How does Social Selling work so well?

Social selling is best described as finding, connecting, and interacting with prospects over social media and providing them with genuine value until they are ready to buy.
While it it isn’t a closing technique on its own. It is an extremely powerful lead nurturing process that has proven itself effective.
- 72% of B2B decision makers and 84% of C-Level VP execs use social media to inform their decisions.
- A lead developed through social media is 7x more likely to close.
- Organizations who use social selling have seen a 10%-20% increase in win rate, 20%-30% acceleration in cycle time, and a 10%-15% increase in revenue.
So why is social selling so effective anyway?
People buy from who they know, like, and trust.
Social Selling done right hits all three. It allows your prospects to get to know you, grow to like what you’re about, and trust you as a knowledge hub within your industry.
To do it properly is very simple:
(1) Create a professional brand.
Brush up your social media profiles and delete anything that might be detrimental to your brand. Chances are that if you’re on the fence about something being a bit too risky, delete it.
(2) Find the right people.
Target a specific decision maker within a specific industry within a specific city. Then, use LinkedIn to find these targets and start connecting with them. You can actually automate this by using the LinkedInHelper chrome extension.
Use their auto-visit feature to automatically visit the profiles of the people who fit your target market. Add anyone who looks back at your profile and for the love of god don’t use the stock invitation message. Write something real and genuine.
You can also join groups that cater to your target market and scrape those for profiles using that same chrome extension.
(3) Build strong online relationships.
Take a few of your newfound connections out for coffees and don’t dare think about pitching your business unless they specifically ask you to. Your objective here should be to get to know them better. That’s it.
Start producing and sharing content that they might deem interesting based on your conversations with them. If they comment on those articles, like their comments and answer them.
(4) Engage with insights.
Your objective is to become renowned as the knowledge hub for your specific field amongst your target market. Keep producing valuable content and start sharing it on other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Quora.
You can even use the emails of your target market from LinkedIn to build custom Facebook audiences. Facebook will automatically target those folks and people just like them.
We will be producing a five part series that covers each of the four pillars and how you can bring them all together. Start using these strategies now because in the very near future there will be no distinction between social selling and selling at all.
Apply to work with Traction House here.

