Online social selling training is now a vital part of any sales training program as traditional sales methods have diminishing returns. Also sales tactics such as cold calling have become an unwelcome intrusion in the buyer’s journey. To sustain business success, sales professionals need to adopt digital selling techniques as part of any efficient sales strategy. Social selling skills are transforming sales, prospecting and lead generation. The Digital Sales Institute online social selling course is ideal for a variety of sales professionals, from inbound and outbound consultants and reps, to business development executives, account managers and sales team leaders. If you want to enrich your selling techniques, develop new sales skills and maximize your career potential, this course is ideal for you.
Learn from Sales and Social Media Experts
All course material is designed and delivered by leading sales training and digital selling experts, all of whom are champions at using the latest sales techniques to drive customer engagement. Your learning will be enriched by their hands-on proven experience, industry tips and best practice advice.
Three-quarters of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before ever contacting a sales representative. – Forrester
Sales Training for Student Success In The Digital Era.
To ensure sales training student success, ( 1 payment gives you access to all online sales training courses), once you have paid you will receive an email from your assigned personal sales training success coach, instructing you how to access all the course materials for any or all the sales courses you wish to complete.
Prior to commencing your online sales training courses, you can avail of an introductory web or phone chat to go over each course objectives, questions, learning goals and personal objectives.
Once you receive your login details you may commence your sales training, the course payment allows you access all courses, materials and lessons for twelve months. You can repeat any course as many times as you wish. Upon completion of each sales training students success, you will be issued with a Digital Certification.
If you have any admin-related queries, your coach will be happy to answer them.
For any queries regarding course content, your coach along with a certified sales trainer will be available to support you in your studies.
What is social selling and what part does it play in the social media influenced sales process are fundamental questions now being asked by sales leaders across the globe. They want to know if social selling can help to build relationships, extend a business’s social reach and connect to a network of contacts, influencers and customers.
What is social selling
Engagement has never mattered more to B2B buyers, but the old sales models to engage buyers is becoming obsolete. A hard pill to swallow by many in sales management is that today’s informed and connected buyer is usually in control. When we talk about “buyer engagement,” using social media and social selling it can be hard to nail down. Research shows that buyers do want to interact with us in new ways, but on their own terms. This means that when engaging buyers, we need to be credible, be useful, be valuable and be relevant to get their attention in a content fuelled sales world.
In the traditional sales and marketing model it ran along the lines of building awareness, driving interest, try to create some desire which eventually leads to action. This has been the traditional approach to buyer engagement (marketing, cold calling, events, prospecting etc) for a long, long time, since the 1920’s to be precise.
The wakeup call and the reality that we have to acknowledge is that’s not what is going on over at the buyer’s journey. How could it be? Look at our own buyer’s journey and how the availability of information via social media, the web and online has changed our own purchasing decisions. What we see today is a buying and decision-making process that has become much more fluid plus there is a degree of complexity in the buying journey. Modern B2B buyers don’t compartmentalize nearly as much as their predecessors. While they are becoming aware or exploring, they could also be evaluating and considering options. They are looking for help, insights and support way earlier in the buying process without the sales pitch. They will engage with influencers, peer groups and vendors with the primary objective of learning new ways to do things without entering a formal sales process. They see this engagement as streams that ebb and flow throughout their buyer’s journey.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” –Socrates
What is social selling
Social selling revolves around three simple words: transformation, acceleration and collaboration.
It works on the premise that a whole new generation of B2B buyers will purchase software, technology, products and solutions in pretty much the same way as they purchase music, clothes and gadgets.
So, social selling is the sum of connected actions (content, information, news, articles, research, insights) shared online (think social reach/social business). When these connected actions are experienced by customers/potential customers, they will influence the awareness and consideration of your business. Social selling is also about building a bridge between social media marketing activity, buyer connectivity and sales outreach to maximize buyer engagement and minimize wasted resources.
