Social Selling 101 – Everything You Need To Know
Social selling is a trendy word you’ve most probably heard on social media, books and podcasts, or maybe even around the water cooler.
But what is social selling?
And is it just another buzzword; or is it here to stay around for the long haul?
In this article, we’ll break down:
- What is social selling?
- Practices to avoid
- Social selling strategies you can practice to win more sales
Social Selling 101 – Everything You Need To Know
What Is Social Selling?
Simply put; social selling is the practice of using social media platforms to sell your products or services. By platforms, this can be anything ranging from Facebook and LinkedIn, to Instagram and even Pinterest.
Social selling allows you to use the two prospecting strategies to get leads, and close more prospective clients.
Inbound Social Selling Strategies
Inbound social selling strategies are systems that you put together to bring clients into your business. This includes:
- Identifying your ideal clients with your marketing strategy.
- Learning which social media platforms they’re hanging out and primarily based on.
- Putting together lead magnets; these are things you can give away for free, in exchange for an email address or contact details. Lead magnets include webinars, opt in form reports, white papers, valuable and informative documents and much more.
(To learn how to setup your own inbound marketing system, check out our program here.)
Outbound Social Selling Strategies
Outbound social selling strategies are processes or methods you do to proactively reach out to your ideal clients and prospects. This can include:
- Finding your ideal clients using your marketing and sales strategy, just like above
- Messaging them directly on the social media platforms to engage in dialogue; starting the sales process
- Finding their contact details on social media, and then contacting them via email or phone
We teach using techniques to get their email address and sell on the back end; more on this shortly.
(To learn how to create your own outbound lead generation system, checkout our program here.)
What To Avoid
One of the conscious things you need to be careful about prior to starting your social selling endeavours, is knowing that certain social media platforms have different desired purposes.
For example, if a person goes onto Amazon or eBay; they do so with credit card in hand – meaning they already have the psychological intention that they are visiting that website with the intention to buy.
When someone is visiting Instagram or Facebook; they’re not visiting ready to press the buy button.
Sure, they may buy something on those platforms; but not until they’re already familiar with the brands they’re buying from.
Instead, they’re there for a different purpose; whether it be visit groups they’re interested in, see what family or friends and doing, or stalk that crush of theirs…
It’s important to sell using strategies that are congruent, and in alignment to the platform you’re using.
Hence under the subheading Outbound Social Selling Strategies, we stated earlier we recommend getting contact details from the platform and contacting them off the platform.
This avoids us positioning ourselves in a way of being pushy and ‘salesy’, yet still allows us to get the relevant information to contact them in a way they are OK with.
Strategies To Win More Sales
One of the key strategies we teach our Students in The 5% Sales Blueprint, is that when it comes to social selling; give value, value and more value.
Blogging regularly, creating informative videos, and giving away cheat sheets and other information products in exchange for contact details are excellent ways to use social selling to your advantage – and build relationships with your prospects so that they become long time-term clients.
When creating content, always keep in mind that you want to build two important foundations prior to engaging in the sales conversation.
Trust
Putting up videos of your expertise, blog posts solving problems they are facing, and giving away valuable information positions you as a trusted authority.
By doing so, you also position yourself as a specialist in your specific niche, which is important when trying to avoid the price wars involved when you’re positioned as a commodity.
Desire
The second foundation you need to lay prior to starting dialogue, is creating desire with your prospective clients.
If a person doesn’t feel any desire, want or need for your product, then there’s no reason for them to engage in a conversation with you. Giving away informative content on social media platforms is a great way to start your social selling strategy.
Final Thoughts
Social selling is here to stay; and with companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube only getting bigger, you’ll need to enhance your sales training and skills to survive and thrive in future markets.
To level up your sales, register for our 7 day sales challenge here.
Want To Close Sales Easier?
Are you committed to closing sales a lot easier, and consistently?
If so, you should check out our self-paced and affordable online sales training program; The 5% Sales Blueprint.
It’ll give you everything you need to close sales consistently.
To learn more, simply click on the link below for more information.
Our Online Sales Training Program – The 5% Sales Blueprint.
