2015 is set to be the year that social selling goes mainstream according to top sales industry commentators. Brought together at the end of last year to analyse the progression of the social selling phenomenon, sixteen prominent thought leaders agreed that social selling would play a significant role in bringing together the sales and marketing functions, enable improved targeting of decision makers and influencers and as a result, generate better leads and more business.

This is quite a prediction. Can there really be an end to the battle between the sales and marketing departments? With social selling that seems to be the case. Effective marketers are using intelligence and insight drawn from the web and social media to pique the curiosity of highly targeted customers. This approach is being planned in conjunction with input from front-line sellers and the result is highly effective campaigns with content that produces tangible outcomes and a more satisfactory relationship with the customer.

“The war is over and they are now able to work in synchrony,” said Brynne Tillman of Social Sales Link. “What the marketing department creates and implements is now truly able to target the right decision makers and influencers that convert to better leads and more business.”

As in all forms of selling, social sellers benefit by developing great customer relationships, in fact, 55% of social sellers retain more customers than those not using social, so it’s crucial to find a way to cut through the dross. Prospective buyers are continually bombarded with unsolicited and unwanted approaches, so sellers have to stand out by providing the most relevant information, whether it relates to the individual they are approaching, or the company they work for. This is the essence of social selling; using tools to extract pertinent, timely intelligence that helps sellers open up and sustain a conversation. This is even more important when you consider that most buyers will already have researched products or services before even contacting a sales person and, according to Executive Board, they are 57% of the way through the buying process, so they will be expecting a sales and marketing message that is ‘connected’ from the moment they engage with you.

So many of the rules that applied to the earliest sales professionals still apply today, but what has changed for social sellers is the tools that they have at their disposal. Access to the Internet and its plethora of data is a distinct advantage of course, but the sheer deluge of information that it delivers can make it harder to decipher what is really useful. It can also make it more difficult for sales people to be noticed and much easier for them to be ignored. In a survey we carried out amongst managers recently, almost half said that they believed social media should be something that could help sales people, but whilst a further third agreed, they were not sure how.

Another industry commentator, Tibor Shanto, says that: “Sales leaders and sales people need help to better understand which social tools have actually contributed and how.”

Intelligent insight, which is dedicated to helping social sellers, is already being used successfully by some of the UK’s biggest blue chip companies including American Express and RBS. It works by alerting social sellers to trigger events, giving them a reason to target and connect with a customer or prospect. What kind of triggers? Primarily they are based on four key events that could happen to a customer – relationship triggers, such as winning an award, can open the door for you to show an interest; sales triggers that are indications that your customer might need help from your product or service; risk triggers that highlight customer issues they are about to face; and community triggers which focus on events in and around not only your customer’s community, but their customers, their partners and their industry.

Many buyers are already on social media and potentially making buying signals so sellers can use the insight to reinforce their own information and enhance their engagement with the buyer. By the same token, monitoring the customer’s competition through intelligent insight can also give sellers the edge when it comes to helping them make informed decisions and it certainly doesn’t harm your relationship to share that insight with customers. On the contrary you will be regarded as a trusted partner.

The benefits of social selling are clear. This is why 2015 is set to be the year that social selling goes mainstream.

 

By Alastair Brown, VP of Marketing at Artesian Solutions. 

 

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