You’ve probably heard of “social selling,” but what exactly is it? Put another way, social selling is a sales technique that combines traditional sales methods with modern digital tools. At its core, it’s about using social media networks to reach and engage potential customers in meaningful conversations.
By utilizing social selling, businesses can precisely identify potential leads and build trust-based relationships with them through popular online platforms. That said, it’s important to note that social selling isn’t just about posting on social media platforms. There are best practices to follow to ensure your efforts are effective.
Let’s look at some of the best social selling techniques and strategies to get ahead.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is an innovative lead-generation technique created to assist salespeople in forming connections with potential buyers via social media platforms. Some also say it is a sales and marketing strategy that combines traditional sales methods with the power of social networks.
Utilizing the process of “social listening,” salespeople can understand what their target market discusses online. This knowledge helps them create meaningful conversations that resonate most with their audience and foster authentic relationships through engagement.
By utilizing social selling, customers and companies can transcend the typical transactional experience of sales, resulting in more authentic relationships with prospective buyers.
Through the power of social media, salespeople can now foster relationships with their top prospects in a much more intimate manner. This has created an incredibly personalized one-to-one experience beyond what’s possible on the internet alone. Furthermore, this online connection can lead to face-to-face meetings and even closed deals when managed appropriately and quickly.
4 Major Benefits of Social Selling Tools
By leveraging social selling, sellers can experience these four critical advantages for their professional or individual brand.
1. It builds trust
Trust is the foundation of any productive transaction or sale, as customers prefer to work with someone they believe in. By connecting with them and strengthening your relationship with them on a deeper level through conversation, you generate an atmosphere of mutual trust that encourages customers to feel safe doing business with you.
This can be accomplished using social media networks like Facebook and Instagram, as these platforms help create a community where people are welcomed regardless of their size or stature.
2. It Yields Long-Term Results
Social selling isn’t just about getting a one-time sale. It’s about establishing a long-term relationship with your customer. By consistently and continuously nurturing relationships with prospective customers, it solidifies bonds that will continue even after they become paying clients.
3. It Amplifies Your Reach
Social selling through social media platforms can expand your network and increase your potential reach exponentially. It will even help you develop relationships with customers who may have yet to find out about you through traditional marketing tactics.
4. It provides insights into your customer base
Companies that actively pursue social listening and conversation with their customers gain valuable insights into what drives them. Social selling is a sales tool and an invaluable market research method.
Interactions from social selling can provide companies with important information about customer desires and interests—even without significant sales results. This information can be employed to create more targeted marketing plans, devise new product designs, or refine product descriptions for maximum appeal.
How Does Social Selling Work Across Various Platforms?
Considering the multifarious approaches to social selling—as people use diverse platforms in varying ways—it is essential that your methods are adjustable and tailored to the particular platform you’re utilizing and the prospect.
To this end, here’s some valuable advice on executing social sales successfully across various major networks.
1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn is the leading B2B social selling platform, with half of all buyers using it as a resource to determine what they will buy. In other words, if you don’t have much time or energy to dedicate to your social selling campaign, this should be your go-to outlet. Remember these guidelines while using LinkedIn to make the right impression on potential buyers and customers.
Step 1: Build Credibility
Social selling should never come off as impersonal; your prospects should feel a sense of trust in you. Word-of-mouth is the best way to achieve this. Check out groups in the same industry as your prospects and add value to the conversations. Also, keep your profile updated with relevant job titles, company names, descriptions, and/or awards.
When it comes to social selling, understand who you’re targeting. Check whether you have customers with whom you have excellent relationships. And if you see someone, request that they provide their endorsement or recommendation on your profile. It will help solidify your authority and influence among new contacts.
Ensure that the abilities you receive endorsements for apply to prospective customers, not just future employers. A potential customer may not be interested in hearing that you’re experienced with particular software (unless it’s something they want to purchase), but an employer surely would.
