Implementing Social Selling Through Coaching on Linkedin

[rabiakhatun785]

These are years of great changes and the first to have changed are the customers with whom salespeople interface on a daily basis.

Has the sales process changed? Actually, the purchasing process has changed.

The customer, even in B2B, gets information online, does not respond to cold calls from strangers who attempt push sales approaches and in a very high percentage of cases, when he decides to meet a seller, he is already inclined to purchase.

But if the B2B purchasing russia phone number list process is strongly unbalanced online, why does the buyer's journey mainly take place there, why do salespeople resist change and continue to search for customers using traditional methodologies? Why do they still rely on word of mouth and phone calls to people they don't already know personally?

Social Selling is a relatively new digital marketing strategy, it has been talked about for years but only recently have companies been focusing on its use in a structured way to generate contacts (leads) interested in their products or services through the use of social media by their sales networks.

The lockdown caused by the pandemic in 2020 pushed the accelerator on Social Selling as an alternative lead generation model that can also be implemented in smart working and without necessarily physically meeting the lead.

We talk about Social Selling when

“Salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects, offering value, answering questions, and posting content until the prospect is ready to buy.

In this way, the use of social media in the sales process allows Sales to generate interest in their prospects rather than interrupting their activities with cold calls and impact sales, slowly converting them into loyal customers ” [ Husbpot blog ]

Social Selling According to Hubspot
This is for me the best definition of Social Selling , it emphasizes the uselessness of cold calls and highlights that sales people must use Social to carry out 2 fundamental actions

interact with prospects
publish valuable content (for your prospects)
Interact on social media but how? Through interactions on prospects' posts or through private messages within the same social platforms on which they come into direct contact with leads.

Which Social? Those used by prospects and in B2B buyers are more likely to be present on Linkedin than on other platforms.

Being a Social Selling Trainer, Why?
I recently asked myself the question: <<Why did I choose to train companies to use Linkedin? Why did I choose to specialize in Social Selling among the many branches of digital marketing?>>.

The answer that came out, off the cuff, without thinking too much, was: <<Because sales people are not social media managers or even content creators>>.

I want to tell you about my real experience as a trainer and coach on Social Selling with Linkedin.

Lead generation in Social Selling
The role of the salesperson is traditionally linked to concepts of relationship , negotiation and sales .

Social Selling presupposes that, before establishing a relationship with a new contact, the salesperson independently generates the contact itself; in marketing jargon, we talk about Lead Generation .

Hubspot does not mention this important aspect of Social Selling in its definition, probably because it focuses on lead generation through its Digital Marketing software/CRM.

In reality, Linkedin is an excellent tool for lead generation, already in the free version and even more so through the Premium Linkedin Sales Navigator account .

Social Selling between Lead Generation and Content Creation
If we ask salespeople to generate contacts on Linkedin or with Linkedin Sales Navigator, they get active, learn to use the tools and rejoice in seeing all their potential customers “on display” with profiles and contacts.

When we ask them to interact, send a message that isn’t pure commercial spam, or to post content, many salespeople stiffen.