Setting Your Business Apart: Social Selling

 Whether you are a seasoned sales professional or are just starting out, it’s easy to see that traditional selling methods are just not working like they once did. My first career out of college was as a life insurance salesman. My mentor with that company’s philosophy was, “open the phone book and start dialing." It did not take me long to find out that I was wasting my time and energy making cold calls. What my mentor failed to realize was that in this day and age of caller id and spam blockers, the time one puts in to sending ghost emails and making cold calls is not an effective use of a salesman’s time. In 2015 access to information about people is easy to get. People now want to work with individuals that they have a connection with and can trust. Most importantly they want you to prove your worth and expertise before they even consider accepting one of your phone calls.

You may have already heard of the concept of social selling, a concept that every sales professional CLAIM they are using. They think  having a vague LinkedIn profile is enough. Then, they’ll wonder why they aren’t getting the leads from social media that they should.

If you want to succeed in this new way of selling you have to put the time in. Just like cold calling, if you only made 10 cold calls in a day you probably won’t net one worthwhile conversation.  Social selling is time consuming, but if done right can net amazing results!

Here are the three steps that make a great social seller in 2015:

1. Promote

When you reach out to a prospective client, the first thing they are going to do is look you up on social media and google to get as much valuable insight as they can into what you offer.  So, have it available!  A clearly defined personal mission statement, a detailed description of what you do, testimonials from clients that you have worked with in the past, gives a better idea of you personality outside of work. Consumers want to work with professionals they can see themselves having a drink with on the weekend.

Promote as if you had to buy from you. Who would you want to work with and what would you want to know about yourself before making a purchase?

2. Educate

Your potential clients want to know what your skills are, and they want you to prove it to them! The best way to do this is to educate them. I believe that this is the most important aspect of the social selling model. I also know, that this is the part of social selling that most professionals skip, and is the reason they are not successful getting business opportunities through social media. There are many ways of educating your customers. Some of my favorites are: blogs, webinars, YouTube videos, e-books, and white papers.  Writing one blog per week or hosting one webinar per week is not time consuming and can make all the difference in your customer’s eyes. Educating your potential clients will give you a leg up over your competitors.

3. Delight

The final step to social selling is delight. Your potential clients want to get a pat on the back every once in a while, so give it to them! If they have a birthday, make sure to send them a message, if they just had a new baby reach out to congratulate! Those are the obvious ones. But if you really want to impress them you have to customize your delightful messages. Once a month, try sending them some information about something that you learned about them on their social media accounts. For example, if the person is a baseball fan. Send them and e-mail and tell them you read an article about baseball and it made you think of them and send them a link. Consumers will appreciate this small gesture more than you think.

Thank You For Reading

Randy Delling

Social Stride