage in conversation
Reply quickly to comments, like their posts, be open and available to answer their questions… it may seem basic and yet, it must be prepared.
To get in touch with your identified prospects and start the conversation, do not talk about yourself but about them! Test your connecting message and compare response rates. - Measuring performance
Does it work?
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) measures your effectiveness in imposing your professional brand, finding the right people, communicating with useful news and building relationships. It is updated daily.
Track your leads in a CRM tool and assign them the right source and generated revenue. By drawing a report once or twice a year, you will know where your leads come from and be able to focus your efforts where there is the most potential.
It is not enough to sit around a table and say “we’re going to socialise”. It is a business and personal investment. Involve your employees and you will all come out as winners.
To maximise your chances of success, train your sales and marketing teams. The Suisseo agency offers a one-day workshop dedicated to social selling on LinkedIn, which reviews all aspects of the strategy through practical cases, in your company or in our offices. Contact us for further details!