With information available at a swipe, social selling is becoming much more than a fad and is strongly advocated by many companies
By Shaku Selvakumar: I was recently in a meeting with the agency when the company’s CEO walked in. While the introductions were going on, the CEO turned to the creative director and said, “Yes glad to meet you and happy birthday!” The creative director was taken aback and the client responded that he had downloaded a very useful app, which could curate and collate relevant information about contacts and would send notifications about important milestones and details. The app also pulled the most popular tweet, a summary of their profile, called out any obvious relationship connections and had a list of calendar meetings. According to Dan Pink, everyone is a salesman. Whether we realise it or not, we are selling. Perhaps, it is your talent, perhaps, it is a tangible product, or perhaps, it is a service. Information was always what made a good salesman great. Not just having the right information but using it at the right time to get an edge over your customers. Further, active social engagement is critical for sellers who can mine information just by virtue of listening and responding on social channels. This is exactly why social selling is not a fad. Defined as when a salesperson uses social media tools to sell directly to the company’s existing and prospective customers, social selling is being strongly advocated by many companies. Impacting the bottomline: Aberdeen Research surveyed 173 end user organisations to study how top performers used social media. Social sellers significantly outperformed the competition in numerous key performance indicators. Consider these findings. Nearly 79 per cent of sales reps using social selling tactics achieved their quota over 43 per cent and 15 per cent among industry average and laggard firms. It impacted revenue numbers directly as well with top performers showing a 16.3 per cent increase over 4.3 per cent within the industry average and an 8.7 per cent decline amongst laggards. The average sales cycle was shorted by. Also, 7 per cent amongst the top performers. Your business is my business: That social media is influencing the way we do business is a given. Consider this: 65 per cent of social media users learn more about brands, products or services and 53 per cent compliment brands. About 85 per cent of IT decision makers use at least one social media network for business. Social media sources of information are used by more than 70 per cent of B2B decision makers. Buying process is morphing: The average company is much smarter than it was a decade ago. It can access more information about you and quite quickly. Customers are not ignorant of the latest market developments. They can access product comparison guides. They ask questions online. They read blogs, whitepapers and posts. They attend webinars and seminars. According to IDC, technology buyers receive an average of six phone calls and 14 emails every day from vendors and find it a necessity to do their own research. According to a HootSuite paper, “Salespeople who get return calls face another challenge: navigating larger buying teams of stakeholders at prospective companies. The number of people involved in a large technology purchase increased from five in 2010 to seven in 2012.” The like factor: Getting on the social selling bandwagon is not difficult. Like everything else, it requires dedicated time and a willingness to listen. According to Sprinklr, a social media management site, “An average person spends more than three hours per day on social media. He/she post interests, share their Amazon favourites, and discuss products. And the data is freely and publicly available. This information is rich with explicit and implicit clues to what individuals’ needs are, and also what their likes and dislike are. As a business, your organisation must learn to find these clues, assemble them into a coherent picture that informs action, and then act on that data to improve the likelihood of a sale. That is a daunting task with traditional sales and commerce, but new technologies as well as methodologies are making it easier.” It is not about you: Social selling is really not about a marketing push. You have told the world about your fantastic company. You have spoken about your products and sent many links about events and whitepapers. You have tweeted about a product release. Now it is about listening to what customers are looking for. It is about taking complaints seriously. It is then about reaching out to offer a solution to the problem. It is about adding value and maintaining your reputation and credibility. Sharing information, your own and that which has been curated, can turn a run of the mill salesperson into a well informed and interesting advocate. Social selling is both an individual and a company effort. Both have to be connected and stay consistent with the message. I bought a new car last year and I still get emails from the car company. My salesman sent me an invite to connect on LinkedIn and when I tweet about the dealership, I get a response immediately. I feel connected and start feeling less of a prospect and more of a person. And that does the trick. (Shaku Selvakumar is a US-based marketing and digital communications expert; and founder of Coeuredge, a digital experience company), Source: mydigitalfc.com, Image: flickr.com |