Step 2: Discover Connections
LinkedIn provides multiple approaches to identify potential prospects—individuals that may derive value from your product or service. Use LinkedIn’s search feature to find skills, job titles, businesses, or even industry-related topics relevant to your ideal customer profile (ICP) and those who have shared connections with you. Leveraging this information, you can use this established relationship by sending a connection request and initiating conversations.
Step 3: Join Groups
Joining LinkedIn Groups is a great way to solidify your connections, as this initiates discussions that enable you to showcase your knowledge and experience in a particular field.
2. Twitter
After LinkedIn, Twitter is another powerful social selling tool for B2B salespeople. Specifically, the platform’s Lists feature enables you to pay attention to content from specific accounts or groups. If you’re looking to bolster your sales strategy with Twitter lists, these three steps are essential:
Step 1: Find Prospects
To expand your prospect pool, search for potential customers or leads on Twitter and add them to a private list. This will prevent competitors from seeing who you’re targeting, but those on the list won’t know they’ve been selected as prospects. It’s a win-win situation. Monitor the content posted by your private list and interact when necessary. But don’t get too friendly, given that you don’t have a preexisting connection with them.
Step 2: Network with Existing Customers
A strong connection with existing customers is essential to making new sales. Utilize Twitter lists to keep up-to-date on their activities, such as what they post and the conversations they’re following. This can strengthen relationships or even open doors for new opportunities.
You can list your current customers publicly, but make sure you didn’t sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or are in an industry that requires confidentiality.
That way, potential consumers can glance at the existing brands that have already done business with you and gain valuable insight into your services. Additionally, don’t just like their tweets for the sole purpose of being polite; rather, comment when there is genuine value to be added.
Step 3: Monitor Competitors
Monitoring competitors also helps you stay ahead of the game. Create a Twitter list that includes your competitors and other industry experts or influencers in your field. Analyze their content to identify areas where you can improve your services and differentiate yourself from them. Additionally, watch for changes in their strategies so that you can adapt yours accordingly.
3. Other Platforms
Undoubtedly, there are many other social media networks to browse, including Facebook, which has almost ten times as many users as LinkedIn. Still, typically, sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit aren’t the best choices for sales-related activities. On these platforms, most users refrain from engaging with business issues, as they’re intended for discussing social issues and connecting with friends and family.
14 Best Social Selling Practices That Work
There are so many excellent social selling practices out there, but if you’re looking for the most effective methods that will help you see results quickly, here are some of the best:
1. Ensure Your Social Media Profiles Are Up-To-Date, Professional, and Authentic
Before initiating your social selling strategy, refine and update your social media profiles, whether on LinkedIn or Facebook. Prospects are unlikely to respond if they see an outdated or incomplete profile, or if their profile picture is blurry or unprofessional.
An excellent first impression is of utmost importance on social media. It’s also essential to be genuine and trustworthy to attract and engage a larger base of followers. We recommend you use a picture displaying your professional side and reflecting the real you.
Include brief details about who you are professionally at your company with links to where people can learn more about it. Also, describe your role there and the major projects or initiatives you’ve been involved in.
2. Connect with your prospects
Once your profile is updated, start connecting with potential prospects. Be sure to research the companies and people you are connecting with and send a personalized connection message before sending one.
3. Join relevant online communities or forums, such as LinkedIn groups
Joining relevant communities enables you to join the conversation about topics that are meaningful to your target prospects. You can join groups on LinkedIn and other platforms that follow trendy industry topics.
Besides, joining these groups will give you invaluable insight into their needs and how to meet them better. You can also initiate meaningful conversations if you want. However, avoid promotional comments and unsolicited sales pitches.
4. Post Content That Builds Your Personal Brand And Credibility
Strengthen your presence on social media and build trust with your customers by sharing compelling, original content. Share helpful articles related to the industries of those you want to contact. These tactics help create an impact on your audience and promote engagement. You can ask your followers to jump in and get the conversation going by engaging with you in the comments.
5. Track Comments
If you see posts with high engagement, explore the comments section and join the discussion. By browsing your prospects’ comments, you can gain insight into their perspectives and preferences. This can help you decide what type of content to share with them.
