Social selling defined
Could social selling be the secret jewel for companies, especially B2B? Let’s start by defining social selling, as there are a few variants. Michael Brenner is my favorite writer on the subject of social selling, so I will use his definition of variant of social selling that I want to spotlight in this post: “Social selling is not just about starting the sales process with social tools like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Social selling is about sales people building a strong personal brand. It is about understanding the role of content and how content can be used to tell a powerful and emotional story. And it is about growing your social connections.”
“Social Selling Can be used to tell an impactful story, growing social connections through leads to orders”
Social selling prerequisites
I really think that B2B companies should start investing in social media selling pilots. There are many aspects to be reviewed when getting started with social selling pilots. It is very important to consider the basics similar to any social media activity or campaign, like identifying your customer type, where and how your customers use social media, your objectives, budgets and list your expected business value outcomes. Getting started with B2B social media has many aspects. In my opinion, there are four success factors that need deep consideration in addition to the usual aspects listed above;
a) Social Media maturity.
There has to be some degree of social media maturity as regards your existing processes and the role that social media has in your digital marketing strategy, especially in the area of how social media leads are handled within your company.
b) Having a coordinated multichannel approach.
In this era, having a coordinated multichannel go to market approach is a vital success factor for managing leads. A project lead may appear in several forms at different times so it is key to be able to identify the pieces and be able to construct a picture of how the project is progressing and this helps to identify the players, the contacts involved. Contextual intelligence! Software can really help here! I recall my previous sales life as an account manager and my card index system, cold calling and flipping through my post for updates from a lead management company. The world has moved on.. have you?
Executive buyers do still prefer email and phone when it comes to touch points for contact. However, social networks like LinkedIn make up a good share of the % of the other channels that they prefer to use so make sure you start to include social selling.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc., Executive Buyers Prefer Email And Phone, July 26, 2013
To amplify the point, I recall an eMarketer interview with Vala Afshar, the CMO of Extreme Networks. In that interview he talked about the use of a multichannel approach. I quote Vala Afshar: “We see that we need to have a significant number of touchpoints with a client before we successfully win business. When you have multiple touchpoints, it’s important to understand the impact that you have along the buying journey” . He also said; “All of these touchpoints have a certain amount of influence, but customers are more influenced by their peers, especially in the B2B space.”
c) A cultural fit for social media.
Social selling pilots often need a top down support network. This helps fund the pilots, ensure that the result and key learning points can be spread to other segments to build on the work done. There has to be a cultural fit otherwise it could end in disappointment. The “hearts and minds” need to align. You also need to make sure that all aspects of your company social media policy are covered and also your company ethics should be aligned (assuming you have a list of company ethics ;-).
Here is an example where the culture did not match in Oracle and the social media sales expert was fired. The social media sales expert in this example was Jill Rowley. She was the best salesperson at her former company, Eloqua. She was consistently ranked as the top- or second-best performing salesperson, with clients like Wells Fargo, Square, McAfee and Salesforce. She was very skilled at using social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
d) Managing risk
There might be many industry / country combinations that might not be a great fit for a social selling approach. I always say that risk assessments should always be a part of doing social media for the first time, and a risk audit might be needed for social selling pilots in some industries, or to calm fears when the culture leads to uneasy feelings. Regulated industries need some consideration. There are over 12 major regulatory bodies — including FINRA, FFIEC, FDA, FTC, SEC, and NLRB — all having something to say about how social media can be utilized safely to avoid a warning notice or much worse.
Forrester Research published a report that talked about “a growing market for social risk and compliance (SRC) solutions. These products help enable, and even optimize, social engagement while enhancing oversight and mitigating risk and compliance concerns”.
Social Selling -What about YOU?
If social selling is not just about starting the sales process with social tools but more about sales people building a strong personal brand, how would this fit in your company? Is your company ready for this? Do you have the support of the C-suite? Could social selling be the next logical step in maturity plan for your social media catalysts?
Could your culture cope assuming you had mitigated any risks and had a rock solid deployment plan?
There are potentially big rewards awaiting companies that can safely navigate all these aspects, and Jill Rowley’s sales record while at Eloqua is a great example of what can be achieved when all the aspects I mentioned are aligned and Jill Rowley’s career at Oracle is a great example of what can happen when they are not.
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