Social Selling Ideas
Why Social Selling is Important in Sales 3.0
So, let’s start with some background information on Sales 3.0 and the buyers journey. Around 67% of the B2B buyers journey is now digitally influenced. They read at a minimum of 5 pieces of content regarding solutions available. Today’s buyers are self-educating, informed and hyper-connected. Social selling unlocks the opportunity for a business or salesperson to get involved in the purchasing journey by being useful and valuable to a buyer as they ebb and flow throughout their buyer’s journey.
Buyers aren’t always in the market, but they are always in the market to learn. At any time, only 5-10% of your target market is actively looking to buy and another 20-30% open to considering a change. This means a business must constantly work to build credibility and trust with the potential 90% of buyers in the consideration/status quo cycle.
However, buyers are always learning throughout these cycles, continuously self-educating, making connections with peers and influencers, and consuming relevant content. This has two implications for the sales organization:
When buyers are ready to leave the status quo, the 1st vendors they turn to are the ones who have built trust. They can even collaborate with a trusted adviser (salesperson) on solution prior to conducting their own research. Leaving it to inbound marketing or a Google search is not enough anyone. Businesses need to use connected actions and social reach to influence buyers so they can get on their short list of potential suppliers. A buyer may ask an influencer or thought leader to suggest a short list to them. Social selling works to bridge these connections so they have come to understand, trust and have a positive impression of your business capabilities. The use of planned “connected actions” on the social networks and constantly reviewed social reach can positively impact the ability to gather more interest, from more buyers, more often.
It means all salespeople (and maybe your entire organization) needs to become proficient in a different sales skill. As part of sales transformation and to accelerate buyer engagement on the social networks, social selling training will be required to allow the sales team to be able to share content, to connect, to engage and to nurture relationships. It also places an onus on sales management to ensure they have time to do the activity and help them become “thought leaders” who can communicate value without the sales pitch.
What is social selling in relation to Customer Acquisition
If you acknowledge that buyers not just use but are heavily influenced by social media on their purchasing decisions, then you should be thinking more about how can the sales organization engage your “buyer’s community” or “buyer’s network” using social selling.
How do you engage and reach buyers online? (It can’t be limited to just inbound marketing or your web site)
How does your business (social reach) become part of these networks or communities, where your connection actions will be judged by the relevancy of what is shared, your insights, your ideas and your expertize and not your branded sales pitches?
How will your business create content for your social sellers to share that is highly relevant to these networks, knowing that branded sales orientated content is ignored?
How will you set goals that track buyer engagement, not just to help determine the right ways to reach out and connect, but also to measure leads and revenue from your social selling strategy.
The Value of Social Selling to your Business
To answer what is social selling, you must remember that without a clear social selling strategy is just random acts of social marketing. To deliver results it must be comprised of many different social activities that work in unison to extend social reach and engage more buyers.
What is social selling going to mean in your business?, it should focus on crossing the chasm between the use of old sales techniques to social tactics that implies competitive advantage for your business. In the digital era,the shift in value has moved from the product or service you’re selling to the value YOU provide to buyers.
Sales Transformation. Leading companies use social selling as a different way to link customers, content, conversations, products, and solutions.
Sales Acceleration. How faster growing companies do a better job of differentiating, showing return, and handling the customer’s perceived risks to change using the Social Channels.
Customer collaboration. Forward thinking companies educate buyers via Social Networks, sharing ideas and perspectives, investing in customer success, and create a customer perception of working as partners.
We hope this article has gone some way to answering, what is social selling and what it means for your business.
In this post, we want to share 7 social selling tips that can be used as part of a digital selling or social selling campaign. Used in a proper manner these 7 social selling tips can help salespeople to engage with more prospects or customers than ever before and help uncover sales opportunities better than the more traditional approaches.
Today’s buyers are far more empowered with information and insights to help them assess purchasing decisions. So rather than a salesperson who just provides details they can freely access online, they look for trusted advisers who can help them achieve their goals. The days of smile and dial for a quick sale are long passed.
So Here Is Our List Of Our 7 Social Selling Tips.
Cold pitches are not social selling.
Social selling is not about employing the social channels to replace cold calling or replacing the telephone with Twitter and LinkedIn. Simplistic bare faced cold sales pitches do not work (they have rarely worked via the phone, so social media is no different).
