Social selling is about leveraging your social media channels to connect with the right prospects, engage with those prospects, foster trust, and ultimately meet your sales goals. Building new relationships is now easier than ever before and is done in a way that is minimally disruptive to your prospective customers. Mastery of social selling can eliminate the need for cold calling.
Fundamentally, social selling is all about making connections and sharing great content. Demonstrate your expertise by sharing insightful and helpful opinions. This is a great way to distinguish yourself as a trustworthy resource. According to LinkedIn Sales Solutions, 92% of B2B buyers say they are more likely to engage with sales professionals if they are industry thought leaders.
To get started on social selling make sure to:
1. Identify your market target and figure out which social media platforms they are likely to use.
2. Create a business page on your chosen social media channels.
3. Create and post original helpful content. Also, share content from other trusted industry sources.
4. Post helpful comments on other pages.
5. Engage your audience. Answer questions. Reply to comments. Position yourself as an industry expert. Interacting with your target audience will help keep your services top of mind.
1. Show Up in Person
Although automated liking and commenting tools exist, these do nothing to build rapport. There are ways to incorporate chatbots into marketing and customer service, but they don’t work with social selling. Be present in real life. The point of social selling is to build relationships and you can’t do that unless you seem both human and approachable.
2. Optimize Your Social Media Profile
You need to make sure your profile actually shows up when customers and prospects are looking for help. Be sure to optimize your social media profiles across all of your chosen social media platforms to maximize the impact of your social selling strategy. Your various profiles do not need to be identical but they need to be consistent.
3. Listen Carefully
Companies pay to get information about potential leads. If you listen strategically on social media you can get that information for free. Prospects are sharing incredibly valuable information on all of their social channels—they’re telling you exactly what they want and exactly what they need. Moreover, they are also telling you exactly what they don’t need. All you have to do is listen. Use social lists to see what people are saying about you, your company, your industry, and your competitors. Especially, watch for pain points and requests for recommendations, as these are perfect opportunities for you to provide a solution to their problem.
Before reaching out to any of the leads you may identify, make sure to customize your message based on the wealth of information they have already provided.
4. Provide Value
Help, don’t pitch. Your goal should be to contribute valuable information that can help establish you as an expert in your field. Write posts that share important and helpful information. It’s OK to share relevant posts from other organizations as well just add a short helpful comment of your own. It’s OK to mention your product or services in some social posts but not all of them. Also, don’t make your posts sales pitches. The goal in social selling is to establish relationships that will eventually lead to a sale, not to make a sale on initial contact.
5. Build Relationships
Stay in touch with social contacts over time. Pay attention to the content they’re posting, and from time to time engage with a like or a comment to let them know you’ve read and appreciated what they have to say. If you notice a contact posing a question, jump in with a meaningful answer. Focus on how you can help your contacts or make their lives easier. If you can establish yourself as their go-to person in your industry, you will be top of mind when they’re ready to make a purchase?
6. Don’t Be a Social Creep
Don’t make your prospects uncomfortable. Here are some social selling tips from HubSpot:
Social selling is a fantastic way to increase your sales. Follow our simple social selling best practices to build relationships and hit your sales targets.