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Selling is social. It always has been, it always will be. But the way we do sales has changed.

The internet has opened up new opportunities for consumers and vendors to gather information about each other in an easy and efficient way. It’s about finding and being found. Social media is a wonderful tool to not just build visibility but to engage with the customer in a personal way and to build credibility and trust.

Reasons to use social media in your sales process

• You don’t have a choice: There are more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide and three-fourths of all B2B buyersuse social media in their decision-making process. Social media is where many professionals search for contacts, keep up on news and technologies, find product reviews and it is where they build an opinion about you and your competitors. If you are not there, you don’t exist. We believe that social media plays an even more important role in influencing the customers’ opinion about you before they have a need for your service or product.
• It drives revenue: You can’t ignore these numbers; 78% of sales people using social media as part of the sales process outperform their peers and exceed their quota by 23% more often than their peers.

Is your sales team social-ready?

To date, much of the conversation around social media has been focused on marketing. Only 20% of salespeople engage buyers with content. The marketing team is certainly the content centre of excellence, but when it comes to building long-term relationships it must be the salespeople’s responsibility to connect with the customer and to effectively utilise content that is optimised for them on a personal basis. Follow these 6 points to make sure your team is social-ready:

1. Stop selling, start serving: Social selling is never about the hard sell. It’s about creating credibility through meaningful relationships. As the Marketing Guru Seth Godin said “people are not interested in you or in what you want to sell to them, they are first and foremost interested in achieving their own goals.” So help them to achieve what they aspire and they will be open to your ideas.
2. “Be interested to be interesting”: Our Sales Mantra #3 is about carefully listening to what your customers care about, say and think. Research where they are active and how you are connected. Like, share and comment their social media activities. Show genuine interest in what they do and you will receive their attention in return.
3. Educating in what matters: Once you grab their attention amaze them with authentic and helpful knowledge they crave. This is an effective way to demonstrate thought leadership and influence people.
4. Train your sales team: As many as 75% of salespeople say they’ve received no formal social media training at work. Make them understand how important their contribution on social media is. Keep in mind that every employee is a personal brand who contributes to the company brands. The content and comments they are sharing must reflect the views and values of a company.
5. Executive alignment: Take social media to the next level and build support by leading from the top. Bring the line managers along. If they don’t use social media your sales team won’t.
6. Work close with the marketing team: The salesperson is the subject matters expert! He/she must find and help develop content that serves the customer appropriately.

One initial reaction to that might be “My team is already working hard. How can we fit that in?” Time management is indeed a major issue in this whole concept. But social media gives you the chance to work smarter, not harder. It is a strategic tool for nurturing valuable, long-term relationships and with a dedicated training and coaching your team will be soon exploiting the advantages of it.

Get social-ready with our engaging taster training workshop “Social Media Selling – How To: Embrace Technology to Improve Lead Generation”