Remember, the most important activity in social selling is to bring VALUE. One of the biggest of the seven social selling tips we can share is to always provide VALUE to your potential customers and social network. So, you will need to find relevant information, content and conversations that people will value and allows you to build relationships with others.
Providing value on the social networks can be pinned to a series of tactics (sharing articles, quality content and informative research and engaging in conversations etc). In time, people come to acknowledge the sharer, which gives sales people a deeper understanding of the buyer’s profile. To build value you need to consistently offer really relevant information and insights, market trends, latest research or whitepapers.
Always keep in mind that the social networks allow us to interact with other human beings in meaningful ways online. Social Selling is an evolutionary step forward making the sales process more productive and meaningful. It is not about using social media to shout at, stalk, or spam people digitally.
Build your personal brand.
Credibility and your level of value are critical aspects of social selling. We know that social media can boost the level of influence a salesperson or a business has within a market, and can even impact buyer decisions. Building your personal brand online is important because within the social networks “your reputation can determine your level of influence”.
Building your personal brand online will allow you to nurture relationships, to stay top-of-mind with the purpose of creating “sales time” with buyers at the right time. It is about positioning yourself to have influence and high levels of perceived value with prospects or potential customers. Remember, it’s not just about building up our own personal brand but also to support the company’s brand online.
Pick your Profiles
Who do you sell to? Who do you want to influence? Who do you want to connect to? These are important questions not just in social selling but in any sales activity. So, you need to create or select one or more “ideal customer profiles” to target with your activity. Your profiles will prioritise the individuals and companies that you know will get the most value out of your product, and will also provide the most value back to you.
By picking which profiles to engage with, it helps you find qualified prospects and protects you from selling to the wrong customers.
In social selling, your profile will give you a clear target to aim for, resulting in highly qualified leads. As you refine and connect, if they don’t match the criteria you have set then you’ll know to move on.
Simply put, an ideal customer profile helps you identify and engage with the type of people that will most benefit your business.
Become a Content Champion
Content and conversations power social selling. In order to stand out from the 2 million blog posts published online every day, you will need to cut through the clutter.
Did you know that the top 3 content tactics are blog articles (65%); social media sharing (64%); and publishing case studies (64%).
How can I cut through the noise with my social selling? I hear you ask.
Well research shows you need to have “likeability” in your content, that is how much a post or piece of content is “likeable”? In both the B2B and B2C (but especially content shared by sales people in B2B sales), the content being shared needs to have social reach, be liked and deemed to have value by people. The likeability of any content can be affected by crafting assets using the best practices for each individual social network (media, language, tone, topic, length, etc) matched to a buyer persona or ideal customer profile. Right Profile – Right Content – Right Context and Right Timing!
When it comes to learning more about these 7 social selling tips, salespeople are publishing to be seen, to create awareness and get expression of consideration to get buyers into the sales process. With the amount of content listed above, the challenge is how to stand out and turn social content into quality sales leads?
Position yourself to become a conversation channel. Gradually becoming a valuable connection, one worth listening to and engaging with. Once the quality of your conversation contributions have established yourself as a valuable connection, you can nurture and build a buyer/supplier relationship far more quickly.
Why not have a plan that on a daily basis you will review discussions on your groups in LinkedIn and give honest answers to questions people have without plugging your business. Also, conversations are not there to tell people how wonderful you are or how you can help solve their problems if they meet you. Spend time looking for articles, news and research you can use in conversations with people without interrupting them and that is on the money. This will help you throughout your sales career no matter what product or service you are selling.
Social selling should drive two-way conversations with your audience via social media. You need to engage them not just as your buyers, but as people and really help them achieve their goals whether it be answering a question or finding information for them.
Avoid Connection Collecting
Look up Dunbar’s Number and see how it is relevant in social selling. Ask yourself, “Is there real value in connecting with 5,000 people”. Connections should be a bridge to lead you somewhere. You need to think more about the quality and relevance of your social network.” Building an engaged following takes time and effort, you need to sow, nurture before you can harvest. To make valuable and relevant connections, you must make sure you’re giving them distinct value that others are not.
