78% of salespeople using social media for business outsell their peers (Keenan, The Rise of Social Salespeople).
Think of how much more successful your company would be at closing leads if your sales team and marketing team collaborated more or, even better, together. This is the idea behind social selling.
So, what is social selling? According to LinkedIn, it is defined as, leveraging your social brand to fill your pipeline with the right people, insights, and relationships. So how do you do this? How do you “leverage your social brand” and use social selling in Denver to produce the best results?
There are three basic things you need to be successful. Both your sales and marketing teams need the following three things to make this work!
1. Set the Stage
First and foremost, you need to set yourself up in the right context. How?
- Establish a Professional Presence
Create a professional brand presence on social media sites with a complete and clear profile.
- Look for Prospects
Prospect efficiently in order to find the right people by utilizing powerful search and research tools.
- Track Insights
Look for valuable insights and share that information to start or maintain a strong relationship.
- Create Relationships
Work on growing your network in order to reach potential leads and others who can connect you to potential leads.
2. Add Value
Next, you need to provide the right content to your prospects. This means ADDING VALUE! Address your prospects pain, and educate them about that pain. Here are a few ways to do this:- Have Marketers Work WITH Sales
Your salespeople have those initial conversations with prospects, so have your marketing team occasionally sit in on those conversations to gain insight from those prospects.
- Have Sales Get Social
Have members of your sales team spend one hour per week prospecting on social media. Have them go into sites like LinkedIn and observe the discussions taking place in your prospects’ groups and respond to some of those discussions.
- Content, Content, Content!
Always be creating new blog posts and eBooks to offer information to your prospects. Every week, have a journalistic team member research and produce a blog post, then turn it over for social content and rework it for an eBook.
- Hold Each Team Accountable
Sales and marketing should be working hand in hand, so it’s important that they hold each other accountable. This means making and working towards quantifiable goals.
3. Work TOGETHER
In order to help customers, there must be a strong collaboration between marketing and sales. Here are some ways to do this:
- Exchange thoughts on customer problems and needs
- Examine prospects' social profiles to gain deeper insight
- Identify your buyer personas and work together to come up with content that would best address their needs
- Exchange calendars and marketing plans so each team is in the loop about what the other is working on/has coming up
Now you have your basic guide to getting started on becoming successful with social selling in Denver! To learn more about social sellling and other valuable tools for social media, contact Blue Frog Marketing! We have offices in both Denver and Des Moines and can serve any kind of customer from any location!
If you are interested in implementing a social media marketing strategy, but you either don't have the time or don't know where to start, give us a call at 515-221-2214, or fill out a short form online by clicking the button above, and we'll contact you! We would love to help your business become successful at social selling in any way we can.
