6 Quick Tips for Social Selling

Ever heard the saying that there’s a thin line between love and hate? Well, that saying is true, especially with social selling. Here are six quick tips for social selling.

But first, let us get to know more about social selling by answering a few questions.

What Is Social Selling? And What It Isn’t

What is social selling? According to Hootsuite, it is a novel approach that allows salespeople to laser-target their prospecting and establish rapport through existing connections. According to Tim Hughes, social selling is not selling on social, but it’s the reaction, and process salespeople need to take. To understand what it is and what it isn’t, I came across this infographic, which is pretty much self-explanatory.

Social selling isn’t a one-off event. It is a continuous journey. It would be best to commit to infusing social media into your daily routines to affect your revenue. It is about building credibility through your content and leveraging your social networks to search and find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and ultimately help you close the sale in the buying process.

How Effective Is Social Selling?

These days, keeping up with new sales strategies is challenging. The latest system – social selling – is more than a buzzword. It will help you sell more. According to this article, they have proven it to increase company revenue by 16%!

Selling has always been a social affair. But now, in our digital age, social media makes it more accessible. Social selling can help you find new leads and build trust between you and your potential customer.

This article by HubSpot says research shows that top-performing sales reps, who close deals 51% more than their peers, consider social networking platforms “very important” to their success.

The same article mentioned above notes that after adopting social selling practices and LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, marketing software company, Eloqua decreased their average sales cycle time by 20 days and boosted the rate of leads converting to opportunities by 25%.

Social selling is an effective sales technique. Experts increasingly emphasise their strategies because it generates better quality leads, increases pipeline, and boosts win rates and deal sizes than other strategies like cold calling and so forth.

How Do You Successfully Sell on Social Media?

The first step to driving sales using social media is to figure out where your target audience spends their time online. When you know what social networks they hang with, start relaxed and warm up slowly to them through content. Would you please get to know those that have blogs and comment on the content of their blog post? For those on Twitter, retweet their content thoughtfully. Compliment their content whenever it resonates with you. Please become familiar with them on Twitter, but don’t stalk them or do anything creepy. You don’t want to scare them away. Instead, you want to make it as convenient as possible for consumers to purchase your products. Selling on social media requires a unique approach and social media strategies that will capture consumers’ interest so that they are keen to click the buy button. Using social media is sometimes time-consuming and tedious. In this article, I list five social media marketing tips to help your business.

What Are Social Selling Tools?

There is an endless supply of digital marketing and social media marketing tools, and new ones keep springing up daily. Here are a few of the social selling tools available: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Hootsuite, ZoomInfo ReachOut, LinkedIn Social Selling Index, Nimble, Reachable, Social Port, Awario, IFTTT, Bambu, Meltwater, Buffer, KiteDesk, InsightPool, FollowerWonk, GetProspect, and so forth. These are some of the tools you’ll need to implement the social selling tips mentioned in this article.

What Are Some Good Selling Techniques?

You need to exercise restraint when trying to sell on social media because if you’re seen as too aggressive, your audience will tune out or, worse yet, hate your brand. This is not only on Twitter but on other social platforms, cold calling, email and digital marketing in general too.

But, if you adhere to these 6 Quick Tips for Social Selling mentioned below, your audience will be more receptive to your social media engagement and love your brand. Here are my six quick social selling tips.

Goals

Like any other venture in life, you need to set goals by which you will measure your efforts on any social media channel. It would be best if your goals were meaningful and measurable. For instance, how many followers do you want to attract, how many of your followers do you want to engage with daily and so on? Without setting SMART goals for your social media marketing, you are in trouble. But by selecting the right intentions, you can measure your efforts and make needed adjustments when necessary.

Set your social selling goals and describe what you want to achieve in your social media strategy. By connecting your social selling goals to specific tasks and social channels, you ensure that you consistently take action daily. Your social selling goals should align closely with your company’s marketing strategies and plans. This will empower your sales team to align their organisational goals with the social selling goals to become a crackerjack of the entire sales journey.

