Social selling is a cornerstone piece of a digital selling strategy. Now is the perfect time to get started if you haven’t already implemented social selling in your business.
In this article, I’ll review some of the significant benefits of becoming a social seller. But first, let’s review what social selling is.
What is Social Selling?
Social selling is a sales and marketing strategy incorporating social media platforms as part of your business development process. This includes prospecting, lead generation, lead nurturing, and active relationship management via social media.
Social selling is a strategy that can be deployed both at an individual sales representative level and through an overarching brand. This means both sales and marketing teams can be actively involved in developing your social selling strategy.
These strategies often include creating social media profiles, engaging with your target audience online, and publishing content that elevates you as a thought leader in your industry.
What are the Benefits of Social Selling?
Sales and marketing leaders who are active with a social strategy are likely already aware of its benefits. But for those new to social selling, below are seven benefits you can expect:
- Expand Your Reach – Sales is a numbers game. The more prospects you can connect with, the more opportunities you’ll have a chance at winning. Social selling allows you to leverage your network’s network to expand your reach and increase your visibility online.
- Find Your Audience – Prospecting has never been easier with social media networks. You can search, filter, and save prospects based on multiple datapoint dimensions. Tools like LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator are great ways to find your target prospects.
- Build a Community – You can join or build a community of like-minded people online. This is a great way to engage with and publish content that is directly relevant to the work that you do.
- Develop Trust – Trust is a crucial ingredient in the sales process. By working on a social selling strategy, you’ll be able to showcase your knowledge and past client work online. This, in turn, will provide valuable social proof and enable your prospects to develop trust in what you have to offer.
- A Personal Platform – People want to buy from people. Social selling offers a way to become personal with your business development strategy. Let people engage and buy from YOU, not just a corporate brand identity.
- Become a Thought Leader – You can become a trusted expert in your industry. By publishing original content and engaging in online discussions, your audience will begin to see you as a thought leader they want to work with.
- Close More Deals – Social selling provides an effective way to scale your business development. Unsurprisingly, a study found that 78% of reps who use social selling are outselling their peers. Simply put, social selling will help you close more deals.
Looking for help with your social selling strategy? Be sure to sign up to get notified when my course, “Mastering Social Selling” is launched. Or reach out to discuss how I can help your business.
