The Social Selling Sales Playbook

With over 4.95 billion lively customers on social media, promoting on social media is extra related than ever. Gross sales leaders with a forward-thinking method should incorporate these practices into their gross sales forces; in any other case, they threat falling behind extra proactive opponents.

To reinforce your social promoting endeavors, I’ve compiled an intensive information masking every part from the basics of social promoting to extra superior topics, equivalent to assessing its effectiveness and figuring out probably the most useful social promoting instruments.

Whether or not you’re seeking to provoke social promoting by your gross sales group or independently, this complete information serves as your all-in-one useful resource.

Desk of Contents

What’s social promoting?

Social promoting is a gross sales technique that makes use of social media platforms to attach, have interaction, and construct relationships with potential clients. In contrast to conventional gross sales approaches that usually contain chilly calls and direct pitches, social promoting focuses on leveraging social media networks to grasp and work together with prospects in a extra personalised and genuine method.

In the present day, 56% of salespeople use social media to search out potential prospects. By commenting on, liking, and sharing prospects’ and clients’ posts on networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Fb, Instagram, and TikTok, salespeople create natural relationships with patrons over shared pursuits.

Nevertheless, social promoting isn’t for reps in search of fast wins or a silver bullet. To succeed, salespeople should put within the hours and energy to have interaction with their goal patrons and construct credibility.

The Artwork of Social Promoting

Knowledge reveals that those that put probably the most effort into social promoting reap the largest rewards. For instance, 76% of top-performing gross sales reps “all the time” analysis their prospects earlier than reaching out.

Our State of Gross sales Report 2024 reveals that 75% of salespeople use Fb to search out leads, adopted by Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube. The important thing to success right here is to develop your community and construct a fame in your chosen social media platforms.

However what does this appear like in observe at an organization? The telecommunications large Teleus adopted social promoting practices and LinkedIn’s Gross sales Navigator.

Teleus found that Gross sales Navigator influenced 82% of the corporate’s Q3 and This autumn 2021 closed received income. These offers have been 209% bigger than these not influenced by Gross sales Navigator.

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As social promoting is all the time in flux, it is best to all the time keep up with the newest developments. By doing so, you’ll not solely maintain your abilities sharp and know the place your finest prospects are in the mean time but additionally anticipate the place they may shift subsequent.

Social Promoting Finest Practices

Social promoting generally is a profitable useful resource to generate extra leads and improve your income.

Nevertheless, there are a number of steps reps can take to stage up their social promoting abilities. Listed here are 11 finest practices to contemplate.

1. Optimize your social media profiles.

Optimize your social media profiles earlier than starting your social promoting initiative. Prospects are much less prone to reply in case your profile is outdated or lacks important info.

We’ll be explaining find out how to do it a bit later.

Fast stats: In accordance with our inside analysis, 45% of salespeople discover their leads on social media and 33% assume that social media channels provide the very best high quality leads.

2. Be part of LinkedIn teams and different related boards.

Be part of related teams and boards on LinkedIn and different websites to remain up to date on {industry} developments.

Use useful info to contribute to a dialogue, as unsolicited, sales-y feedback will annoy group members, simply as a chilly name or e mail would. Advance the dialog in a significant method, or simply sit again and observe.

Fast stats: For 32% of the gross sales execs taking part in our survey, LinkedIn is the best social media platform for researching new prospects.

Joe Zappa, founder and CEO of Sharp Pen Media, believes that it is best to comply with and interact with influencers in your {industry}. By “influencers,” he refers to people with a large and engaged viewers who publish thought-provoking native content material and touch upon points you want to focus on.

When Zappa first joined social media, he tried to touch upon posts by prospects, {industry} leaders, and CEOs.

“I imagine this method can undermine your social advertising technique as a result of most prospects and {industry} leaders don’t publish regularly,” he says upon reflection. “Quite the opposite, every part they publish is a hyperlink or self-promotion. That is content material you’ll be able to’t genuinely have interaction with, and there’s little hope that they are going to ultimately discover you.”

Zappa additionally notes that you simply threat coming off as when you’re promoting one thing — “each to the individual whose publish you’re commenting on and to 3rd events interacting with the publish.”

3. Arrange social listening alerts.

Use Google alerts or a social listening device (HubSpot clients can use the Social Media Administration Software program) to arrange social listening alerts. These are notifications that inform you when your prospects or clients expertise a set off occasion or publish a potential gross sales opening.

