We live in an age in which social media rules.
You cannot walk down the street without someone taking a photograph to upload to Instagram, or without someone Tweeting about the latest football scores, or even someone checking in on Facebook. We live in the age of social media, and it is here to stay.
With the dawn of social media, came the advent of social selling.
Social selling is simply the act of sales people developing relationships with the prospects during the sales process. In this modern technical age, this is normally conducted on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and most predominately on LinkedIn. This is done by direct communications between a prospect and the sales person, by writing blog posts or conversation starting blogs and trying to appear as the expert in the field.
At this point in time, it is very clear to point out that social selling is not a new phenomenon. For years, decades perhaps, direct selling companies (C2C) have worked tirelessly to develop relationships with their customers and used it as a clear cut tactic to help sell their wares. However it is only in recent years that those in the B2B sector have realised that behind every business is a person; an individual with feelings, emotions and desires. Many sales professionals are now trying to develop relationships with their prospects using social selling as a vital tool in their arsenal.
Social selling has enabled many sales people to over rely on trying to sell on social media – and this is not an effective long-term strategy.
Of course, if done right, social selling does work, and social media has made it much easier for people to connect with and talk to people far easier than it has ever been. However, from my years of experience in sales, I would strongly recommend you use social media as an extra tool in your contact points with your prospects and customers.
You see, if you can mix in social media contacts with phone calls, emails, direct mail and letters, and even face to face visits, you are going to develop much tighter and much stronger relationships than what you would have with people you have just connected with on social media.
The other danger of over relying on social media to sell is you are putting too many eggs in one basket. How many times have social media platforms gone down, and stopped working? If you rely too much on sending messages to strangers on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn goes down for 24 hours, you have lost 24 hours of vital sales time!
So, always be wary and cautious when you are just trying to sell on social media. Use social media, by all means, but think of it more as an additional tool in your sales toolkit than just having it as a one size fits all option.
If you feel your sales process and contact strategy is lacking, and there is room for improvement, then why not let me and the team at C3 Sales & Consulting step in to help? You will find our contact information here on our site and we can get straight to work in making your sales process as refined as possible.
