When you boil down social selling, what you are trying to achieve is a strategy that has consistent success. It’s your killer pitch, your reliable data pool and something your business can rely on. However, certain pitfalls can slow everything down and throw your strategy out the window. Here are a few dos and don’ts for your social selling strategy. Along with a few helpful tips to get you going.
Mistake #1 You don’t have a strategy at all
Social Selling isn’t simply broadcasting on social media and hoping for the best. This method dries up extremely fast if you just randomly send out sales messages without increasing your prospects, engaging with them or even talking to them without pushing for a sale. You have to set up your approach. You wouldn’t wing it when it comes to selling to a major company, and social selling has that same potential.
Tip #1 Stop burning through your network
This tip is a no-brainer, but a lot of us can forget that the constant growth of your prospects is a requirement for continued sales. You can’t sell to the same client forever, no matter the longevity of your product or service. That killer contract could be a timebomb if your entire business depends on just one renewal. Who wants to live in that constant fear? No one. But, one of the key issues some strategies hold is the practice of churning and burning through prospects. Relying on generating countless leads at a high figure in order to make continued sales. Never creating relationships and simply selling to those prospects willing to buy on day one. This practice can get tiring fast and what will you do when you’ve run out of prospects? Never going to happen? Maybe, but it’s going to get tougher and tougher to bring those numbers in. A practice that will leave you tired, burnout and without the sales figures to make the practice feel worthwhile.
Mistake #2 You don’t value your leads time
When you send an email on a Friday afternoon you understand that the person on the other side might not respond straight away. There are more people online at any given time than ever before. But, that doesn’t mean they are always looking at their phones. So give people time to respond before the follow-up. Not giving people time to think only leads to frustration not sales. As part of this social selling do’s and don’ts section we’ll add an extra tip to this section. Make sure you’re following up at the right time to create a good back and forth.
Tip #2 Create Engagement
One of the most important aspects of social selling is the underlying rule that people are more likely to buy from those they know and trust. This trust can be created and nurtured through social media engagement. This means posting content that your audience sees every day, so after some time they understand who you are and what you’re about. You’re content needs to be able to break through the mundane scrolling of your target audience. A great piece of content stops the person in their tracks, makes them take note and respond to the questions or discussions being raised. These discussions should be based on the problems of your audience and how you can solve them.
Mistake #3 Misreading Your Audience
There is nothing worse than false assumptions. Even if they aren’t assumptions at all no one likes to feel like they are failing. If you explicitly highlight a client’s problems there is a chance you will push the wrong button. What you think the prospect will value from your business may be completely wrong. This is why you need to generate conversations so your prospect reveals their hand. What makes them tick and why they would need your service. The reason this article is called the dos and don’t of social selling is to generate that interest and start a conversation. What comes next is a follow-up piece of content or question in a message campaign. What we haven’t done is assume these mistakes are being made by everyone all the time. You may understand your audience down to the bone, but everyone has different values at the end of the day.
Tip #3 Have Genuine faith in your product
Confidence isn’t just found in face to face communication. You can show confidence through a few things online. The speed of your replies and the choice of words you use can tell a lead a lot about your service. They might have special circumstances that need to be flushed out, but if you can’t simply say “yes, this is a great product”. You may as well not start the conversation at all.
Why Should you Care about these Social Selling Do’s and Don’ts?
Mistakes with your social selling strategy can do a lot more harm than you think. It can severely damage your reputation and relationships if you start treating new prospects you meet online as figures. Just because those members are behind an avatar or screen it doesn’t mean your actions won’t have consequences in the real world.
These are only a couple of mistakes that happen with social selling. There are a variety of quick tools and silver bullet promises online that promise quick results. In the end, however, they only lead to account restrictions and a dry pipeline. So what can you do? Practice, learn and take measured steps. Find your value and use it to create content. Then, use the Maverrik methodology to build your network and keep people engaged.
