Your Social Selling Guide for Sales Leaders and What to Focus on

A social selling strategy starts at the top. If sales management and senior executives are suspicious

about social media – if they only see risk, their people wasting time clicking “Like” buttons and

employees posting funny pictures, then they would be right to draw down the shutters and, in the

process, cut off the opportunity social media presents.

If, on the other hand, they want to become a social business and prepared to invest in training to

optimise its potential and reduce risk, to reconfigure operations so that departments work together

digitally, not in silos. Then social selling could be the key to unlocking the data insights into

customers and prospects. Where do they engage, digitally? What language do they use? How active

are they? What external content do they share? There is a mountain of social data out there if a

business knows how to mine it.

Some 62 per cent of Irish companies said they used social media platforms as their primary method

for connecting with customers, up from 58 per cent and 46 per cent in 2014 and 2013 respectively.

(Compiled by CSO December 2015)

So how many of our companies have formal social selling programs, policies and KPI’s in place?

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. It is not about employing

the social channels to replace cold calling/sales outreach or replacing the telephone with Twitter and

LinkedIn.

The reality is that integrating social media into your team’s selling process is a must if you expect

your salespeople to break through the competitive clutter and reach buyers who are better

informed and more digitally connected than ever before.

A well planned social selling program will see sellers will use the online channels at the front end of

the sales cycle to be useful, to network, build their online brand, and be found, demonstrate

credibility, generate leads and conduct presales customer engagement. Social channels can and

should also be used to nurture existing customer relationships and as part of account based

management

To turn your sales organisation into a social selling machine, you need to do these things:

Accept that buyer behaviour and the buyers journey has changed. Sales management must shift

their mindsets. The selling world is different than it was five or ten years ago. Some if not most of

the sales tactics that worked when a business was building its customer base, are not working for

sales teams today. Saturated with sales approaches, buyers ignore phone calls and emails from

people they have never heard off. It takes so much more effort to break through the noise these

days. Sales people must alter their sales approach. The role of sales leadership is to help them learn

how to do it.

Develop a social selling strategy. Engage both the marketing and sales teams as part of the planning

process. Be careful not to head straight for social selling training without having thought through

items like culture, change, KPI’s, content and making social selling a consistent activity. Heading

straight to tactics without executive sponsorship and a well developed plan is a recipe for failure.

Establish social etiquette and social media guidelines. Sales people need to know what is expected of

them from their actions online. Sales people present themselves PLUS the company brand.

Remember what is posted online stays there is forever, while mistakes are bound to happen a

business can reduce any risk by ensuring that all the sales teams understand the art of

communicating online. As important is to teach them what is and is not appropriate to say and do on

behalf of your company when they are using social networks as part of their selling activities. Less

than 26% of sales people know how to use social media correctly as part of their sales activities.

Include social selling training into the bigger sales training plan. The digitally connected buyer means

that sales behaviours have to change and sales people need to understand how to strategically use

the social networks in the right way. If a company or sales people just view social channels as a

vehicle to spam prospects with vanilla sales pitches, a huge opportunity will be wasted, and the

company brand is put at serious risk. Social training should be ongoing and not just a one-time event

at the end of induction training.

Implement and focus on the metrics. Social activity is not about doing more – make more

connections, send more invitations, or do more demos. Without the right metrics and KPI’s, sales

teams can waste a lot of time hitting like buttons. Without clear goals and objective sales people do

not link their social behaviour to social etiquette, policies or structure. They commit “random acts of

social” where at times self-promotion takes precedent over company promotion. The quality of sales

activities as a result of social selling is what counts. Using the social networks to attain measurable

sales results is more important than checking off the box that says sales person A sent 50 connection

requests.

Be realistic in your expectations. Using the social channels is not a quick fix to increasing sales

pipeline and revenue. No one who implemented a social selling plan saw results overnight. No

surprise here as this is no different from any other sales tactics a business may have invested in for

the sales teams. When it comes to the social channels learning how to do things differently does

take time. This is why the planning that goes into providing the training and coaching that sales

people need is vital so these new approaches bear fruit overtime.

Social selling is an additive process. This is not a replacement for phone calls and prospecting emails.

It is an additive approach, a prescriptive process like another arrow in the quiver that you should

think about, "How do I apply social to every prospect, every deal, every account, every single day for

no more than 30 to 60 minutes a day.

Forward thinking sales leaders know that social selling is not some snake oil, nor is it a gimmicky

approach to selling. These leaders know social selling is another set of sales tools and an evolution in

how we reach buyers in the digital era. Social selling is a complement to traditional sales methods—

not a revolutionary approach that replaces them. Social selling, due to its ability to enhance the

customer journey, is an incredibly powerful sales tool. But, like any tool, its value and utility are

ultimately tied to the skills of the individual employing it.