Maintaining an active personal brand on social media has become a necessary tool for sales professionals to build and maintain relationships with prospects. According to a Forrester Consulting study, Social Selling: A New B2B Imperative, 49%of B2B enterprises have developed a formal social selling program.
If you aren’t utilizing social selling as part of your sales strategy, you could be losing sales to more social-savvy salespeople. At Orbitly, we make it as simple as possible to socialize your pipeline. But sometimes there are steps you need to take in order to make that social connection.
Pick the Right Channels
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the most popular social channels for social selling, but that doesn’t mean you need to do all of them or just do these. If your audience is on Instagram, explore that. If your audience is not on Twitter, don’t waste your time creating content on a channel where your target audience won’t see it.
Complete Your Profile
Your profile might be the first contact you ever have with a prospect. Ensure it’s complete with:
· your full name
· a professional photo of you
· brief bio
· any other areas that tell your story
Social selling is about relationships, and relationships can’t be built if you’re hiding behind a sushi photo or a blank ‘About Me’section.
Listen
Your prospects are telling you exactly what they want, need or desire. You have a plethora of information at your fingertips. You just have to stop and strategically listen. Utilize this free information to learn and discover, then implement what you learn to your sales strategy and communication efforts. Use monitor and search tools to listen to the digital conversations happening on social media. With Orbitly, you can enrich your lead lists in seconds! Check it out!
Engage
Don’t be a robot and automate likes and comments. Be authentic and remember that the purpose of social selling is to build relationships. LinkedIn provides a handful of effective tools for salespeople,and one of these is LinkedIn groups. Other helpful tips for engagement are:
· Follow other thought leaders or community members.
· Seek profiles that relate to your target audience and connect with potential prospects.
· Set time aside to monitor feeds and engage with other people’s content and social interactions.
Connect
If you do all of this work and you don’t actually connect,then you’ve wasted time. The leads won’t just come running, so send an invitation to connect, make an endorsement, or send a personal message.
Since social selling is about building relationships,ensure people can reach you! Clearly communicate various communication channels you can be reached, which will depend on the social channel and what links or sections are available for contact information.
Don’t Pitch
Remember you’re building relationships with social selling.This is not the place - and likely not the time- to present a solution or pitch a product. Save the product pitch to follow a thorough needs analysis where your advice and consult will hold more weight and help to develop a stronger business relationship.
Remember that the goal of social selling is not to get a sale on first contact. It exists to build meaningful relationships. Utilize these best practices to gain insight on your target audience, nurture leads,and ultimately generate sales.
With help finding and adding leads through social media profiles and email, try Orbitly!