There are only so many hours in the day so most people tend to prioritize tasks that produce results right away. For sales professionals, these tasks usually include sending emails and making calls to leads, gathering information to help close a sale, or attending meetings with clients.
Activities that make hitting your quota faster or easier in the longer term, like social selling, tend to fall to the wayside because the results are not immediately clear. To run a sustainable business, however, its important to make these longer-term activities a priority. Here are our tips for making social selling a priority at your organization.
Emphasize the Value
Making social selling a priority requires understanding the importance it can play in a sale. Only once they appreciate the value will your sales team be willing to make the culture shift required for social selling. Show your sales team information, stats, and results indicating that social selling will drive more business, and they will be far more likely to make it a priority.
Create a Social Selling KPI
The adage “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” definitely applies to social selling. Your sales team is measured on different metrics and KPIs; opportunities in their pipeline, deals closed, contracts renewed, and more. KPIs create pressure to achieve certain goals, but they also guide your team into understanding and focusing on the areas that are important to the organization.
Creating a KPI or metric related to social selling will incentivize your sales team to make it a priority. The metric itself will vary depending on your organization’s goals, current social selling activity, and team. You may want to use a metric that simply indicates they are active on social media, like impressions, shares, or followers, or you may want to measure more concrete results like leads or opportunities generated through social selling.
Allocate Time For Social Selling in Your Day
Social selling is not an activity that team members can simply cram in at the end of the quarter. Social selling requires regular attention, ongoing engagement, and thoughtful interactions in order to acquire customers. Sales professionals who do the bare minimum and fail to engage their audience regularly will not see results from social selling.
While social selling does require regular communication, it doesn’t require lengthy interactions. Encourage your team to carve out 15 minutes each day to focus on social selling. Most sales professionals will see results from spending a few minutes per day posting interesting content, replying to comments or questions, and participating in group discussions. Over time, this level of engagement will become evident, but, when they only need to fit in 15 minutes of social selling, your sales team likely won’t notice a difference in their day-to-day routine.
Making social selling a priority doesn’t require a lot of additional resources, money, or time. With a small amount of effort, you will eventually see more and better leads coming to you.