This free guide was developed for managers to help support their sellers in leveraging social selling in their daily routine.
In many cases, time invested may not yield immediate ROI, which can be a stopper for many; however, committed sales teams have built social into their existing routine, and are in it for the long term. Investing time in social selling can make the difference and convert that time into an opportunity. Here is the 4-Step guide.
Step 1: Activate your team’s Professional Brand Strategy
Every company who advertises focuses on what separates them from the competition. Brand awareness and differentiation are absolute essentials. In the case of the largest global, social network platform for business, LinkedIn, this is also true –, especially for individual branding. Approaching 600-million users, LinkedIn is full of competition. Savvy social sellers recognize this and have taken steps to rebrand their professional profile, making it customer-centric, focusing on what they can do for their customers instead of focusing solely on their own achievements.
Step 2: Increase your team’s connections
Despite your team saying they are well-connected on LinkedIn, the question is: are they really connected to enough of the right people? Social selling places a premium on being proactive in both connecting and engaging with potential business decision-makers. When your team is well connected, your opportunities to influence and multi-thread increase exponentially.
Step 3: Bring their focus back to what matters: building relationships
As you know, relationship building is a huge part of sales. Research proves that over 80-percent of prospective buyers do their research online. So, what do social sellers do? They engage them where they are. Nurturing online leads with thought leadership is key. Effective social sellers shorten their sales cycles by constantly engaging with their leads and customers along the entire buyer’s journey. By providing key information at the right time, motivated buyers begin to look at sellers as trusted advisors, and get closer to a decision with each comment, or piece of relevant content.
Step 4: Gain actionable insights
Qualify the right people, understand their needs, and nurture them to a buying decision. We have established it all starts online for the vast majority of today’s informed consumer. Social selling enables sellers to know what their potential and existing customers are thinking, by intercepting them on their journey and disrupting it with expert advice – speaking directly from their ‘professional brand.’ The secret to better sales results starts with sellers asking better questions. In the social space, there is tons of information put out by your potential customers. Performing social listening and leveraging that information can give you the direction you need to really understand how you can help your customer.
Step 5: Need a Plan?
One of the major stoppers managers face when trying to motivate their sellers to practice social selling is just getting started themselves. Before that happens, managers must first better understand the current buyer’s journey. Join our upcoming webinar tailored for managers and learn how to formulate a plan with social selling as the disruptor.
Join us for our Webinar Social Selling for Managers and learn more.
