In Part 3 of What Is Social Selling and Why Should You Care, I discussed how you can move opportunities through the pipeline faster, free up yourself (and your sales team) to move on to new prospects, and lower acquisition costs.
In Part 4, (the final in this series) I'll be going through how you can achieve greater client lifetime value, make bigger deals and retain more clients.
How to achieve greater client lifetime value
When I wrote this headline I felt as if I was about to tell you how to find gold in a pot, at the end of a rainbow. Obviously I'm not, but here's the irony. At its core, social selling is about moving away from purely transactional client relationships and towards consultative partnerships.
When you add social selling techniques to your sales methodologies you’re able to spend more time on activities that create real value for your clients. By building stronger relationships with your clients, you’re not only able to hit your targets, but you’re also able to create a foundation for sustained revenue growth, year-after-year.
I know it sounds like an impossible ideal, but hear me out. Social selling works but only if you educate your clients.
Here's why.
Those who use social selling methods find clients near the beginning of their buying cycle, when they can be challenged to think strategically. By taking control of their client conversations early on, they're able to expand the scope of discussions. Then, over the course of the buying cycle, they can continuously monitor their opportunities, educating their buyers with relevant content at critical times.
As a minimum anyone involved in selling i.e. business owners, sales executives, marketing executives and consultants, should be:
- Leveraging curated content (ideally from their marketing department) to provide relevant material to individual members of their buying committees.
- Sharing relevant industry news and insights to keep their buying committees informed on key industry trends.
How to make bigger deals
By using social selling techniques in this way i.e. to position yourself as a trusted advisor before negotiations even begin, you'll find that your clients will look to you for help and will be far more receptive to complementary product offerings.
Furthermore, if you use intelligence from social media monitoring services you'll understand the pain points and politics within the companies that buy from you, so you can expand your sphere of influence and grow deals horizontally.
Here are a couple of things that you can do instantly:
- Monitor your social networks to identify value-added opportunities with current clients.
- Connect with cross-function influencers to expand deals into new departments and locations.
How to retain your clients
Social media allows anyone involved in the sales process to provide value to their clients once the business has been won and during periods that are traditionally dark. By monitoring your clients on social networks, you can:
- Discover opportunities to re-engage and discuss business outcomes.
- Recognize dissatisfaction signals such as complaints or requests for recommendations.
- Find out when competitors are making connections with your clients.
Now I want to hear from you…
Tell me in the comments below or in a private email:
- How are you dealing with social media or social selling?
- What aspect of social media or social selling do you find the most challenging?
Please share your stories and experience here, and if you’ve got a question, just pop it down here. If you want to contact me for a strategy call click here.
Thanks for being a sport and participating!
P.S.
Finally, if you know someone who'd LOVE the insight from this social selling post, please send them a link. You’ll find solo entrepreneurs, consultants and yes, even sales and marketing managers who manage people who'll be interested to hear about this.
