Sell it, Sell it Good! (On Social Media)
I think every social media expert's jaw dropped to the ground when they heard of the tactic social selling. You mean our top sellers can just get on Twitter and LinkedIn and close sales left in right?!
Sounds too good to be true ... only because at first, it is. In 2017, there is still a major disconnect between marketing and sales. Social marketers are trained to go out in the social media world and market a brand, at its best, products/solutions and all. But sales professionals aren't always socially savvy, which furthers the teams even more.
I had the pleasure of attending Koka Sexton's Social Media Marketing World Session, How to Turn LinkedIn Into a Funnel for New Leads. He touched on a lot of great points on social selling and why we, as marketing and sales teams, need to be taking part. Below are some of the key takeaways that you can use to guide your social selling strategy.
Marketing/Sales Alignment - Come Together, Right Now!
As I said earlier, marketing and sales are struggling to work together. In one quick, easy definition, Koka defined social selling as "bridging the gap between sales and marketing."
Yes! This is a perfect definition. Bring together your sales and marketing experts to form this sales closing, revenue driving, force field. Total domination, am I right?
Decision Makers Are on Social - Find Them!
Top executives, senior level VPs, and other decision makers are active on social media, especially Twitter and LinkedIn. Sales professionals need to leverage social to get to these individuals in a new and personal way.
For some companies, sales divisions may be larger than others, so the question "who do we utilize?" comes into play. Koka defined the movable middle as the individuals we need to target. These are the sellers that are not social media experts, but know enough and are willing to LEARN.
Social media teams can assist in turning the movable middle into trusted and visible accounts. Visibility creates opportunity and those opportunities can close sales.
Trigger Events - Get in There & Do your Thing!
Did you know that when someone updates his/her LinkedIn profile to "Senior Vice President of Blah Blah Blah" you have 90 days to successfully get your product in front of him/her?!
LinkedIn is a key platform in the social selling world with its feature saved searches. You can literally be alerted as soon as targeted accounts are updated. A quick email to your smartphone basically saying let's chat to this user about your product ... how easy and effective is that?
Be the Ultimate Resource For Your Industry
It isn't always about getting your sales team on social and communicating 1v1 immediately. These individuals need to make a social presence and be an influencer in specific industries. Koka went into detail about how content fuels social selling. In order to be successful, sellers must curate, distribute, engage and then take offline. These activities and efforts on social media matter and will make an impact on potential buyers.
While the disconnect between marketing and sales is not always an easy problem to solve, we can work to bridge the gap with social selling. Two teams of experts can come together and achieve everyone's end-goal...
Driving business growth!