It is hard to run an online business without the implementation of social selling. Social selling is a concept where sales reps leverage social networking platforms to connect with the right prospects and deeper meaningful relationships. Social selling has emerged one of the hottest sales industry trends in recent times.
The modern buyers of today are more empowered, educated and informed when evaluating options. Traditional ways of selling are longer in trend which has made channels like cold calling and promotional emails fatigued. No doubt having a large presence on the social media channels is great but at the end of the day, you will need these channels to help you and B2B sales teams generate new opportunities for business. And this is where social selling strategy comes into action.
Implementing social selling without a proper strategy is of no use. Integrating social selling with your sales and marketing efforts will not only help you make the jump from prospect to lead status but also will give you a leading edge to measure the effectiveness of your social media strategy.
1. Keep the conversation going
Gone is the time when business cards needed to spread your business. The sales reps and good networkers these days need to stay in that network and communicate with the leads you have already generated. Whether it is through LinkedIn, facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform, it is crucial to continuously engage with your audience. For this, you should continuously check for comments and reply without needing to log into each individual network.
2. Empowering sales teams
Social selling is not about big brands posting pictures and information on the brand’s Facebook page or other network. Fundamentally, social selling is about communicating online with individuals. The social leaders are responsible for training their sales teams so that they can make sure that the right messages are getting to the right people from the right people. The sales leaders can track the success of the employee’s individual posts in order to identify top contributing employees and help improve sales for the entire organization.
3. Measuring ROI
What will be the impact of social selling on your sales funnel? You need to find out this by knowing your business well. By merging your sales, Customer relationship management marketing automation and social media channels, you can keep record of the conversions much more accurately that show the true ROI of each of your marketing efforts.
No doubt, there are a lot of elements to a successful social selling program. However, if you follow the social selling strategies effectively, you can plot your steps to a successful social selling implementation.
Guest article written by: From start-ups to the large, George Albert is helping organizations in increasing pipeline and revenue through social selling. He is COO at Sales for Life who is helping B2B Companies create behavioral change with the right strategies to engage today’s modern buyer.