6. Share Success Stories
Consumers are more likely to trust individuals they can relate to. This is why testimonials from satisfied customers are important to win over prospects. If your customers have a positive opinion of your product or service, sharing their success stories on your social media channels will help build relationships with those who might still be on the fence.
Furthermore, demonstrating the success of your existing customers is an effective way to create credibility and increase engagement among prospective buyers.
7. Be Consistent
Although dedicating an entire day to social media may not be the most productive way to spend your time, you should maintain regular posting and engagement. Nurture your connections by following up with leads you have already connected with.
Congratulate them when they move to new roles or businesses, and interact with their content across social media. Even if it doesn’t promote your product directly, be available for guidance and assistance whenever necessary.
8. Monitor engagement
Monitoring your social media engagement metrics, such as likes, shares, and comments, effectively shows what content connects with your audience. Take cues from what works best so you can consistently convey the most relevant material to your audience.
9. Seek referrals
If you’ve identified certain stakeholders that you’d like to connect with, take a quick moment to review their LinkedIn profiles and see if there are any mutual contacts. You can always ask your mutual connection for an introduction, which will help you access those valuable leads.
10. Know when to take your conversations off social media platforms
If you aspire to close the sale, eventually, you’ll need to bridge your established connections on social media into a more tangible setting. After selecting an authentic relationship with your prospect through various online platforms, suggest hopping on a call or meeting in person so the conversation can continue without digital distractions.
By being more aware of your prospects’ difficulties and circumstances, you can gain valuable insight to help close the deal.
11. Start Blogging
Even though sales representatives don’t have to blog to be successful on social media, it can still serve as a useful tool for drawing qualified buyers. By blogging, you can earn industry respect and provide value-adding content that showcases your knowledge and thought leadership capabilities.
Make sure your clients and prospects are exposed to your most popular shared content. Your social selling campaigns won’t be successful if the right people don’t see your content. Use targeted campaigns to ensure maximum visibility for the content you create. Of course, you shouldn’t be aggressive.
12. Align With Your Marketing Teams
Most people overlook the importance of aligning social selling campaigns with marketing teams. But this can do more harm than good. By combining the marketing and sales teams, social selling has the potential to be incredibly successful.
For instance, sellers who create resonating content may utilize it across various channels and reach a larger audience when the marketing department provides advertising support.
13. Don’t be a robot!
The golden rule of social selling is to always act like a human. People appreciate it when you sound natural and casual, so don’t be afraid to inject some humor or light conversation into your posts. Also, avoid using the same exact phrases repeatedly, as this will make your interactions appear robotic.
Instead, add variety to the words you use and your communication style to make them more appealing to a broader audience. Reposting content without actually reading it, commenting on it, or verifying its relevance will make you look like a robot—and that’s not good.
14. Post Regularly and Avoid Low-Quality Content
Posts and content that aren’t regular or helpful will be a major red flag to your followers. Make sure that posts are scheduled regularly and that they provide value to readers. Post only quality content. Quality content matters when it comes to social selling, so always double-check before posting anything online. Spend time creating valuable content and thinking of ways to share it with your target audience. Anything else would be akin to spamming your followers.
Conclusion
There you go—these social selling tips can take your brand promotion to the next level on social media and create loyal customers while increasing conversions. All that’s required is the right approach, dedication, and consistency. So get out there and craft a comprehensive social selling plan with these concepts in mind—and let success follow.
What are your top tips for successful social selling? Share them with us in the comments.
You have crafted an impressive sales enablement strategy – now it’s time to watch it come alive. But, before that, equip yourself with sales enablement tools to maximize your strategy’s success.
Sales teams are facing increased competition and stagnation in their sales efforts. To break out of this and stay ahead, your reps need to have the right resources when they need them as quickly as possible.
Sales enablement tools are designed to help sales reps and marketers work together more efficiently and effectively. Employing these tools in their workflow will increase your team’s productivity and sales performance.
What Is Sales Enablement?
At its essence, sales enablement provides your sales team with the necessary resources to perform efficiently and effectively, such as tools, technology, content, and more. It is a strategy to provide sales representatives with the resources needed to close deals faster.
