Social selling is not just about having your sales team reach out to prospects on different social media outlets. It requires a well defined strategy to deliver successful results.
Whether you’re a small startup or a large corporation, your business could benefit from a comprehensive social selling plan to help your sales team generate new leads and reach new customers.
Want to take your strategy to the next level? Read on.
1. Understand Your Audience
Social selling is driven by delivering the right message at the right time to the right people. If you don’t
understand where your target audience is hanging out, how they use different social media platforms and the best way to communicate to them, then your strategy will not be very successful.
Take some time and consider the following:
What industry is your audience in?
- Is it B2B or B2C?
- Where are they located?
- What stage of the sales cycle are they in?
These are questions you must answer before you decide which social media platforms you will focus on for your social selling strategy.
2. Integrate with Other Teams
Although social selling is inherently associated with the sales team, it doesn’t mean they should work alone. Your social selling strategy will be much more successful if you get marketing, business operations or customer success teams involved as well.
Consider how these teams can help with the following:
- Helping set up sales reps’ social media profiles
- Creating content to help sales reps reach out and connect with prospects
- Providing exceptional customer support via social channels
- Monitoring social media and sharing insights with the sales team
- Measuring results
No matter who ultimately owns the program, it’s important to collaborate with different teams to ensure a successful social selling program that drives results.
3. Identify Preferred Channels
Just because, for example, your company’s own Instagram page generates hundreds of likes and comments, does not mean your sales team should focus all of their time on that specific channel. Take time to train your sales team to do the proper research to determine what social channels are most frequented by your prospects, what type of content do they react well to, and what times are they most engaged. The results may surprise you and they will ultimately drive your sales team's social selling efforts as well.
4. Personalize Your Outreach
Once your sales reps have a good understanding of where their audience spends their time, it’s time to interact with them. Social selling is not about generating a mass message and sharing it with as many people as possible Conversely, your focus should be on personalizing your interactions, which will help you build trust with prospects and ultimately close more deals.
5. Set up Guidelines
If you want to make your social selling strategy repeatable, it’s important to create general guidelines for your team to follow. Since there’s not a single approach that works best, it’s best to customize the guidelines depending on your team’s resources, goals, and team members.
A set of procedures will make sure the strategy is in line with the overall business strategy, specific format that must be followed and that the whole team is on the same page. The best process will still leave enough room for sales reps to be themselves and have enough flexibility to play around with what works best with their audience.
About the Canadian Professional Sales Association
Since 1874, we’ve been developing and serving sales professionals by providing programs, benefits, and resources that help you sell more, and sell smarter.
Contact us today at memberservices@cpsa.com or 1-888-267-2772 to see how we can help you and your team reach new heights in sales success.
Copyright ©2016 by The Canadian Professional Sales Association
For permissions, contact editor@cpsa.com.
This content is exclusive for CPSA members
Become a Member
Already a member? Login to see full the article.