SOCIAL SELLINGA Manager’s Guide

Our award-winning sales performance software delivers smarter selling to manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers creating a more complete picture of what’s really going on with your customers.

To find out how we can help you #sellsmart with a free demo visit us at www.sales-i.com.

Find out more: www.sales-i.com

OVERVIEWThe sales landscape is changing. The role of digital channels for lead generation, nurturing and customer service increases year-on-year. With a predicted 6.1 billion people having access to your business’ social channels via handheld devices by 2020 – it’s time to get serious about Social Selling.

1 What it is

2 Why you need it

3 How to plan it

4 How to do it

5 Conclusion

LET’S BEGINSocial Selling isn’t a new concept – but it is an increasingly important tool for modern salespeople.

Knowing what this sales method offers, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t do, will help inform online sales efforts for teams and individuals.

In this eBook, we will work to demystify Social Selling so that you can be confident in how to guide your sales team into the social world on behalf of your company.

1 What it is

WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING?Social Selling is when sales teams and salespeople profile, contact and interact directly with prospects through social media platforms. Platforms most widely used for networking, sales and brand management include LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

WHAT SOCIAL SELLING ISN’TSocial Selling isn’t a magic cure for a faltering sales pipeline. It isn’t a quick way to develop hot leads, nor will it be a fast task for your team. However, it is another valuable channel for prospecting, relationship cultivation and business. Nonetheless, just because it is social media does not mean you can skip the strategic planning required.

SALES, NOT MARKETINGSocial Selling isn’t something you can palm off onto your marketing team. This is very much a sales orientated task. However, the content created by your marketing department is a rich source of material for you to repost, comment upon and share as part of your social selling activity.

NO ROBOTSAutomated, generic spam emails and messaging will fail to make an impact with your target prospects. Remember that this is a conversation. YOU need to own it and nurture your online relationships as closely as you would with your email and telephone contacts.

CONVERSATIONS NOT CONTENTUnlike one-way communication marketing campaigns that focus on brand awareness and product education, social selling is all about having conversations. This two-way dialogue is exactly why social selling is so valuable!

For your social selling to gain any traction with your prospects it needs to be of specific use to them. The style and substance of all your actions need to be:

Specific – relate directly to your connection/ prospect or group topic.

Timely – make sure you are joining in with a current discussion and are not offering advice too late to be of use.

Valuable – ensure that you offer advice and counterpoints based on your knowledge and skill set to show how valuable your voice is to -that topic.

All of the above applies to every interaction and each person or group you address. If you don’t have anything to add, or, you know nothing on the topic then you really don’t need to expose your lack of knowledge to your competitors and prospects.

2 Why you need it

IT REALLY WORKS!Social Selling is a golden opportunity to show the value of your expertise. Despite its name, Social Selling has very little to do with selling your product or service. What you are selling is everything else that would make a prospect want to work with you.

Contributing to conversations, responding to cries for help when prospects need expert advice and solving problems in this very public forum works to add value to the product you represent. If you are an established expert in your field, the weight of your opinions and recommendations will grow – building trust and respect in your work. All of which are the type of added value that can put your business to the top of the pile when it (eventually) comes to pitching your product.

(SOUR

CE)

SEP 2018

MILLION3 2 6

(SOUR

CE)

AUG 2018

MILLION5 6 2

(SOUR

CE)

JUN 2018

MILLION2.23

(SO

URC

E)

72% SALESPEOPLE U S I N G O

F

AS PART OF THEIR SALES PROCESS

OUTPERFORMEDOUTPERFORMED

THEIR PEERS AND EXCEEDED QUOTA

23% M O R EM O R E O F T E N .

(SO

URC

E)

HIGH SOCIAL NETWORK ACTIVITY

SALES REPS WITH A

45%ACHIE

VE

SALES OPPORTUNITIES

MORE

51%& AR

E

MORE

LIKELY TO HIT THEIR SALES QUOTAS

INCREASE THEIR SALES PIPELINE BY

TEAMS WHO EMBRACE

S O C I A LS O C I A L 18%

THAN

THO

SE

NOT

USIN

G SOCIAL SELLING.FAST

ER

(SO

URC

E)

OF B2B BUYERS

(SOURCE)

SAID THE VENDOR’S

HAD

A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT

ON THEIR BUYING DECISION.

82%

3 How to plan it

GETTING STARTEDAs with other sales channels, to properly execute Social Selling you will need to create a structure to guide your team and allow you to review the success of your chosen tactics.

Getting started - Goals and objectives - Research

What do you want to achieve?

Do you have a target for driving contacts into your sales pipeline?

Is there a goal for interactions per day, week, month, per user?

Is there a target number of conversions to your website per day, week, month?