Sales enablement tools improve customer experience, speed up the sales process, and increase overall revenue. They can help streamline processes such as onboarding and training new reps, tracking the performance of existing representatives, and providing relevant content for sales interaction.
What Are Sales Enablement Tools?
A sales enablement tool is comparable to CRM software but with a focus on sales and marketing teams. With a sales enablement system, you can easily bridge the gap between marketing and sales. Tracking analytics and content usage are made simple with these tools, allowing you to quickly identify where improvements need to be made to reach success faster.
They provide an organized repository of approved content that all reps can access quickly and easily. Sales reps no longer have to waste valuable time searching through emails or file systems for relevant documents; they can now log into the content library, search for what they need, and move on.
By leveraging the right tool, you can effortlessly locate and monitor marketing content and analytics, as well as cross-reference data from sales reps which will help you identify potential areas of improvement.
Furthermore, sales enablement tools can eliminate redundancies and reduce the time spent on tedious tasks, allowing more time to strategize and close deals. It helps your team streamline processes so they can focus their energy on what matters: closing deals!
Benefits of Sales Enablement Tools
Many would argue that sales enablement tools may reduce the abilities of salespersons, but the reality is quite the contrary. By providing reps with reliable resources and insights, they can become more efficient in their tasks.
These tools can improve customer experience by providing customers with personalized content that is tailored to their needs. Additionally, they increase the speed at which deals are closed by reducing the time it takes your reps to access critical resources.
Finally, they increase overall revenue by improving the efficiency of sales reps and providing them with the necessary data to make accurate decisions.
The advantages of sales enablement tools include the following:
Scaling Success – Since sales enablement tools are designed to scale, you can easily increase your success rate by quickly onboarding and training new reps. By equipping the entire sales reps team with reliable sales enablement tools, an organization can reduce the dependency on a few typical top performers to sustain success.
Robust Sales Data
Sales enablement tools provide sales reps with up-to-date statistics, which helps them make informed decisions when handling customer conversations and selling approaches.
Sales enablement tools have gained impressive traction in recent years, and most platforms specialize in leveraging data for collecting, organizing, and activating it for the sales teams‘ usage.
With invaluable insights about buyer preferences, personas, and pain points, sellers have successfully engaged with prospective customers with specific strategies.
Closing Deals Faster
One of the most significant advantages of using sales enablement tools is that they help close deals faster. By providing reps with the right resources and insights, they can make decisions in a shorter time frame and increase their chances of closing deals.
By utilizing improved data and access to better tools, sales reps can get their hands on the intel necessary to engage in more effective conversations faster. Thus, this reduces the time and effort needed to close deals.
The Tools Align Sales And Marketing Initiatives With Overall Strategy
Sales enablement tools can help ensure that sales and marketing teams work together efficiently. By providing sales reps with access to the latest content, they can easily keep up with customer expectations and industry trends and quickly respond to customer queries.
Additionally, these tools allow marketers to track how their content is performing and identify where improvements need to be made to make campaigns more effective.
Improved Company Reputation
Organizations can maintain a good reputation in the market by equipping sales reps with the right resources and insights. Customers want to feel that their interactions are meaningful and that they get value from them. Sales enablement tools facilitate this by providing customers with personalized content tailored to their needs, resulting in improved customer loyalty.
Types Of Sales Enablement Tools
There are primarily four categories of sales enablement tools:
Sales Engagement Tools
Sales engagement tools allow sales teams to contact prospective customers through phone calls, emails, and social media outreach. Dialpad, Salesloft, Apollo.io, and Loom are good sales engagement tools.
Sales Content Management
A sales content management tool is essential to selling advanced products such as enterprise software. This allows the sales team to organize blogs, whitepapers, case studies, PDFs, and videos that are helpful to close deals faster. Some popular tools in this category are Highspot, Showpad, and Guru.
Sales Intelligence Tools
If you are in a B2B SaaS realm, sales intelligence tools are essential for sales teams and marketers to gain insights about their prospect’s business. This is crucial as they can discover and optimize their outreach to meet their requirements. LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo are two sales intelligence tools that many successful sales teams have used.