Have a Social Selling Strategy
The last of our 7 social selling tips is to have a strategy. A social selling strategy which acknowledges that the modern buyer needs education but they educate themselves. A strategy that helps guide people, one where audiences can expect meaningful insights from experts helping business not yours. https://player.vimeo.com/video/222529482?color=ffffff&title=0&byline=0
Modern sales strategy understands that the key to sustained success is to include social selling training and social media marketing alongside the more traditional sales tactics. Due to the increasing amount of information available to buyers online these days, the time is fast approaching when the amount of trust buyers has in you as a sales professional will be the primary thing to influence their buying decision. Due to the power of social media and self-education, fewer and fewer salespeople are going to have the ear of their buyers on a constant basis. A social selling strategy can be a powerful way to build a higher level of trust with customers and prospects. The blending of digital selling and social selling is no longer a foreign approach to any salesperson wishing to succeed in the digital era.
A bonus 7 seven social selling tips is that when we talk about the next generation of buyers coming through, the digital natives, then social selling is going to be a natural path on their buying journey. Make sure you have your social selling strategy ready.
Discussing social selling trends and insights may seem premature within the sales community as it is still quite new to many salespeople. However, the pace of innovation and disruption in the sales process is accelerating. As social media and the impact of digital channels become prevalent on how business to business buyers buy (yes, getting closer to consumer behavior all the time), it means companies and sales management have realized the importance of social selling in the sales process.
Increasingly, every prospect or customer a business wants to engage is online and research shows this is also their preferred method of engagement.
Future thinking companies and sales teams are implementing effective social selling programs to reach prospects, influence buyers, build credibility, generate leads, increase sales pipeline and retain customers. If you follow sales trends, article after article on buyer behavior is saying that the prospect is more than halfway through their buying process before then engage with a vendor. Buyers are using search engines, whitepapers, blog posts, news articles websites and other digital tools to help them self-educate before they consider a shortlist of possible solution providers. When you think about it, our own behavior as buyers has become heavily influenced by what we read online. So, if the evidence for social selling is so clear, why is it taking so long for many companies to embrace it?
Here at The Digital Sales Institute, we work with many organizations implementing social selling training, so we want to offer up some social selling trends. In a broader sales strategy sense, this is what’s coming down the line and how it will affect how your business interacts with customers.
Enabling the Sales Person.
To be truly successful with social selling, the mindset as to the meaning of selling needs to change. The reality is that no one can just take what they did in the traditional sales process for the past how many years and apply it online. If sales leadership still believes that the only role for salespeople is to “sell something”, then they will struggle in the era of social selling and content marketing.
So social selling trends prioritizes the role of salespeople to one that creates credibility and trust: During their buying journey, modern buyers want to believe that someone really cares and understands their problems. They seek out people who spends time informing, explaining and educating, without the sales pitch. So maybe the sales process needs to evolve to a point where salespeople are not just rewarded for the deals they close, but also for the people they engage and their potential to be a recurring customer. In social selling trends, the depth and strength of the work a salesperson does to build trusted relationships online should be just as important as the deals they close. What we are saying is that social selling starts and ends by enabling the individual salesperson.
And as part of a wider sales strategy it will make them more effective sellers by the business providing them with the tools and tactics to better connect and engage with prospective buyers.
Social Selling will be Data Driven.
So, we know that social selling revolves around using the social networks to find and engage customers. Makes sense as that’s where the buyers are, and so as salespeople, that’s where they need to connect and engage with them. However, our social selling trends points to data and not profiles will be the driver for whom to engage online.
As companies gather and enrich their data on people (prospects, influencers, partners, etc.), they will be able to merge this will freely available social data to create detailed predictive data on anyone they want to connect via the social networks.
Social selling as part of a sales enablement plan will mean using rich data to guide not only who to engage, but how to engage, with what content, what topics and with detailed conversation starters.
Social Selling Trends: Quality over Quantity Interactions.
