Everyone knows how critical social selling – the use of social media by sales organizations to better leverage information about potential customers – is in today’s fast-paced and tech-driven world. Twitter’s recently announced IPO filing is only the most recent indicator that social media is here to stay and is playing a larger than ever role, within sales organizations and businesses as a whole. This puts an even greater onus on having the best social selling best practices across your sales force.
Successful social selling best practices involve so much more than simply learning about a prospective customer before you get on the phone so that you have natural conversation starters. In fact, there are a host of great social selling best practices that can be effectively utilized to open new doors and really hit prospective customers where you want to.
To help clarify the exciting but increasingly complicated social selling landscape, here are 3 underrated and underused social selling best practices that can truly help your sales force leverage the burgeoning power of social media.
Look for trigger events
Buying triggers are events or subtle occurrences that sales reps look for in a prospective customer to let them know that they may be ready to buy. By being alert to trigger events, reps will be able to reach the buyer at the most appropriate time, striking while the iron is hot. The real-time transparency of social media is the perfect setup to identify trigger events.
Some examples of trigger events in B2B sales include infrastructural changes in the prospective customer (such as a recent expansion or changes to executive teams), an uptick in marketing or advertising spend, receiving industry awards or even going through times of crises. Follow key decision makers at the companies of your prospective customers on Twitter and LinkedIn and actively listen to what they are talking about, what they are looking for, where their pain points are and, most importantly, their subtle cries for help from someone like you!
Collaborate with marketing
The best marketing and advertising is barely noticeable at all – the subtle and subconscious communication of products and solutions is more effective than the noise of hitting someone over the head repeatedly with your obnoxious message. Social selling works in the same fashion – reaching out to a customer who has expressed what he or she is looking for is a lot more effective than a “spray-and-pray” method of broadcasting to huge audiences and hoping one person perks up and pays attention to what you’re saying.
Social selling represents a great opportunity to improve sales and marketing alignment. Sales reps should be working with their marketing peers to deliver the right nurturing marketing campaigns and getting the most appropriate content and marketing materials to the right people at the right time. For instance, if a prospective customer – the CEO of a company – is lamenting her struggles with focusing on the right sales and marketing KPIs, this could be a good time to share your latest eBook on that very subject with her via social media. Social media represents a great opportunity to be proactively sensitive to your prospective customers’ pain.
Keep an eye on the competition
Many reps who consider social selling to be an integral part of their toolbox use it to get information on prospective customers, which is great, but those same people are also missing out on an even greater opportunity – learning about their competitors. With social media, you can now know exactly what your competitors are thinking or doing on a regular basis.
The key is to look for unique selling propositions that differentiate you from your competitor, in the eyes’ of your prospective customers. Look for what their customers are happy with and, more importantly, what they’re not. If a competitor is regularly interacting with its customers on pain points and common complaints via social media, this represents a plum opportunity for you to jump in and demonstrate how your company is different and can actually solve these issues.
There is no doubt that social selling can be a devastatingly effective weapon in any prospecting rep’s arsenal. The key then is to think outside the box and look for underused social selling best practices. Go beyond the traditional capabilities and functions of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to really harness the connected and increasingly transparent world of social media for business.
