What Is Social Selling?

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This week we’re joined by Brad Banyas, CEO of OMI! OMI is a cloud success partner that helps companies implement CRMs, marketing automation, Salesforce, Nimble, and social selling.

1. WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING?

Despite seeming like a common buzzword, social selling isn’t all that different from standard selling. The only difference is the medium through which you build your relationships.

You used to build relationships with prospects by phone or email. Now it’s Twitter handles and LinkedIn profiles.

Social media, essentially, is one of the key ingredients here – and LinkedIn is probably the best and most recognizable example. The platform is used to build a larger network of data around and about your prospects,. That way you know what they’re doing professionally, what they’re looking for, what they’ve recently accomplished, and even who they know.

2. HOW CAN I USE IT?

The main reason why social selling is growing more relevant is because the buyer’s journey and interactions with your company have changed.

People used to learn about you through magazines and trade shows…but now their main source of exposure comes from your website and your social media.

Building business relationships used to take time, but now thanks to social media you can have all the information you need about someone right at your fingertips. Likewise, they have (or should have) all the information they could want about you.

Information from social media platforms like LinkedIn can help you categorize people in your CRM. Salesforce and Nimble are great for this, and they are the main tools on which OMI consults.

After you determine your niche target audience, you can identify specific needs or storylines that get tagged in your prospects’ social tools.

The content that people post on social media – like, say, job listings – can help inform the specific ads that you in turn put in front of them.

After spotting tags like that on a lead, OMI can focus on messaging and begin a nurture campaign for that specific individual, or even reach out to them directly about their specific need.

3. WHAT DOES GOOD SOCIAL SELLING LOOK LIKE?

In short, programs like Salesforce and companies like OMI are supposed to help you build relationships. So your efforts into establishing connections and friendships among your network don’t actually look like plain old business.

Good selling doesn’t always look like a sales pitch.

Like or comment on someone’s social media posts now and then.

Should you spot a job posting and you know somebody who just might fit the bill, share the post with them.

“I can go to any expert I know…and say, ‘We’ve got a client with a problem, and I know you can help. I’m going to introduce you two.’ Our clients remember that.”

If an acquaintance has a business challenge that you can’t solve, see if you can connect them to someone who can help. Do your best to provide value.

“I can go to any expert I know… and say, ‘We’ve got a client with a problem, and I know you can help. I’m going to introduce you two.’ Our clients remember that.”

Of course, it’s not worth it for sales reps to scroll through social media feeds and file away every individual occurrence in the lives of their business peers; they don’t have the time for manual data entry. That’s what social CRMs are for.

Social CRMs haven’t changed social media, but they have changed what information is brought to your attention from social media, so that you can act on new developments and become more helpful to others.

Social selling is about connecting on a personal level, then beginning to do business – as opposed to cold-calling.

“At the end of the day, people want to do business with their friends…What can you do to make their day better or solve their challenge?”

“You’re using the speed of the internet to bring those experts together and then solve problems. And it works.”

People prefer to do business with someone that has been referred to them by someone that they already know and trust.

It’s not sold; it’s earned over time. That’s a key difference between being a vendor and being a trusted advisor.

“We want to be a trusted partner – and when someone says ‘vendor,’ it’s kind of the kiss of death. You’ve just been commoditized.”

4. HOW CAN MARKETING SUPPORT THIS?

As we say on this show countless times, you must align your sales and marketing teams around the proper goals and customer profile.

“The ability of marketing to work with sales in nurturing…really has evolved and is not as difficult as people think.”

The concept centers on giving them relevant content over time. That way, when they’re ready to buy, they know who to choose.

It used to be that the marketing department had all the content, but now in many cases the sales team generates their own content (like video voicemails). Once any one piece of that sales-made content is recognized as particularly effective, that’s a good time for marketing to come in and adopt it for their inventory as well.

“These kinds of tools are really beneficial around building your brand as an individual…no matter what company you’re working for… You are the brand.”

“As much technology as we have…it’s all about the human connection.”

Lots of companies even capture content from customers and using it to [re]define their brand as a whole.

5. WHERE SHOULD I START?

The internet. Start with the internet.

But in all seriousness, you really can learn anything about these techniques or these tools by googling “social selling”. Explore one of the world’s largest business networks. Get social-selling classes directly on LinkedIn. Look into easy CRM tools like Nimble and Salesforce that connect to the tools you’re used to.

Start playing around. Reach out to people. Spark conversations. Be human.

 

 

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