The next on our list of social selling trends is less importance accredited to the number of followers or connections a salesperson has. Social selling will be measured on the quality of the social network as building a relevant and engaged network that leads somewhere, will be much more valuable than having a large network of loose relevancy. This trend will rely more and more on data for social sellers to connect with prospects and customers. This data will enable quality online interactions with AI on personal messages, social conversation topics, nurturing plans and social point points to maximize connection requests and eventually sales meetings. As per Dunbar’s number, salespeople will focus on smaller networks to ensure better results out of their social selling activities.
These quality interaction, will over time lead to a data loop so a business can understand, who read, engaged, shared etc., something a sales person did on their social selling activity. This will allow sales management to understand how much of an impact those actions have on the entire sales efforts.
Everybody will be Social Selling.
Business leaders will slowly realize the social reach of their combined workforce. These social selling trends show that social selling will no longer be just an activity for salespeople, but for everyone in the company who touches a customer or has a social media account. The phrase here to remember is a “Social Business” and we believe this trend will grow. Every employee will be given social selling training to be a social seller as part of a transformation towards a social business where social reach and social influence will be a barometer of a company’s success.
Final Words on Social Selling Trends.
Client feedback and our own research into social selling trends tells us that some of the items we have shared in this article are already well on their way to becoming a reality.
Social selling is not being driven by sales organizations, it is being driven by the new breed of buyers who use social media to stay informed and find solutions. Smart sales organizations are responding to this trend as they realize the buyer-supplier relationship has changed. Plus social selling is bringing far greater scalability, efficiency and personalization in the sales process.
To wrap up, social selling trends will continue to evolve, maybe to the point that all sales in the future will be social. But maybe they always were, and now we are returning to a buying and selling environment that we all can embrace.
The social selling course from The Digital Sales Institute is a 10 module, video driven digital learning experience on how to use social selling to support a whole range of sales activities from lead nurturing to engaging buyers. The focus is on helping salespeople to learn how to connect with potential customers faster using proven social selling techniques. Customer feedback is showing a sales performance improvement by a factor of 3x. by up to 400% by adopting digital and social selling tools.
This course is ideal for inside or outside sales people, consultants and sales representatives of all levels, business development executives and managers, account managers, relationship managers and those leading sales teams, or anyone looking to develop their digital sales capabilities.
Learn social selling and digital selling techniques.
Learn about the attributes of social selling along with how to generate results using this tactic. Also get to understand Social selling strategies and how to build a social selling program leveraging social media. The student will also learn how to use content both self generated and curated in lead generation tactics. The Digital Sales Institute offers a practical, repeatable social selling course where we helps seller take “first steps” in learning to apply the system and make it part of their sales habit loop.
The end result is the ability to secure more appointments and engage buyers in less time. The focus is on selling skills that target potential buyers. Then how to get attention from prospects that will drive buyer engagement, spark responses and build connections.
The social selling course includes action worksheets, ability to download presentations. Also included are quizzes and notes. We ensure to blend in a mix of learning and doing that links directly to your sales challenges. Like every sales tactic, it needs to pay its pay so we help you define KPI’s and your goals for social selling programs. Your takeaways on this social selling training course will include a range of practical prospecting tactics that can be used immediately to set you on your social selling journey.
When it comes to sales prospecting and lead generation, sales people are finding that the road to success is utilizing social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pintrest, Snapchat plus other niche social networks to create awareness and to connect with influencers, buyers and decision makers. This is why social selling along with digital selling has become one of the dominant tactics to find and engage with new prospects. Well trained sales people are now using social media to provide value to customers and prospects by contributing to conversations, sharing knowledge, , replying to comments and off course sharing quality content. They map the buyers journey and the digitally influenced buying process, from awareness to consideration to decision, engaging and nurturing the prospect until they are ready to have a sales discussion.
The life of every sales person is changing rapidly. The whole sales process and buyers journey has evolved more in the past five to ten years than it did in the previous century. Whether its B2B or B2C, people are turning to the social channels to self educate as trust in the more traditional sales methods decline. This shift has left lots of sales people in difficult positions. Their once star sales tactics are becoming increasingly less effective, so as the old saying goes, its adapt or die. This is why we hope you find these social selling tips helpful.