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For instance, say a prospect mentions they’ve an issue you could tackle. A social listening alert can assist you rapidly be part of the dialog with useful content material or perception.

Equally, if a possible purchaser’s firm hires a brand new CEO or expands its enterprise, touch upon the set off occasion as quickly as potential to get on their radar.

4. Share content material to construct your credibility.

Share authentic, industry-specific content material to construct credibility and engagement on social media.

Have you ever learn any fascinating articles associated to your prospects’ {industry}? Share them! Did you see a thought-provoking research that could possibly be a superb dialog starter? Share it!

Don’t overlook to ask individuals to have interaction within the feedback to begin conversations.

Fast stats: 31% of gross sales execs assume that social media content material resonates most with prospects. In the meantime, 32% are certain that social media content material provides the very best ROI for B2B companies.

5. Take note of the feedback part.

If you happen to see high-engagement posts in your feed, browse the feedback part and be part of the dialog. By studying the feedback your prospects are leaving, you’ll be able to higher perceive their viewpoint and preferences.

Additionally, you will get an thought of what sort of content material your prospects take pleasure in and interact with. This can assist you determine what sort of content material to share.

For instance, somebody would possibly go away a remark in your current product launch publish asking, “Is that this characteristic accessible for Gentle accounts?”

You would possibly reply, “All trial accounts have entry to this characteristic for 14 days, and Enterprise and Professional accounts have limitless entry, too.”

Whilst you don’t want to have interaction with each publish you see, commenting generally is a highly effective device, in keeping with Alexander Low, Managing Director at DCM Insights.

“If you happen to present up each day on social media right here with intention and interact with individuals by liking or commenting on their posts, you might be creating micro-moments of affect,” says Low.

If you happen to similar to/react to a publish, solely the writer will get notified. Nevertheless, whenever you touch upon a publish, each one who has favored, reacted to, commented on, or reposted will get a notification that you’ve commented.

“That is how one can community round a lot of individuals directly. Deal with the outcomes you need to obtain, flip engagement into connections, after which take conversations offline; which you then must nurture into alternative,” says Low.

6. Share success tales.

Testimonials are a useful type of social proof. Analysis reveals that over 92% of B2B patrons say they’re extra prone to make a shopping for determination after studying a reliable assessment.

Sharing success tales out of your different clients helps construct your credibility with potential patrons. If a prospect resonates with a testimonial you share on their feed, they may be extra inclined to make use of your resolution.

Fast stats: 16% of gross sales professionals assume that leveraging social proof is the primary technique for promoting to new clients.

“If you happen to do an incredible job fixing for the client, they’ll all the time be eager to offer suggestions — and the extra you clear up for them, the extra constructive that suggestions might be. It’s an incredible behavior to get suggestions after a gross sales course of and even higher to have that suggestions displayed within the type of a LinkedIn advice,” says Marlon De Assis-Fernandez, a senior gross sales supervisor at HubSpot.

7. Be aware of buyer help alternatives.

Extra patrons are interacting with companies on social media and messaging platforms. Keep watch over what patrons and customers are saying about your organization in these areas — particularly if a buyer is dissatisfied.

Staying alert to social media chatter about your organization can provide your buyer help group a heads-up about an issue. You’ll even be extra ready to speak to prospects who could have seen disgruntled buyer content material.

For instance, when you see a touch upon social media the place a buyer expresses dissatisfaction together with your firm’s providing, be aware of the problem.

If your organization’s advertising or help groups haven’t but responded, make them conscious of the remark to allow them to tackle it, and word the language they use for the decision.

Fast stats: 22% of B2C gross sales execs assume that utilizing social media DMs (Direct Messaging) to offer buyer help/reply questions is an efficient gross sales technique.

8. Be constant.

Spending all day on social media will not be the perfect use of your time, however it is best to intention for constant posting and engagement.

HubSpot’s personal Dan Tyre recommends gross sales reps publish at the very least weekly on LinkedIn with particular person follow-ups for prospects who have interaction together with your content material.

“The hot button is to have three or 4 interactions inside 10-12 days, which reveals skilled persistence with out overwhelming your prospect,” Tyre says.

9. Observe engagement.

Social media engagement metrics embody likes, feedback, shares, and excessive engagement. This knowledge signifies {that a} piece of content material actually resonates together with your viewers. Study from what works finest so you’ll be able to proceed to share probably the most related content material together with your viewers.

