A Social Selling Guide for Sales Leaders – The Bitter Business

A Social Selling Guide for Sales Leaders – The Bitter Business

A social selling strategy starts at the top. If sales
management and senior executives are suspicious about social media – if they
only see risk, their people wasting time clicking “Like” buttons and employees
posting funny pictures, then they would be right to draw down the shutters and,
in the process, cut off the opportunity social media presents.

If, on the other hand, they want to become a social business
and prepared to invest in training to optimise its potential and reduce risk,
to reconfigure operations so that departments work together digitally, not in
silos. Then social selling could be the key to unlocking the data insights into
customers and prospects. Where do they engage, digitally? What language do they
use? How active are they? What external content do they share? There is a mountain
of social data out there if a business knows how to mine it.

Some 62 per cent of Irish companies said they used social
media platforms as their primary method for connecting with customers, up from
58 per cent and 46 per cent in 2014 and 2013 respectively.   (Compiled by CSO December 2015)

So how many of our companies have formal social selling
programs, policies and KPI’s in place?

The social networks allow us to interact with other human
beings in meaningful ways online. Social Selling is an evolutionary step
forward making the sales process more productive and meaningful. It is not about
using social media to shout at, stalk, or spam people digitally. It is not
about employing the social channels to replace cold calling/sales outreach or
replacing the telephone with Twitter and LinkedIn.

The reality is that integrating social media into your
team’s selling process is a must if you expect your salespeople to break
through the competitive clutter and reach buyers who are better informed and
more digitally connected than ever before.

A well planned social selling program will see sellers will
use the online channels at the front end of the sales cycle to be useful, to network,
build their online brand, and be found, demonstrate credibility, generate leads
and conduct presales customer engagement. Social channels can and should also
be used to nurture existing customer relationships and as part of account based
management

To turn your sales organisation into a social selling
machine, you need to do these things:

Accept that buyer behaviour and the buyers journey has
changed. Sales management must shift their mindsets. The selling world is
different than it was five or ten years ago. Some if not most of the sales
tactics that worked when a business was building its customer base, are not
working for sales teams today. Saturated with sales approaches, buyers ignore phone
calls and emails from people they have never heard off. It takes so much more
effort to break through the noise these days. Sales people must alter their
sales approach.  The role of sales
leadership is to help them learn how to do it.

Develop a social selling strategy. Engage both the marketing
and sales teams as part of the planning process.  Be careful not to head straight for social
selling training without having thought through items like culture, change,
KPI’s, content and making social selling a consistent activity. Heading
straight to tactics without executive sponsorship and a well developed plan is
a recipe for failure.

Establish social etiquette and social media guidelines. Sales
people need to know what is expected of them from their actions online. Sales
people present themselves PLUS the company brand. Remember what is posted online
stays there is forever, while mistakes are bound to happen a business can
reduce any risk by ensuring that all the sales teams understand the art of
communicating online. As important is to teach them what is and is not appropriate
to say and do on behalf of your company when they are using social networks as
part of their selling activities. Less than 26% of sales people know how to use
social media correctly as part of their sales activities.

Include social selling training into the bigger sales training
plan. The digitally connected buyer means that sales behaviours have to change
and sales people need to understand how to strategically use the social
networks in the right way. If a company or sales people just view social
channels as a vehicle to spam prospects with vanilla sales pitches, a huge
opportunity will be wasted, and the company brand is put at serious risk. Social
training should be ongoing and not just a one-time event at the end of
induction training.

Implement and focus on the metrics. Social activity is
not about doing more – make more connections, send more invitations, or do more
demos. Without the right metrics and KPI’s, sales teams can waste a lot of time
hitting like buttons. Without clear goals and objective sales people do not
link their social behaviour to social etiquette, policies or structure. They
commit “random acts of social” where at times self-promotion takes precedent
over company promotion. The quality of sales activities as a result of social
selling is what counts. Using the social networks to attain measurable sales
results is more important than checking off the box that says sales person A
sent 50 connection requests.

Be realistic in your expectations. Using the social channels
is not a quick fix to increasing sales pipeline and revenue. No one who
implemented a social selling plan saw results overnight. No surprise here as this
is no different from any other sales tactics a business may have invested in
for the sales teams. When it comes to the social channels learning how to do
things differently does take time. This is why the planning that goes into providing
the training and coaching that sales people need is vital so these new
approaches bear fruit overtime.

Social selling is an additive process. This is not a
replacement for phone calls and prospecting emails. It is an additive approach,
a prescriptive process like another arrow in the quiver that you should think
about, "How do I apply social to every prospect, every deal, every
account, every single day for no more than 30 to 60 minutes a day.

Forward thinking sales leaders know that social selling is not
some snake oil, nor is it a gimmicky approach to selling. These leaders know
social selling is another set of sales tools and an evolution in how we reach buyers
in the digital era. Social selling is a complement to traditional sales
methods—not a revolutionary approach that replaces them. Social selling, due to
its ability to enhance the customer journey, is an incredibly powerful sales
tool. But, like any tool, its value and utility are ultimately tied to the
skills of the individual employing it.