Social selling may seem like a one person operation, but there are a lot of techniques a team can use to make it work for everyone. The concept of social selling works around building up your connections, establishing trust and promoting your services when the time presents itself. 84% of buyers kick off their buying process with a referral. The idea of one person creating a working relationship with a group of people seems much harder than 1:1 communication. Having multiple sectors asking a variety of different questions at once would be overwhelming. In most cases, it just doesn’t work out. But does that mean social selling as a sales team doesn’t work?
Getting Started
The initial interaction with your target audience is very important. You want to establish who you are. So, complete your research, engage with them on a social media post or two and then send a connection request. This works well. However, it may not work if every person on the sales team has done this at same time. If they receive a request from each person in a company their guard is going to be immediately raised. It just feels suspicious or the company is desperate for their business. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t all employ social selling. According to Salesforce compared to non-social sellers, sales reps are 40% more likely to hit their revenue goals and can expect 57% higher ROI.
Before you set out on your social selling journey, ensure you all have your target audiences and the cross-over is limited. It’s best for a client to have an established relationship with one member of the team than a surface level relationship with all the team.
Social Selling as a Team Creates an Established Voice
Content is a key factor in the success of social selling. The right viral post can create opportunities, conversation starters and generate business. With an established team, you can create your company’s narrative and a unified front. Is there a service or a product you need to promote? You can coordinate your team’s content around it without sacrificing a single account to constantly promote it, grinding the engagement level to a halt.
Your team are the best brand ambassadors with their content working as marketing and sales all-in-one. They can saturate popular hashtags with promotional materials and showcase your company’s culture as a great place to work. A team of enthusiastic people, working together in a positive environment makes the decision to work with your company even easier.
Dividing Areas of expertise
At times it’s best to choose a singular person to take over bringing someone onboard. If you offer multiple services, dividing your team into different sectors will give them time to learn and promote a singular service to an expert level. Rather than each member of your team learning the surface level of information for everything you offer. When you engage with a business owner or CEO you don’t truly know their position without first talking to them and understanding their business wants and needs. After learning they need something outside a particular members field of expertise they can move them along the line to the person who does.
Having established and well crafted social profiles for each member of the team means the client never feels like they are being pushed down the line or talking to someone who may not care as much about them. LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index can be a great guide on learning what areas a profile needs to improve on in order to make social selling easier.
It is absolutely important to start any sales process with a strategy, social or otherwise. It can be a large scale operation or a small order of practice. But it needs to be implemented across the board in order for it to be successful. Coordination is how sales teams are able to achieve those dream contracts and land big clients.
