Should You Try Social Selling?

Finding New Customers in New Places

You probably use social media to market to your customers already. You might use it to share seasonal offers or to promote your latest blog post. But do you use social media for sales? If you don’t, then maybe you should think about starting social selling.

Firstly, what is it? In the words of HubSpot, social selling is: when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople provide value by answering questions and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is ready to buy.

Why Should You Care About Social Selling?

Some businesses already use social selling. Why should you care? They’re probably all working for startups or fortune 500 companies, right? Wrong. Social selling is being done by people in all industries and LinkedIn have recently shown that salespeople that are using social selling are up to 78% more effective than those who aren’t and 51% more likely to hit their quota.

Cold Calling Is Dead

It’s often said that you should be doing what your competition isn’t doing. Well, in the case of cold calling, that’s never been truer. If your sales team relies on cold calls to get the job done then you should also try supplementing that with some social selling. The internet has changed the way businesses interact. It has made prospects even less inclined. While people may have seen cold calling as a bit of a pain a few years ago, now it just seems out of place. If a prospective client wants to find your business, they’ll Google it. Social selling will help make sure that if they do Google it, they can speak to a sales rep in a way that they are comfortable and at their own pace.

As mentioned above, the relationships you build through social selling are built on a stronger foundation. Since the user has typically approached you, or you have approached them in a less direct manner, the sales process is less adversarial. This means that the salesperson can really get to the root of what the client needs, rather than how much they’re willing to pay.

Your Buyers are Ready

According to LinkedIn, 76% of buyers are ready and willing to have a social media conversation with prospective vendors. If you’re worried that your buyers aren’t ready for social selling yet, that statistic should put you at ease. While it obviously isn’t perfect for all industries (for example if you’re selling military hardware), it seems that there is a large untapped community of potential buyers waiting for the right approach.

So, what are you waiting for? Time to get social selling!

Photo credit – Top: Wikipedia
Photo credit – Bottom: Harco Rutgers