The great promise of social selling is to generate more leads, more sales, and an effective sales process. Social selling generates better quality leads, increases pipeline, and boosts the win rates. Social selling is when salespeople use social media to communicate with the prospects directly. Social selling doesn’t interrupt the flow of the prospect’s day and provides a more effective way to connect with the customers.
There are five basic elements of social selling:
- Establishing a professional brand
- Searching and targeting the right prospects
- Providing valuable insights to the prospects
- Engaging with the prospects at a personal level
- Taking time to build relationships
One of the most important aspects of the social selling process is data. The data that the sales team depends on needs to be accurate, abundant and accessible. Data is important in social selling since details on prospects, their pain points, and the value-added information about them may come from many sources. It’s important to recognize the role of data to improve the performance of social selling.
The benefits social selling are innumerable as it allows people to laser-target potential customers, establish rapport, and guide them through the sales funnel. Sales reps nowadays use social media to provide value to potential customers by answering their queries, responding to comments, and guiding the potential customers by hand throughout the buying process – from awareness to consideration to decision.
If you can’t quite see the value of social selling yet, check out these benefits:
- Reduced sales cycle
Buyers are engaging in online communities and asking their peers to provide feedback and reviews on products, and researching solutions prior to any sales conversations. With social selling, salespeople can keep an eye on these conversations and monitor what’s being said and at the right moment, dive in with thoughtful and value-added responses.
- New revenue opportunities
Through social selling, salespeople can get an inside look at the needs and want of potential customers and can join in on the conversations that are already happening on various social media channels. By listening to prospects that are in urgent need of a solution, salespeople can provide them with immediate assistance. This new way of lead generation helps the salespeople identify the most relevant customers.
- Online brand reputation
Engaging directly with the prospects boosts brand awareness and establishing a trusting relationship can form a significant amount of likeability of customers towards your company. Having an online presence also allows you to hide the damaging content about your brand by pushing it down the search engine rankings.
- Customer retention
Social selling allows the salespeople to maintain contact with your customers all the time. Sharing informational content and answering people’s burning questions online can inspire customer loyalty.
