by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
I was reading a comment by somebody on Linkedin who said “Social selling is no use to me as I have to talk with my clients”.
He did describe himself as a “cold calling trainer” so maybe some vested interest to rubbish social selling, but I spat my tea out.
Who has ever said that social selling means you cannot use the phone? or have a meeting?
Let’s clear this up, social selling does not stop you using the phone, using letters, using emails, using carrier pigeons or having fact to face meetings.
In fact “the point” of social selling is to get you a face to face meeting.
Let’s think about the best way to convince somebody of your product or service, it’s probably face to face. That could be in the same place or even using a product like RingCentral to conference call people in. RingCentral allows you to do videos calls as well as voice only calls. Either way, seeing somebody is still a great way to judge a meeting.
The second best place to have a meeting is over the telephone, again we are all used to this mechanism. Either via a desk phone or via mobile. Of course you could use a product like RingCentral to enable you to have multiple people on that call.
So what’s the purpose of social?
First and foremost social selling is not selling on social. Nobody gets up in the morning and says “the first thing I need to do today is talk with a salesperson”. In fact the great thing about social media, is that as buyers we can search for solutions to our problems without dealing with sales people.
Gartner, (what was CEB) said in recent research that 77% of buyers don’t believe sales understand their business and don’t think they can help. I was talking to a CIO at some Christmas drinks and he said that he was pretty much under siege from sales people. He said he had competitors that used the same email templates. I asked him what he did, he said “this is all just noise, I delete it all”. 80% of cold outreach he just deleted.
Social selling enables you to build relationships with people, and who will people turn to when they want to buy something? People they love and trust.
The modern buyer is looking for an expert, somebody that can help and guide them. You need to have a personal brand so buyers can see you are an expert. As well you need a strong network. Your territory needs to be online. Don’t forget that Gartner (what was CEB) says that there are now 9 or 10 people required to agree a purchase. You therefore need to be connected with, at least 10 people per account.
Finally, for you to keep “waving” at your territory each day, you need content. Some content you will curate, using tools such as Flipboard and some content you will write yourself. Linkedin still being the best place to post your blogs. Why? Because it adds to you expertise.
By having a personal brand, a strong network and content, you won’t look like a spammer as you prospect on social. As I said before, don’t what ever you do is sell. Linkedin isn’t for selling, it’s for building relationships.
Here at Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) we do no outbound marketing. We don’t cold call, we don’t send spammy emails, we don’t attend events, but we get three piece of inbound everyday.
Now we don’t take those deals through to close on social. The first thing we do is suggest a call or better still a meeting. Why wouldn’t you?
We also use social and content to move deals along through the sales process. This is anti phone as all you can do with the phone is pester people and annoy them. With content, people will be able to read and absorb your ideas with out you annoying them. In fact you can influence them and they will be happy to read and consume your insightful and educational content. After all, they will learn something.
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/is-your-team-doing-what-they-should-be-doing/
https://dlaignite.com/you-cannot-have-digital-transformation-unless-you-can-measure-it/
https://dlaignite.com/how-not-to-run-social-media-transformation-strategy/