WHEN CONTACT IS MADE THROUGH A MUTUAL CONNECTION

5X(SOURCE)

Who you are trying to reach?

Who is your ideal prospect?

Who is your ideal prospect mediator/ gatekeeper?

What do they want to read or discuss?

What are their/their company’s main pain points?

Where are your ideal prospects on social media?

Which platforms are they/their companies using?

Where are they most active on each platform? e.g. Groups, event pages.

Why & what you are posting?

Be clear about your motives behind posting content. e.g. thought leadership pieces or industry insights.

Promotions based on current events – stay relevant.

Contests and giveaways.

Event content (your company events and ones being attended by your team) – join the discussion.

Product developments – news, PR, sharing news about your day-to-day work and your thoughts on these developments.

Industry insights – use your expertise to start a discussion.

Think pieces about related topics – use your expertise to start a discussion.

Polls and open questions to your network – spark a debate about a relevant topic.

Replying to posts that respond to your original posts, discussions – show that you are an individual and that you value your network’s interaction with your posts.

REMEMBER The ‘what’ you

are posting about is the most important element of the whole

plan. If you aren’t tapping into the

topics that excite your prospects, you

won’t get their attention.

What resources do you need to carry out the plan?

Defined roles for your team – a clear understanding of their responsibilities Branded content available for updating profiles such as LinkedIn header images featuring company branding

Training to ensure that everyone representing your brand knows how to practically use social platforms, but also that they agree to your company online behavior charter.

A clear understanding of the tone-of-voice required for Social Selling.

A COMPANY IN

VESTS

IN

A

(SOURCE)

SOCIAL SELLING TRAINING

EVERY

WILL GENERATE

180

DA

YS

WITHIN

40

0%

R OI

$5SALES PERSON’SSALES PERSON’S

REVIEW PROCESSKey metrics to build into your Social Selling strategy:

Engagement This typically includes likes, shares, retweets, Twitter ‘hearts’ and comments.

ReachThis is the total number of people who have scrolled past your post in their feed. However, the various algorithms (which are constantly changing) that dictate who sees what and when employed on each channel will affect each post’s reach.

Although measuring the reach of each post is a valuable way to see how well its content resonated with your audience, it’s advisable to compare a greater sample of similar posts if the findings are going to influence strategy. After all, many platforms give estimates of who they delivered content to – not who actually saw it.

Clicks on linkThe most valuable interaction of all is the click through. Once you have tempted your social prospect to visit your website, you can glean a whole host of information about what you offer that interests them.

ConversionsThe journey from using Social Selling as the first touch point with a prospect to closing a sale will be a lengthy process. But, once you have built connections online and shown your value, don’t forget to credit Social Selling for any deals that come out of the relationship.

Yes, the data to calculate your Social Selling Return On Investment (ROI) will be slow in coming, but it will have value beyond financial income. It may be that to truly explore the value of your team’s Social Selling efforts, you will need to survey customers and prospects, and associations and groups where they have been active.

(SOURCE)

40%OF SALESPEOPLE CLOSE

PER YEAR AS A RESULT OF

SOCIAL SELLING

COMPANIES THAT INVEST IN

HAVE SEEN THEIR REVENUE GROWTH

DOUBLEDOUBLE

CONTENTStick to the 80/20 rule. By this we mean make 80% of your content conversational and 20% about your job, product and brand. If you get the mix incorrect you may be ousted from groups for spamming the talk boards and ignored by prospects that you are trying to woo.

The majority of social posts fall into one of two categories – promoting or community building.

Promoting is primarily the domain of your marketing team, however, reporting and commenting upon content within your network is a great way to promote your business without directly pitching.

OF B2B MARKETERS USE LINKEDIN TO DISTRIBUTE CONTENT (S

OU

RCE)

80

4 How to do it

THE REPOSTReposting interesting content from all sources (not just your business) is one of the quickest Social Selling wins. All you need is to understand the original post, have an opinion that furthers the discussion and know who you are directing your input to.

What is an example of a great repost?

A great repost should add value to the original post.

In this example the reposter has:

asked a specific question to their network

made a comment about the original post

added a call to action

added a link

included relevent hashtags to ensure this report is served to the right people

Are you looking for a product like ours? The best way to find out why

everyone is buzzing about what we do for our customers is to check our user

reviews. Read them now at *LINK*

#sales #accountability #datavisualization #efficiency

#customerengagement

Original Branded Post

Check out our latest customer reviews! *LINK*

#reviews #saas #WOM#customeropinion

THE REPOST DO’S & DONT’S

DO Do say why you have shared a post and what value it offers your network.

Do reference people you want to draw into joining your conversation by tagging them.

Do include #hashtags that relate closely to the topic to ensure the repost reaches a receptive audience.

Do share your expertise.