For instance, when you discover that content material about B2B gross sales instruments will get probably the most likes, feedback, or shares, that’s a superb indication that the subject particularly resonates together with your viewers. You may then focus on the subject extra usually.

10. Subscribe to blogs.

How will you establish what to speak about together with your prospects on social media? By studying comparable articles and understanding potential clients’ considerations.

Try what content material your patrons are sharing, and subscribe to these blogs. Then, share the articles you assume could be significantly fascinating to your patrons on LinkedIn or your most popular social profile.

Fast stats: 12% of gross sales execs use weblog posts as a part of their gross sales enablement content material, and 28% of the survey individuals get their leads from weblog posts.

11. Search referrals.

Request referrals from mutual connections to achieve heat introductions to particular stakeholders and potential leads.

Fast stats: 33% of gross sales professionals assume that the very best high quality leads come from referrals from current clients.

12. Know when to maneuver your conversations off social media.

If you wish to land the sale, you’ll ultimately must take the social media connections you make offline. After making a strong reference to a prospect on social media, provide to hop on a name to proceed the dialog.

This may mean you can study extra concerning the prospect’s ache factors or state of affairs, which can assist you achieve the readability you’ll want to land the sale.

Tyre says that if interactions with a prospect that matches his vertical market and excellent buyer profile transfer in a constructive course, he’ll hunt down the contact’s e mail tackle to arrange a name. They will then proceed the dialog off social media.

13. Optionally available tip: Subscribe to LinkedIn Gross sales Navigator.

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LinkedIn Gross sales Navigator is a premium service priced at $99.99 per thirty days, with a reduction for annual subscriptions. The device helps gross sales reps establish new leads based mostly on their location, {industry}, firm dimension, and different attributes you’ll want to construct a prospect checklist.

Need extra? Watch this webinar as social promoting specialists Olga Bondareva, Ekaterina Altbregina, Sofia Lopatkina, and Assylkhan Shaidollayev share their finest practices and profitable case research:

You can even hearken to Guillaume Moubeche’s technique for turning LinkedIn right into a heavy lead machine:

14. Optionally available tip: Weblog.

Gross sales reps don’t must weblog for efficient social promoting, however it may be a useful method to appeal to certified prospects. You may construct affect in your {industry} and supply worth to your viewers with authentic perception and thought management.

Running a blog pays dividends to your lead-generation efforts. Companies that weblog at the very least 16 instances a month see 350% extra visitors than people who don’t.

To craft a publish that captures your prospects’ consideration, contemplate the next suggestions:

• Choose a subject that resonates together with your viewers’s pursuits.
• Create compelling titles to seize consideration.
• Keep away from making your publish excessively sales-oriented.
• Infuse your perspective and insights into the content material.
• Share your posts throughout your social profiles, together with Twitter and LinkedIn, and make use of related hashtags to boost discoverability.

Optimizing Social Profiles for Social Promoting

On the earth of social promoting, your social media account must be greater than a digital resume. Your profiles ought to actively allow you to domesticate a fame together with your patrons as a trusted advisor who brings contemporary insights to their enterprise.

Your profiles must mirror this new function. See methods you’ll be able to optimize your social presence under.

Twitter

Twitter profiles don’t have a lot actual property, so it’s simple to offer yours a makeover. Comply with these steps to take action:

• Use an expert image to your profile picture.
• Use a positioning assertion in your bio that features a mini-insight.
• Hyperlink to your organization’s Twitter account (Instance: Gross sales Rep @firm).
• Checklist your LinkedIn profile.
• Embrace related hashtags that your patrons comply with.

LinkedIn

If sellers contact them, 42% of patrons within the U.S. and Canada analysis these sellers by their LinkedIn profiles. That being mentioned, optimizing your LinkedIn profile is an especially useful train.

Listed here are seven suggestions to make sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized for social promoting:

1. Have a present, hi-res image.
2. Don’t simply use your job title. Craft a compelling headline that goes past your job title. For instance, contemplate answering two questions in your headline: Who do you assist, and the way do you assist them?
3. Write a 3X3 abstract — three paragraphs with three or fewer sentences every. Reiterate your worth proposition within the first, present some social proof of the way you assist purchasers obtain leads to the second, and conclude with a quick call-to-action explaining why and the way a purchaser ought to join with you.
4. Put up visible content material that provides worth to your potential patrons.
5. Within the expertise part, emphasize the way you enabled clients to enhance their enterprise — not what number of instances or by how a lot you exceeded quota.
6. Search suggestions from glad clients to bolster your credibility.
7. Be part of teams related to your patrons.