When you feel ready to move from dabbling in social media to engage buyers towards becoming skilled in digital selling, feel free to check out The Digital Sales Institute “social selling training“, a business school standard course which is online for you 24/7, learn practical techniques at your own pace, understand the tactics that can grow your social reach and is full of tips you can implement straight away. In no time at all, we’ll have you using the 6C’c of Social Selling to engage relevant, interested buyers that you can progress to offline sales discussions and meetings for deeper interactions.
To prosper in today’s digitally influenced market, social selling training and the use of the social channels to sell should be part of everyone’s digital sales strategy.
Across the entire global sales community, social selling is being blended into the sales process, tapping into the vast amount of insights that the social networks provide to both buyer and seller. Probably the first time since John H Patterson created his sales training methodology for NCR, sales people have to adjust their skill sets as the now traditional forms of selling such as cold calling have an ever-decreasing success rate. Preparing and learning the skills so that sales people can harness the power of social selling to engage buyers is now critical, not a nice to have.
The buyers journey has changed along with the profile of a typical business buyer, their wants, needs, values and how they conduct business has altered completely from 10, even 5 years ago. So social selling should be a genuine communication channel to share insights, research, value and content long before engaging in any sales conversations. Social selling is not a simplistic approach (how long does it take to master other sales tactics – months, even years?) for sales people to spam sales messages on Twitter, Facebook, on LinkedIn groups. Nor is it a means to use marketing generated vanilla flavored sales messages to bombard a connection. Bye the way, if you are already doing this – STOP. The moment any potential customer gets these messages (and there is more than you think), any brand goodwill or any credibility gets flushed away. The tactic of connecting and building a network of connections just to send sales messages is NOT social selling.
If you were to take one takeaway from this article, it would be to truly build value over time with your social network by sharing relevant, quality content that people find useful and helpful. So, in time when a sales person reaches out with a personalized social touch point to a prospect to engage in a sales discussion, the chances of progressing a relationship will be greatly enhanced, and the research is now out there to prove it.
Sales people need to learn the social selling habit loop, a daily routine to connect with your social network community with news, articles, research, videos and snippets of information. They also need to learn, Givers Gain, starting with ways to connect your network together (as this provides value) and offering to help others connect. A good example of this is that a sales person sees a message posted on LinkedIn that says, “Where could I find some inspiration for a key note speech I have to deliver?” Instead of posting of reply such as, I would be interested in this myself or have you tried PowerPoint? (True reply!). Now, the sales person finds someone in their social network that is a presentation expert and offers to put the person in touch with them. Nothing in it for the sales person, other than to build their credibility as someone who is a conduit, a connector who brings value by taking the time to listen and connect their social network. To quote “Covey”, these are a lodgements that pay off in the longer term.
Selling is simply the act of communicating and commitments. Now, more than ever, to be successful in sales, we need to understand that (a) selling is all about building relationships and (b) providing value. With a well-planned out social selling program, a business will gradually drive more sales then cold calling or cold email will ever achieve.
Always remember that all selling is inherently social, so social selling is really nothing new, but rather a new communication channel. So, look at social selling as an additive process, a sales tactic to help you sell more effectively that will evolve over time.
At the Digital Sales Institute, we try to encourage sales people to separate ‘social selling’ into two main areas:
(1) Direct Social Selling and (2) Indirect Social Selling.
The direct side of social selling is utilizing the various social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram to look for conversations where one would share content/articles. A pathway to connect with people a business wants to target or nurture a relationship with. Taking the example of a CIO who tweets about their focus on reducing IT costs in the coming year. The sales person in return now shares some articles or research on reducing IT. As the interaction builds (assuming the sales persons product or service can help with reducing IT costs), they can at an appropriate time, reach out with their first social touch point – by sending a highly personalized connection request. After a series of planned touch points, the sales person can now reach out to explain the value they might be able to bring to the buyer’s goals. Please note: this is a shortened version of the process but the point is to look for information about what prospects or companies are doing or saying so person or business can be highly relevant to them when they reach out via the social channels.