DON’T Don’t share without any of the above points included. Doing this will can imply that you haven’t read the content, or worse, that you have nothing to contribute.

Don’t be overly negative about content. If you want to put a counter argument in, do so with the aim of offering your expertise to further a conversation, not to end it.

Don’t flip the content into a quick pitch and risk more engaging posts being ignored in future.

YOUR SOCIAL SELLING ALL-STARSDon’t overlook the importance of who you have representing your team online. You will need your sales team to use their social accounts regularly to establish timely content, but you will also need team representatives from your customer service and marketing departments to be on hand when prospects need their expertise. Make sure to include them in your planning so that you are all working toward the same goals.

One final key player will be a member of your senior management team. The power of having a senior member of the business available to weigh in on debates and add their credibility to the work you are doing will make a significant impact on the success of your Social Selling. They will also be able to garner introductions that may otherwise be out of reach for some members of the sales team.

PROACTIVE RESEARCHForget what your inbox is telling you. You don’t need to spend all your budget buying lists from third-parties or data mining companies. Social media already has all the contacts you could ever need – you just need to spend a little time finding them.

You can manually search on most platforms for contacts who are similar to your existing customers, i.e. those who have searched for specific terms or interacted with content that aligns with your product. Of course, you can make use of the many bolt-on products to run searches and carry out online listening for you. Unless you are working on a larger scale Social Selling project, these products may be over complicating your process and slowing the development of contacts. In many cases, the freely available tools on each platform should be more than enough to get results.

5 Conclusion

NEW SALES STYLEThe traditional sales playbook is well overdue a rewrite. Prospects are already online and ready to connect with you, as long as you listen and respond to their needs. This means treating the online prospect the same as you would treat them in person. Talk about topical issues and try to demonstrate why you are worth talking to. You wouldn’t launch straight into a pitch on a first meeting, so don’t do it online.

“So let’s get real: buyer behavior has changed so much that

the traditional sales playbook, developed years and years ago, simply doesn’t

work any more.”- HUBSPOT RESEARCH

(SOURCE)

(SOURCE)

OF DECISION-MAKERS

COLD CALLS

OF EMAILS

DELETEDDELETEDANSWER

48%WITHOUT BEING READ

(SOURCE)

Bear in mind that it isn’t just the person you are connecting with that you are influencing with your online actions and content.

84% of B2B buyers begin the buying process with a referral, and over 90% of purchase decisions are influenced by peer recommendations. So, if your contact isn’t a perfect fit for your product or service, don’t stop interacting with them - they may be the link between you and your next big deal. You also need to remember that as many 75% of B2B buyers use social media platforms to inform their purchasing decisions.

You have to remain relevant, have a consistent presence online and avoid getting involved in controversial discussions. Online interactions last a very long time. Remind yourself of that daily to avoid tarnishing your reputation.

(SO

URC

E)(S

OU

RCE)

(SO

URC

E)

84%

90%

75%

FINANCIAL IMPACTLinkedIn has reported that a significant number of industries are leveraging more than a 50% increase of revenue by employing Social Selling. Included in the top 15 industries are more traditional trades such as Logistics and Supply Chain (58% increase) and Hospital and Healthcare (59% increase).

LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) is LinkedIn’s way of measuring your influence on their platform. The boffins at LinkedIn use an algorithm that scores your profile and your interactions with others in four categories. These are:

Establish your professional brand

Find the right people

Engage with insights

Build relationships

(SO

URC

E)

57%23%

TRADITIONAL SALES TACTICS SOCIAL SELLINGVS.

FINANCIAL IMPACTThe scores in each category show where you have room for improvement. They even provide helpful SlideShares on each section with actionable advice. Plus, you can see how you stack up against your network and your industry which is a great motivation for anyone with a competitive nature.

The SSI score average for profiles in the manufacturing industry at a very low 15 out of 100, clearly showing that Social Selling is an underused resource for this sector. If you can out rank your competitors you will be building a real competitive edge with prospects on LinkedIn.

CHECK YOUR

SSI HERE

AND FINALLYSocial Selling is the biggest threat AND opportunity for your business. If you haven’t already recognized its importance, you will already be losing out to your more technically astute rivals. This is no longer a matter of ‘nice to have’ but a critical must-have element of your strategic sales plan for your company.

“if you use it wisely, social media will start to replace email and telephone, empowering you to manage your relationships with your retail clients effortlessly.”

- BETTER WHOLESALING.COM(SOURCE)

SOCIAL SELLINGA Manager’s Guide

an eBook from

Further reading:

THE SOCIAL MEDIA SALES SHIFT

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAN INCREASE YOUR SALES

SALES STRATEGY SECRETS OF A SOCIAL NINJA

To find out how we can help you #sellsmart with a free demo visit us at www.sales-i.com