Small business owners excel online through establishing their social networks and banding together towards a common goal. They work well at generating B2B interest on LinkedIn and collaborating online to offer more in their local communities. But, does the same social selling methods work for established companies? How do the biggest brands size up?
Methodology
If you look at how social selling works, you are putting your heart and soul of your sales process into the people rather than the brands. What those people have to do in order to achieve real success is to deliver content, engage with their audience and sell. Even though we are focusing on people the brand is still a huge element in the process. Recognition, branded content and landing pages all play a role.
Having an established brand behind any social selling campaign streamlines it forwards because people already know what your company does. If the name behind the person is well-known and big, half the battle is already over.
71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend that brand to others.
Targeting
For small business owners, they look to connect with any CEO, MD and anyone else who they consider a big player in the world of business. Unfortunately for them a lot of these either reject the request or don’t make the kind of purchasing decision they are looking for. This is a call to bring in any and all. Whilst not limiting yourself is a good tactic you can take a better approach when part of a larger team.
If an established company targets different sectors, people are locations you can have a broad reach and have the ability to target specific leads. If your approach is more tactful you can even enjoy more accepted requests and better engagement from your audience.
The Strategy
Whether you’re a solo-entrepreneur or a multi-million conglomerate social selling on LinkedIn will work. The art of social selling is to leverage the ability to connect with people online, develop that relationship and turn it into a sale. So, why would it be different for any level of business? All you need is the right strategy and you can sell to anyone in the world.
Of course, fulfilling those sales is up to the companies themselves, which makes the process even better for larger companies who can complete more projects as they come in.
The only thing holding back larger companies from leveraging social selling is the lack of strategy being used across the entire business. If you want your business to grow it takes a collective effort. Everyone needs to work in tandem with each other with each act complimenting the last. Want to know how to achieve this? Join the Enterprise Social Selling Programme.