Sales Intent Tools
Sales teams can utilize sales intent tools to identify and target qualified leads. For instance, certain sales intent tools can collect data on the roles or titles of individuals visiting your website – allowing you to make more informed decisions on who to target. Sales intelligence tools such as 6 sense and Demand base are great examples of sales intent tools.
How Important Is It To Choose The Right Sales Enablement Tool?
Every organization’s needs are different, and the right sales enablement tool will depend on the type of products and services you offer, as well as the size and scale of your organization. Choosing a tool that provides all the features and capabilities necessary to meet your specific objectives is essential.
For instance, if you offer a more affordable item or service, your customers will probably spend less time in the sales funnel. You might also want to invest in prospecting and lead generation software.
Conversely, perhaps you sell an expensive product; in this case, the buyer journey is longer and concentrates heavily on strengthening relationships with potential buyers. If this applies to your business model, then make sure that whatever sales enablement tool you choose has strong content management capabilities plus delivery features for optimum efficiency.
By leveraging the right tool, you can maximize your return on investment and gain insights into how to serve your customers best. The right sales enablement tool can help increase efficiency and effectiveness in all areas of the sales process – from lead generation to customer relationship management. So it’s important to choose one that fits your needs and budget.
How To Choose The Right Sales Enablement Tool For Your Organization
There are hundreds of sales enablement tools available, and it can be difficult to know which one is best for your business. To narrow down your options, consider the following:
1. Analyze Your Needs
Think about what you need from the software – do you need help with customer engagement or lead generation? Is content management important to you? Once you understand exactly which features are essential for your business, choosing a sales enablement tool that suits your needs will be easier.
2. Easy-To-Use User Interface
Look for an intuitive user interface that is easy to learn and use. The sales enablement tool should be designed so your team can get up and running quickly. If the platform your company has decided to use solves most of your challenges, you should consider getting trained on how to use it effectively.
On the other hand, if its complexity outweighs any potential benefit, a different option that is simpler to understand may be more suitable for you.
3. Robust Analytics And Data Tracking
Choose a tool that offers robust analytics and data tracking to get insights into your team’s performance. The right sales enablement tool should provide actionable intelligence to help inform decision-making and optimize processes.
Most platforms offer an immense array of sales productivity metrics, and navigating through them can be overwhelming.
While they all offer insight, you don’t need to focus on them simultaneously. Prioritize what is essential for your goals and start with those strategies when assessing which functionalities are most beneficial.
4. CRM Integration
Look for a sales enablement tool integrated with your existing CRM system. This can help streamline data entry and ensure accuracy in customer records. There are many tools that are designed precisely with leading CRMs in mind; therefore, making such a choice could prove beneficial as the tool will run more efficiently within your existing architecture.
5. Content Creation Capabilities
Content is the cornerstone of sales enablement. The right tool should be able to create and share content easily while tracking its usage and effectiveness. Content creation capabilities should include features like drag-and-drop editors, templates, and automated workflows. These features will make it easier for reps to promptly create personalized content based on customer needs.
6. Mobile-Friendly
Everyone is on their phones, so your sales enablement tool should be mobile-friendly. This will make it easier for reps to access key information and resources while on the go and those who work remotely or in different time zones. Consider tools that can be accessed from any device and have an easy-to-use mobile app.
7. Pricing
It is essential to consider the cost of a sales enablement tool before investing in it. Factor in both recurring charges, like subscription fees or usage-based pricing, as well as any upfront costs that may be associated with implementation and training.
Most offer a complimentary trial and several pricing options that can be adapted as your company expands. If your company still needs to be ready to commit to a sales enablement tool, free or low-cost options may suit your needs.
Final Words
Investing in a sales enablement tool could be a wise decision for businesses looking to streamline their efforts and increase sales. Taking into account the different features and pricing models that are available can help you select one that fits your company’s needs. Additionally, ensure it is compatible with your current CRM system, offers content generation tools, works on mobile devices, and falls within your budget.