The indirect side of social selling has to do with a sales person building their own personal brand so over time their social audience (connections and weak ties) eventually value their insights, comes to view them as a valuable industry expert, not just another weak sales person. However, it’s important to note that this does take time and does not provide some instant results that some sales leaders think should happen these days. The reality is social selling is all about adding value to a target market, share not sell, help not hinder, be useful not useless.
We write these articles on sales to try to add some value by not just talking about the theory of selling or business but actually giving you some useful tips on sales, marketing and business (hopefully). On our social channels, we share suggestions on what to do and how to do it. We also regularly post or re-tweet articles from other sources not just about sales but about business topics that we think are important to sales people and business leaders.
We practise what we preach, on a daily basis we review discussions in our groups in LinkedIn or Facebook, we strive to provide honest answers to questions people ask without promoting our business or telling them how wonderful we are.
To finish up, please take the time to think through the goals, expectations and vision for any social selling program you plan to put in place. Apart from training, spend time looking for articles, news and research you can use to connect with people without interrupting them while at the same time position yourself as a thought leader by sharing quality information that is relevant. This will help you or any sales person in the digitally influenced buying/selling process, regardless of what you sell.
When we talk about social selling, one measure sales people and leaders talk about is the “social selling index”. During any social selling or digital selling training, it is a term mentioned frequently, in fact with companies who have integrated social into their sales strategy it has become a metric. This is no surprise, as case study after case study is proving the benefits a social selling program is bringing to companies.
So does your social selling index really matter?
All measures in sales are helpful to a lesser or greater degree. However most of measures of activity, such as phone calls made, webinars delivered, and presentations given etc The Social Selling index is a measure of “influence” a person has on the social networks, mainly LinkedIn. I believe companies will devise their own scoring or SSI to account for a sales persons reach across multiple social networks. As companies implement sales transformation programs towards a socially connected business, then yes, an SSI could be the most critical measure for buyer engagement.
A Reminder to What Is a Social Selling Index
For now, a social selling index is for many sales people, a measure exclusively for LinkedIn on their activity based around four pillars of social selling (although I believe there are actually six pillars to social selling), and scores them on a 1 – 100 scale index. It measures a person’s effort in 1) establishing a personal professional brand, 2) engaging/connecting with the right audience, 3) engaging the target with insights and 4) building and deepening relationships. So it works on the premise that the more activities one has on LinkedIn which relate to these four pillars, the higher the social selling score will be. So in effect, the score is a means of highlighting how companies (at this point mainly sales people) connect and engage with audiences.
While the SSI only publically relates to LinkedIn, it is however a good measure in that it raises the awareness of the power of social selling and if nothing else it gives sales teams a benchmark to start with. From a sales leadership perspective, the scores of the individual sales people helps monitor the team’s to benchmark your score against peers and competitors.
I encourage sales people and sales leadership, to think of SSI as a bigger measure of a company’s social reach and level of influence across multiple social networks where leads generated could also be included as part of the scoring.
A Few Tips to Boost Your SSI Score
It is worth mentioning, that each of the current four pillars of social selling index score are worth 25 points. So to raise the score, each pillar will require spending time and attention.
Credibility: AKA Establish Your Personal Professional Brand
Creating and cultivating a strong personal brand across the social network sites is the path to “Social Credibility” which builds trust in the mind of buyers. The focus is not on selling, promoting or plugging, but sharing and giving. I call it Be Seen. Activities that help establish someone as a trusted source or a thought leader. We all like to engage with experts, (according to LinkedIn 92% of B2B buyers will engage with sales professionals if they are viewed as industry thought leaders). So here are a few ways to build your credibility and be seen as someone worth listening to on the social networks.
Ensure all your social media profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc ) are 100% complete, including photo, images, articles, background info, personal/business summary.
In the ‘Summary’ section, relate your content to your target customer or Ideal Customer Profile.
If possible, try to use a variety of media in the ‘Experience’ and ‘Summary’, sections including Slideshare presentations, articles and even video.
Always include skills plus get recommendations from existing customers, other influencers and work colleagues.