Engage

Selling on social media networks is not about broadcasting your message to a million followers on a social media platform, hoping your message will resonate with someone. Instead, it is more about one-on-one communication between you and your audience. Engage with your audience on a micro-level about their individual needs and how your product, service or content can meet that need.

We can perform engagement in social selling in two stages. The first stage is the liking, sharing, re-tweeting of your target’s social media posts and updates on the social network they frequent and so forth. Please be careful not to overdo it, as they may brand you as a stalker, which will be detrimental to your business goals. The second stage is to create and post content that presents the value proposition of your brand or product that you would like your target audience to understand concerning the needs or interests they showed in their profiles. To encourage their engagement in social selling, organisations need to nurture honest communication and social proof. Using a social media calendar to schedule posts for better social media engagement is also crucial in your sales efforts.

Authenticity

The last place you want to pretend is on social media platforms, especially Twitter, because people will know the truth someday. So be original and be yourself, especially in every piece of content you create. Don’t pretend to be a Fortune 100 company when you’re not. Despite what you might think, honesty is still the best policy in the business. The more honest you are with every connection you make or every type of content you create on social media, the easier it will be to build trust and business relationships. Business owners must realise the need for and cultivate authenticity in their social media marketing strategy, social media presence and social selling/sales process.

Add Value

Don’t come on social media to sell. Yes, you heard me, right! Instruct your social media managers that your presence on social media is to add value to your online community, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter and so forth. Don’t come to social media to blast posts about your business. No one gives a damn about you, your blog posts or your business. So listen to your audience of potential customers, research into their needs. Then you will be in a better position to present your product or service to add value to your target customers’ lives. People will be better positioned to receive your posts, product or service on various social media channels. For heaven’s sake, please stop blasting your messages on BB, WhatsApp etc., because you have the person PIN or number. That’s not a social selling strategy. It is an abuse of whatever platform you are using. Think instead of how you can add value to your community’s lives and businesses by providing relevant content.

Listen

Social media is a great tool that you can use to get information about your industry, competitors, future trends, current customers’ pain points, and brand positioning. So do more listening than talking, and you’ll discover a wealth of information in your online community.

The foundation of listening in social selling is to understand what your buyer is reading and hearing within your industry. Listening in social selling is as important as it is in traditional sales.

Trust

Where there is no trust, there is no relationship. Focus on building your reputation as a trustworthy business with your online community through your types of content and social media advertising. Let your fans and followers know your true story through your social strategy!

Your salespeople or sales teams, social media profiles, and so forth must reveal to other social media users that you are a real people, professional who cares about them and is not in business to make a quick buck. It will help if you maintain a high standard of professionalism with your customers and online community. Remember that a “good name is better than riches”.

Remember, it’s also called social media for a reason. People come to social media to associate with friends and family, socialise, and share valuable content. They are not on social media to buy whatever it is you’re selling. Would you please use these six quick tips about social selling and let me know how they work out for your business?

It means doing the right thing, telling the truth and approaching the selling process with the buyer’s needs, wants and interests in mind. Trust means genuinely caring that what you sell delivers on the promise and does no harm to the buyer’s business. Trust goes hand in hand with an exceptional experience. There are a lot of opportunities to build trust in social selling. People trust experts over brands. Social selling shows there’s an actual person behind the Twitter handle or Facebook profile. It helps to build confidence in the buyers to make purchase decisions.

Over to you

These are my six quick tips for social selling strategies. Do you have any other suggestions for social selling that I didn’t mention? I’d love to hear from you. Connect with me on Twitter @ademolaabimbola or @mauconline. Catch you later.

Related Article(s)

• What Are Some B2B Lead Generation Strategies Specific to the Nigerian Market?
• Steps to Accurate Social Listening Strategy for Your Brand
• Why Social Listening Is Important for Business

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