To view a visible template illustrating what an optimized LinkedIn profile for social promoting appears like, click on on the picture under.

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Methods to Interact With Your Consumers on Social Networks

Social promoting is all about engagement. However keep in mind that your interactions ought to be considerate, related, and personalised.

Social engagement is available in 4 major kinds: sharing, liking, commenting, and connecting.

Sharing

Share content material that pursuits your goal patrons. The extra related, thrilling content material you’ll be able to share, the higher.

You may hyperlink to your organization’s content material and what Jill Rowley calls “OPC” — different individuals’s content material. Switching up your sources will nix the notion that you simply’re self-serving.

Jill Konrath, keynote speaker and gross sales knowledgeable, shares useful content material together with her target market on each her LinkedIn and Twitter pages day by day. Konrath makes use of her knowledgeable data to share tangible recommendation and attract a captive viewers.

Sharing content material is significant as extra customers make shopping for selections on-line. In reality, 30% of patrons report studying greater than 5 items of content material earlier than making a purchase order.

Liking

Once you don’t have time for a remark or don’t have something substantial so as to add, a like or favourite works simply as properly. Likes additionally work as a thanks when others share or retweet your content material.

Commenting

A remark mustn’t simply be a gross sales pitch or a hyperlink to your organization’s web site. As an alternative, it ought to be a considerate and thought-provoking response to an article. By commenting on energetic, lively threads that hit the core pursuits of your target market, you’ll be able to drive engagement to your personal website.

For instance, Lisa Dennis, president and founder at Knowledgence Associates, shares posts that her goal patrons would care about and provides considerate feedback to others’ content material.

Wish to take advantage of your feedback? Try this information on the perfect instances to publish throughout completely different social media networks.

Connecting

On Twitter, you’ll be able to comply with prospects to your coronary heart’s need. However on LinkedIn, you need to be extra even handed.

A very good rule of thumb for LinkedIn is to not request to attach with somebody till you’ve had a significant interplay, both in individual or on-line. Then, you’ll be able to ship a customized invitation explaining why you’d prefer to be of their community.

For instance, to request to attach, you’ll be able to reference a weblog publish the individual wrote or a bit of content material they lately shared to point out that you simply did your analysis.

Right here’s an instance of a powerful LinkedIn invitation:

“Hello Jaime, we share 25 connections right here, together with Michelle Lee, who launched me to Amy Chang, which landed me my present advisor place. A number of individuals have talked about you as somebody I would like to satisfy. I’d love to attach.”

Working Social Promoting into Your Day

One of the vital vital perceived hurdles to adopting social promoting is that it takes an excessive amount of time to make gross sales. How can gross sales reps sustain with their patrons on LinkedIn and Twitter once they’re additionally attempting to, you already know, promote?

Like anything, growing a routine round social promoting will lower down on the time dedication.

Ben Martin, Director at Automation Squared Ltd, recommends the next 12-step social promoting course of that may take as little as half-hour per day.

1. Discover related content material to share.
2. Share the related content material on social networks.
3. Verify on who’s seen your LinkedIn profile.
4. Work together with goal patrons who have a look at your profile and ship connection requests when acceptable.
5. Monitor engagement together with your content material.
6. Work together with those that have interaction together with your content material.
7. Overview LinkedIn alerts.
8. Set up goal patrons in a LinkedIn folder.
9. Share content material with goal patrons.
10. Overview any further set off occasion alerts.
11. Reply to messages.
12. Provoke new conversations.

Is social promoting creepy?

Many reps are hesitant to undertake social promoting as a result of they concern it’s going to come off as “creepy” to patrons. In spite of everything, no one likes the sensation that they’re being researched by individuals they don’t know.

Salespeople typically fear that beginning a chilly e mail with “I observed on LinkedIn that you simply…” or “I favored your tweet about…” would possibly scare prospects away as a substitute of drawing them in.