Connections: AKA Engaging with the Right People
Social networking (selling or marketing) is about building a network where people want to engage with you or your brand, and you want to help them on their journey. This is the power that drives social media. Connections are about social reach and this is why it is important to connect with the right people. LinkedIn monitors how well you engage and then analyses the value of the connections made. Leaving the SSI score aside, connecting with the right people is worth getting right, not just for the score but for your sales performance. Start with influencers, existing and past customers, business relationships then focus in on your Ideal Customer Profiles as you research potential prospects.
Look up existing and previous customers or business contacts. Develop two, three or even four ideal customer profiles that you wish to attract. Don’t forget to connect with current and past work colleagues and alumni,
Create a list of companies and people to follow.
Using your ideal profiles, find five to six influential people in your target companies.
Review who has viewed your profile or activity daily. Engage with them.
Always check out who shares, Likes and Comments on your own posts or posts you are adding value to.
Content: AKA Share Insights
Follow this manta, Be Seen, Be Found, Be Useful and Be Valuable as a route to social selling success. It is all about attracting and engaging with potential customers at every opportunity which means every day. The four Be’s listed above create visibility and visibility over time will create opportunities.
So when it comes to the Be Found, Be Useful and Be Valuable, it is critical to have a constant flow of quality content (created and curated) to attract and build relationships. Surveys show that well over 60% of B2B buyers appreciate content shared by a sales person which provided insights about their business.
With a steady stream of content to offer up valuable insights and information, you will intrigue buyers and build your credibility across the social networks as a whole.
Create a content library, topics list and calendar.
Join relevant groups and follow relevant people.
Post content consistently that reinforces you as a trusted source of industry insight.
Mix up your own company created content with curated content from experts.
Be Found – Liking, Sharing and Commenting on posts.
Conversations: AKA Building Relationships
According to Dunbar’s number, you can build a network with as little as 125 connections. Conversations on social media are not about selling but rather a meaningful series of interactions that build your Credibility. So for social selling to be really effectively, we must understand it is about assisting prospects first, being valuable second and then the sales event third. Buyer’s today want to converse with sales people that can solve business problems and who are genuinely interested in building trusted relationships. You are sure to see sales success this way.
Engage your connections with useful and valuable conversations.
Converse with all your contacts, not just target profiles.
When reaching out, only ever send personalized invitations including context.
Solicit referrals from colleagues and connections.
Stay in Touch via Birthdays, Work Promotions, Anniversaries and congratulate on new jobs (trigger event selling).
Use Social Listening to tune into questions or challenges a prospect may be experiencing and needs help.
Social Selling Index only scores Influence
Social influence or an SSI score does not equate to quality or mean a sales person will see a return on the time spent on social media. I see it all too often, sales people trying to be useful and valuable by sharing low quality content and posting generic, vanilla flavoured conversations. Yes, your SSI score will rise and maybe sales management will be impressed. But at the end of the day, social selling should be measured not by SSI but KPI’s like leads generated or sales closed. SSI scoring is definitely a helpful tool for sales people and mangers to improve their selling techniques on social media. View it as the first step in determining your social selling success, but then it should be only one measure with others such as leads, appointments, presentations and revenue as a result of social influence being higher up.
Also, as I stated previously, the term Social Selling Index is limited to LinkedIn. However, you can still take the pillars of social selling (credibility, connecting, content, conversations, conversions and consistency) and score them across all your social media activity. A well thought out social selling strategy will cover several networks, including Twitter; Facebook (for business and consumer selling), Quora, Instagram, YouTube etc. Also don’t forget the multitude of industry specific networking sites and forums.
So readers, that is a hopefully straight forward guide to what is a Social Selling Index and why it matters. Yes it has its shortcomings (but so does measuring calls attempted), however if put in context, the SSI can be a wonderful tool to act as a platform for change not just to help sales people fine tune their social selling techniques but to help a business become more social. I suggest we use it as a good 1st step to reap the benefits that this new age selling strategy offers.
So remember, Be Seen, Be Found, Be Useful and Be Valuable. Learn, understand and train on the 6C’s of a social selling strategy. Use SSI and other scoring measures. Because the reality is buyers are self educating like never before. The prize is great for any business that understands this and empowers their sales people to help buyers along their journey online.
Sales Training Programs on Selling and Social 