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.
In Part 2 of What Is Social Selling and Why Should You Care, I discussed how you can get more and better leads. In Part 3, I’ll be looking at how social selling methods will help you shorten your sales cycle. I’ll be going through how you can:
In part 1 of ‘What is social selling & why should you care?' I wrote about how buying has changed and how you now need to sell in a different manner if you’re going to build a strong sales pipeline and exceed your revenue targets. In this post I’m going to expand upon this and show you how you can get more and better leads.
As you now know much of the buying process occurs before your buyer reaches out to a salesperson. However, what you may not be aware of is that it’s not happening behind closed doors. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Buyers are in your sight-line and good leads are there for you – in full view.
Yes, your buyers are on social media. And, there they're talking about their business needs, asking questions about issues in their industry, revealing intelligence about their own companies and reaching out to their peers for advice.
So, the question begs. If they’re doing all of this, why aren't you there too? Why aren't you socially surrounding them and recognising their buying signals so you can be of help?
Over the past few months there's been a lot of hype over social selling so I'm going to explain exactly what it is (and means) in a series of posts. The first starts here – obviously!
Meet Jessica. She's a a buyer and she's looking for a supplier. She doesn’t do a Google search and then call to make her inquiry. Instead, she searches Google, reviews the supplier’s website, considers their services, checks their reviews and reaches out to her connections for verification or recommendations. If she thinks they're OK, after having done all that and having compared them to other suppliers, she then makes contact via email or the phone.
Chances are, you're no different to her. When you're looking for a new supplier you do the same thing.
Why?
Well it’s because buying has changed.
And, it doesn’t matter who you are or what industry you’re in, that's a fact.
Today’s buyers are better informed and better connected thanks to technology. Social media had lead the way and revolutionized everything.
And, as a result we need to sell in a different manner – that is if we’re going to outperform our peers and the competition (of course).
In this post I'm going to be sharing six social media tips that B2Bs can use to help them strategically develop business. I'll be looking at some of the main challenges and how they can be solved. Whilst this article is aimed at anyone who's responsible for selling in a B2B environment, if you're looking to build your influence (and brand) as a consultant I'm pretty confident that you'll get mileage out of it.
Now let's get started!
In case you've not noticed social media is maturing. No longer is it just seen as a tool for marketers. Now, there's a growing amount of buzz around using it as a sales tool especially for B2Bs. Many understand its value. They know from experience that when it's implemented correctly it delivers a solid return on the investment. And, that's why more and more businesses and individuals (brands), year-on-year, are keen to get it right and use social media as a tool for increasing their influence and business development.
So let's look how you can set yourself up for success by giving you six social media tips that address the main challenges. These are:
Irrespective of the fact that you may or may not be practising social selling, in my world, winning sales starts by having conversations.
And, every good salesperson knows that in order to get people (or more specifically influencers and buyers) to talk to you, you've got to:
Furthermore, that to pull this off in the digital era you've got to have marketing and sales aligned.
For B2B companies, being able to execute your company’s growth strategies, including new product or service launches, go-to-market campaigns or even merger or acquisition deals, comes down to one thing:
Great conversations that go on between your salespeople, prospects and clients.
Ensuring your company delivers great conversations is therefore of major importance. And, in a rapidly changing technology driven environment it's based on three critical activities:
1. Building influence. You've got to get dressed for being online, and present yourself as a key person of influence. It's imperative that you become the signal and not the noise in cyberspace so you're heard or sought out by your prospects and clients.
2. Creating the right stories. Your sales messages and tools have to communicate enough value to break through your prospects’ current situation and differentiate yourself from competitors.
3. Enabling the right skills. Your stories must be delivered with power and impact. They need to create value, convince sceptical executives, and protect your profitability.
Listed below are three popular sales and marketing myths (the two these days are joined at the hip) that I’m going to bust. Unfortunately, these might have been leading you astray when it comes to developing and delivering your messaging. However, discovering the truth behind these myths and embracing their alternatives will serve to empower you AND convince your clients to say “yes” to change, and “yes” to you!
So let’s get on with it!
Social selling, what's all the fuss about? Has social media really ripped up the rulebook on marketing so that we need to rethink everything? Is broadcast marketing dead? Is it all about communication, involvement and feedback – a place for people to talk about things they care about?
YES!
In a world that’s disconnected, we now seek to belong and build communities. So we follow, like, link, subscribe and make friends. We work at speed – networking, connecting, sharing, contributing and supporting.
As a result business is changing. It's becoming more transparent, agile and authentic than ever and social is the catalyst.
So, as someone who’s required to sell your tactics have to change.
In order to win in business now you have to understand exactly what motivates your prospects so you can add value. You need more influence in your market and you have be more engaging so you can cut through the Internet “noise” and connect with your buyers.
Studies show that, year-on-year, when more businesses implement social selling and other social media activities the right way they understand its value better. Why? Well for a start they get to experience social capital and once that happens they then treat it as a business asset and see positive returns.
Although this is encouraging, there are still, however, many who are not achieving success with their social selling and social media activities and that's why I'm addressing it here. My aim is to help you get more leads and business by using social media as a sales and business development tool.
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