A sales person is social by nature. It’s their job to be good at developing relationships. But today being a social seller is more intricate than simply being able to hold good conversation.
Social selling is about being connected. It’s about seeing things from both a seller’s and a buyer’s perspective. It’s about your ability to nurture a lead and build that trust that’s becoming increasingly harder to come by. And building that trust starts long before you pick up the phone. Understanding that could be the difference between a win and a loss.
What I’m getting at here is if you want to optimize your team’s sales performance, don’t just teach them how to use InMail or get more followers on Twitter — teach them strategy to use going into all social media platforms.
Here are a few talking points to help you do that…
Big-Picture Social Selling Tips for Stronger Sales Performance:
Know Your Client
Understanding who your prospect is changes the entire dynamic of a meeting or call — and it’s not only important that you do your research, but expected. So don’t disappoint. Being prepared can be the difference between “let’s talk next steps” and “sayonara.”
Know Yourself
Ever heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? You may think your sales performance, especially as it relates to service, is great, but in today’s social world you better make sure you’re accurate. There are a plethora of blogs and customer review sites popping up left and right. Every person on your team needs to know the buzz around the brand that is…well, you. Social selling is all about trust, and your social presence plays into that.
Don’t Just Sell
Great relationships and great sales performance go hand in hand. While selling your offering is the endgame, you don’t always want to start there.You want to start by developing that relationship.
Sure, you know their name and role as a professional, but so does everyone else with an internet connection. Take it one step further. Become more than a stranger trying to sell them a product. Get to know them and let them know you, and that’s what leads to great business.
Easier said than done, right? Not necessarily. One easy way to get this started is to offer what we like to call free value. All that means is giving them something — often knowledge — that helps them, without expecting to get something in return.
Offering free value can be as simple as shooting them an email with content (preferably yours) that they’d find beneficial, with a quick note about why you thought they might find value in it. This one simple thing can be a game changer in relationships. It shows you have good intentions and are in tune with their needs.
A study conducted by Social Centered Selling a few years ago showed that 72.6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often. With social selling on the rise, imagine where those numbers are now and how that could affect your own team’s sales performance today. Numbers like that are why it’s so important not just to coach social selling, but make it a way of life.
