5 steps for social selling success

This article was contributed by Vincent Brissot,Vice President of Digital Marketing Platforms & Channel Enablement at HP.

Greater online visibility and engagement means a greater opportunity for customers to find your solutions and the expertise they need to achieve desired business outcomes. With the vast amount of information online, B2B customers are researching vendors, engaging with them and informing their purchase decisions with a few clicks of the mouse. According to Forrester Research, 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online.

74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online

This requires that solution providers transform their sales models and create new strategies to engage with potential customers in the digital world. An important part of this new digital customer journey involves social media. But how do you get started in the world of real-time engagement and social interaction? What are the most effective ways to reach your customers? How often should you post? What voice should you use? When you use social media for business, it’s important to master the art of social media and understand its’ various components to ensure that you and your business are not wasting time nor money online.

Which brings us to today’s topic: social selling. It’s an integral part of the social media, marketing, and sales mix. I’m here to help you understand how to use these platforms to effectively communicate with current and potential customers in order to achieve your business goals.

78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media

What is social selling?
Social selling is the act of using social media to interact with potential customers and provide them with valuable information that answers questions and solves problems, with the goal of converting these interactions into sales. It differs from traditional marketing and advertising that blatantly promotes a product or service. Instead, social selling focuses more on cultivating relationships with current and future customers by presenting your audience with solutions to their problems, without overselling yourself. These solutions may be general advice or point consumers to useful and relevant third-party information.

Digital Transformation’s impact
Successful social sellers gain trust with their targeted audiences by positioning themselves as experts in their respective fields, nurturing connections, and listening for the best opportunity to present their business as a viable solution. Social selling yields 45% more sales opportunities, and has proven to be successful in converting these opportunities into actual revenue.

By now all businesses should have a presence on social media, which means that all businesses should be aware of and planning to implement social selling strategies. It’s no secret that digital transformation — the use of technology to transform an enterprise from the inside out — is on the rise due to technology innovations, the internet, social media, and consumers’ buying habits. The traditional way of selling is dying, but the opportunity for businesses to engage with consumers online is alive and well.

The traditional way of selling is dying, but the opportunity for businesses to engage with consumers online is alive and well.

In fact, 90% of top decision-makers say they never respond to cold calls, which indicates that there are other, more effective ways to communicate with potential leads. Social media is a resource for 72% of B2B customers looking for solutions. Now more than ever, B2B customers are checking out vendors online before purchasing, which makes getting eyes on your content and channels extremely important.

Digital channels influence 92% of B2B buying decisions

Tools for succcess
At HP, we launched the Social Media Center to help our partners get on board with social selling, and assisted a client in increasing customer impressions by 400% and obtaining 2,000 profile views in less than a month. Our tools help put partners in front of their prospects to begin the social selling journey.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again — we’ve entered a new era of selling that is far less product-focused, and more about the solution and business outcome that best serves the customer. That means consumers are less interested in hearing about your business’ promotions, and are more focused on understanding how your business is going to benefit them in the long-run. Social selling helps convey this message by delivering focused content and one-to-one communication with potential buyers with the aim to convert them into customers. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Find your audience. The first step in including social selling in your marketing mix, is to identify who your target audience is, and all of the places that they hang out online. For example, if your target audience is comprised of Millennials, consider engaging with them on Instagram or Snapchat. if your audience is IT professionals, look deeper into channels such as LinkedIn or Twitter.
2. Share valuable content. Before doing business with you, consumers want to know that you’re not just to out to make sales, but that you’re knowledgeable in your industry. You can establish this trust by sharing third-party content that is relevant to their needs, provides value, and positions you as an expert in your field.
3. Engage. Posting valuable content is a start to engagement, but engaging with your potential and current customers is the final touch. Salesforce puts it perfectly. “Every time you engage with buyers’ posts, such as with a like or comment, you will get their attention. Interact frequently enough and you will generate brand awareness and start to build a relationship, at which point you can request to connect.” Engagement may also happen when you notice that someone frequently likes, shares, or comments on your content. This indicates that they are interested in what you have to say, which may make them more likely to purchase from you in the future.
4. Listen for opportunities. Don’t simply jump into someone’s mentions or inbox without good reason. Instead, actively watch your social media timelines, use native search bar features or set-up searches on tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social to look for keywords around conversations from your contact list. When these keywords pop-up, engage with your contacts in real-time to offer a solution to their needs, answers to their questions, or simply share their content.
5. Measure then repeat. How can you tell if your social selling efforts are paying off? Set up a measurement system that works best for your business and sales goals. Measurement can be done by tracking conversations that converted into revenue, noting follower and engagement growth in comparison to sales, or whatever other benchmarks make sense for your needs. Tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social offer extensive reporting analytics. You can also gather metrics from native tools like Twitter Analytics and LinkedIn Analytics.

Ready to dive in? First, take the time to figure out how your company can get with the times given the resources that you currently have available. The sooner you get started with social selling, the sooner you’ll see a return on investment like IBM who drove a 400% increase in sales and inContact who increased revenue by 122% via social selling campaigns.