Johannesburg, 12 Nov 2020
The world we live and work in today is quite different from that of just a year ago, and as businesses embrace increased remote working and distributed teams, so the world of sales has had to evolve.
Sales has become more and more digital, but COVID-19 has added impetus to this trend, forcing companies to look beyond tried and tested sales strategies.
The need to be able to connect with potential customers has given rise to the strategy of social selling, leveraging the connections forged on social media, in particular LinkedIn, as a critical part of the sales cycle.
Andre Wissler, Head of Client at Mint Group, explains that just as other forms of social media are about connecting with people who may share similar interests and views, so the business community that has grown around LinkedIn is invaluable in creating trusted relationships.
“The networks that exist in the real world have been recreated and expanded on LinkedIn. People use it to stay in touch with old business associates and to forge new connections with their peers across industries.”
Roger Strain, Account Executive at Mint Group, adds that social selling is, at its heart, about building and leveraging these connections to create trusted relationships that can be leveraged into business later on.
“Social selling is not about trying to sell someone a new business software application in a LinkedIn chat. It is about building up your profile as an expert in your particular field, showcasing that you understand your industry and the specific challenges your clients are experiencing. It’s the first step in the sales cycle.”
Wissler adds that what social platforms provide is the ability to engage at scale. “The power of social platforms is that you can speak to your whole audience, and by being that person who always posts insightful content, you’re able to create and extend critical relationships. One friend who had just started a new business before the whole country went into lockdown, leveraged the strength of LinkedIn tools, such as Sales Navigator, to identify and reach out to his target audience, and didn’t just survive, he thrived.”
The new buyer-seller relationship
“The one thing that all companies need to understand is that the buyer-seller relationship has fundamentally changed over the past few years,” he says. “Buyers now have access to massive amounts of information, so when they do engage, they’ve already created a shortlist for themselves. This just emphasises the importance of creating a sales process that allows you to speak to potential customers even when you don’t know they exist. Additionally, in modern organisations there are often multiple stakeholders who collaborate to make critical buying decisions. An IT director may confer with a particular employee who has given great feedback in the past about a specific system before making a decision and social selling allows you to indirectly reach that individual.”
Making this social selling strategy work is not as simple as it looks. It still needs to work as part of an overall sales strategy that includes multiple channels, including e-mail, marketing and direct customer contact.
On a small scale it is possible to do this on a personal basis, but for large companies looking to leverage the strength of social selling, automation and integration are vital.
“Every company needs to monitor and manage their sales efforts,” says Strain. “With social selling that means that each interaction on a social platform needs to be tracked on a CRM system so that buyer journeys can be appropriately tailored for each individual. Automating this means that the sales team can spend more time selling and less time doing admin.”
By automating the process it is possible to infuse greater insight into the sales process, allowing the sales teams to identify where potential customers are in the sales cycle, what their particular interests are, and the level at which a salesperson needs to interact with them.
“The key to social selling,” says Wissler, “is finesse and an art of being subtle. You’re not going to close a deal over LinkedIn Messenger, and it’s easy to run the risk of spamming customers.”
He identifies three key considerations when making social selling a part of the sales mix:
- Find and engage with people who already have a reputation in the market. By engaging with them you can reach a much broader audience.
- Provide value to your audience. If they see content that makes their lives easier they will be more likely to remember you.
- Be yourself and take it slow. People buy from people and so making sure your personality comes through is vital. Reputations aren’t built in a day, so you have to invest the time and effort to make this pay off.
Social selling can deliver real benefits, and its use is accelerating globally. Investing the time and effort to build your reputation is one element but making sure your company has the systems in place to support it is just as important.
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