Trending
I was talking to a sales leader the other day about social selling and he said to me
"you need to talk to marketing"
If you think that social selling is all about marketing, you don't understand social selling, let me walk you through what social selling means .....
I think we can all agree what sales means ...
Sales is about finding opportunities, often called prospecting, business development, demand generation and then taking those "leads" through a deal cycle to close.
What is social selling?
Social selling is a methodology that you use all the way through the sales process.
Let's look at a "typical" social selling sales process:-
1. You will have a buyer-centric profile, that gets buyers to see you as an expert, somebody that can help them, somebody they can do business with. The modern buyer is looking for somebody who isn't "just another salesperson".
2. You connect with the people you want to influence and sell to.
3. You create content that shows you are that expert that people want to work with and buyers will want to buy from. Tip: Don't sell, more on that in a bit.
4. This will create conversations (lots of them) on social media and many of these you will take off line. NB: Social selling isn't anti-telephone or anti-zoom, of course you will take these conversations to a "meeting" in some shape or form. Covid aside, you might even have a face-to-face meeting.
5. Once you have this meeting the deal will move though your deal flow. Let's assume they want to move ahead, to proposal or whatever your next sales steps are.
6. It's now you job to nurture these people. You do this, not by annoying people with phone calls and emails, you inspire, entertain your prospects with content.
7. Social selling allows you to be "front of mind" with your prospects daily. In fact, you can be obvious choice, in fact the only choice if you go down the route of digital dominance.
8. By being always "front of mind" will reduce the amount of ghosting and will accelerate your deals as your content will create a sense of urgency.
9. In most cases you will find that you won't close the deal, it's about empowering your prospect to buy.
10. Your work to date, will have positioned you, so you can "land and expand" for any renewals or follow up sales. It provides you will an Account-based marketing (ABM) / Account-based sales position.
This does not sound like social selling is marketing's responsibility to me!
If you read those ten steps back, you can see that social selling does not sit in marketing, it sits fairly and squarely in sales.
Sales leaders, it's time you took responsibility for your sales team and got them digital ready, when you are prospecting, but also, throughout the sales process!
Before you dive in a couple of words of advice about how not to waste time our your budget.
How not to waste time and budget on failed social selling initiatives
There are too many people wasting time and budget with social selling.
Remember that social selling is about creating revenue and EBITDA for your business. If you post anything, there needs to be a strategy and you need to ask yourself two questions.
- How many meetings or leads can you create with your activity on social media?
- How much revenue have you created from your activity on social media?
If you need help on social selling
If you want to understand how social selling can help your business, DLA Ignite has been transforming business for over 6 years now.
Our social selling and influence course, will give you all the skills you need to cover those 10 steps above.
Related: The Pitfalls of Video Prospecting