If you happen to’re apprehensive about turning off prospects when social promoting, listed below are some finest practices for interacting on social media in a method that doesn’t really feel creepy:

• Ideally, give attention to interacting with prospects who’ve demonstrated curiosity in your services or products by participating together with your content material, equivalent to commenting on or sharing your posts. Messaging prospects who have not proven curiosity may be perceived as intrusive.
• Personalize your messages. Basically, tailor-made messages are seen as much less intrusive in comparison with generic ones.
• Don’t attain out to contacts on non-professional accounts, equivalent to private Instagram or Fb pages. For gross sales representatives, LinkedIn supplies a extra appropriate platform for skilled and constructive engagement with prospects.
• Interact in “mild” social promoting interactions. Actions equivalent to liking, favoriting, or retweeting are typically thought-about much less invasive than extra in-depth interactions, equivalent to direct messaging or commenting.

Keep in mind, you need social media interactions to really feel pure and conversational for each you and the prospect.

Measuring Social Promoting Success

Measurement is arguably probably the most difficult a part of a social promoting initiative as a result of the results aren’t linear. There’s no method but that correlates the variety of content material shares or likes with the variety of offers closed. However this doesn’t imply you could’t measure social promoting in any respect.

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The vast majority of the social promoting metrics accessible at the moment assess a person’s aptitude, like with Buzzsumo. LinkedIn has created its personal device, the Social Promoting Index, to assist these with Gross sales Navigator Premium accounts perceive their effectiveness on the platform.

Social Promoting Index

The Social Promoting Index (SSI) measures how efficient you might be at establishing your skilled model and presence on LinkedIn.

To entry it, it’s essential to have a subscription to LinkedIn’s Gross sales Navigator Premium, the place you’ll achieve entry to a day by day up to date Social Promoting Dashboard (as proven under).

The Dashboard provides insights into your effectiveness in establishing your private model, reaching the correct individuals, participating with insights, and constructing relationships. Your effectiveness is scored out of 100.

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Excessive-performing salespeople are 12% extra possible to make use of social media to promote, and social sellers utilizing the index outsell friends who don’t use social media.

On a bigger scale, an organization also can add a “social” supply of deal choices to their CRM software program to see what number of clients are coming from social promoting.

Gross sales leaders who’d prefer to conduct a research on how social promoting interprets into gross sales ought to first systematize the observe and prepare reps on social finest practices. They will then measure what impression the brand new routine has on closed offers by evaluating future outcomes to historic numbers.

Social Promoting Instruments

Social promoting is simpler to implement when you’ve got the correct instruments for the job.

The product you select is dependent upon the precise wants of your group and the challenges your patrons face.

Among the hottest social promoting instruments accessible at the moment embody the next.

Oktopost

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Oktopost is a strong software program suite that permits entrepreneurs to construct B2B social promoting plans for his or her group. The platform additionally consists of strong knowledge assortment and evaluation capabilities, permitting gross sales groups to trace ROI and derive insights from buyer engagement.

Oktopost additionally integrates with a number of of the biggest CRMs, making it simple to deploy in your group.

Value: Pricing is accessible upon request.

Pulsar Platform

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Pulsar Platform is an viewers intelligence and social listening platform. This device identifies developments and insights from the huge social media area.

Pulsar can assist gross sales groups form their messaging with real-time knowledge on social media developments and conversations. You can even establish influencers huge and small in social areas, serving to you maximize your gross sales efforts.

Value: Pricing is accessible upon request.

Vidyard

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Vidyard helps you to add and share customized movies, which can provide your gross sales group a vital edge in social promoting. Video can clean away numerous friction factors, lowering the variety of steps it takes to deliver prospects by your gross sales pipeline.

Vidyard is simple to make use of and consists of quite a few video templates that may assist your group simply create professional-looking movies on demand.

Value: A free model is accessible. Professional prices $19 a month yearly or $29 month-to-month. The Plus plan prices $89 per individual a month and begins at $708 yearly. The Marketing strategy’s pricing is accessible upon request.

Seismic

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Social promoting includes numerous shifting elements, and Seismic helps you coordinate all of them. With Seismic, you’ll be able to monitor what items of content material you share in every channel and their metrics to research efficiency.

Seismic permits social sellers to optimize their content material supply throughout the client’s journey, serving to them to shut extra gross sales.

Value: Pricing is accessible upon request.

Getting Began With Social Promoting

Now that you simply’re geared up with the fundamentals of social promoting, find out how to measure its effectiveness, and a few social promoting instruments, you’re able to get began with social gross sales.

Make sure to incorporate the perfect practices into your day by day routine and prepare your gross sales group to do the identical.

Editor’s Word: This publish was initially revealed in November 2014 and has been up to date for accuracy and comprehensiveness.