S e l l i n g

Social entals
Fundam ell Hann
by Maxw -Anderson
ah &

award
James S
What is
Social Selling?
01
Why embracing
social media is
07
How the sales role is
changing/what is and
10
Preparing a
social selling
vital what isn’t social selling campaign

12
The social selling
formula in the
13
Measuring your
results and
14
The how and
why of content
modern world benchmarking creation

16
Turning
engagement into
17
Application
18
Automation
and why it’s
opportunity important

19
Pick up the
damn phone!
Why Embracing Social
Media is Vital
Social media is one of the most disruptive
influences of our time. We are living in age where
social media has over 2.6 billion users collectively.
In the context of sales, social media has changed
the way you can connect with customers and
other companies. There are no intermediaries
and no middlemen. You can simply create a social
media account and connect straight to the end
buyer without using an institution.
Lowering the barrier of access to customers has
had an extremely disruptive influence not just
on technology but sales as well. A small team
producing orchestrated social media content
can rival the online presence of a conglomerate
without spending a fortune. There was no
greater example of the disruptive power of social
media than the election of Donald Trump.
In the run up to the
election, Trump was seen
as an outside candidate,
unlikely to take office
and isolated from the
traditional establishment.
Yet by using platforms
such as Twitter and
Facebook, he was able
to launch a grassroots
campaign that defeated
the traditional media.
In the world of B2B and B2C sales, all businesses
from SME’s to conglomerates can deploy social
media in order to maximise their reach. In fact,
any brand looking to build their network and
make sales should be embracing social media
as a platform to reach new prospects. In a
market that’s becoming increasingly fixated on
online business, incorporating social selling is a
prerequisite if you want to be living up to your
potential.
Social media is the epicenter of where users
spend their time online, and increasingly where
they educate themselves on buying decisions.
Currently, 78% of consumers say a company’s
social media posts impact their purchases. Social
media has become one of the dominant channels
of modern marketing. This has made social
selling more important than ever before.
In a nutshell, social selling is the name given to
using social media to connect with prospects and
nurturing them on a long-term basis with value-
added content. As an online sales strategy, social
selling is all about using social media to build
relationships with customers. The starting point
of your relationship with customers is the very
content that you produce.
The reason why social media, and social selling
have become so important is that modern
consumers expect to connect with a brand
before doing business with them. Companies
are now in a position where they need to
demonstrate their expertise before buyers are
willing to pull the trigger.
// 1
The value of social selling is not solely focused
on customers either. Businesses and decision
makers from the finance industry to the
insurance industry are all present on social media
sites like LinkedIn. This makes social media one
of the best platforms for a brand to show off
their knowledge of the industry, and qualify
themselves as a business partner.
Social media has changed the entire
culture of business communication.
There remains an assumption that social media
is a B2C landscape, but in reality it’s an incredibly
effective medium for B2B companies as well.
Despite this, many B2B companies remain
resistant and reluctant to commit to a full on
social selling campaign.
This is a misjudgment because social media has
launched a two-way exchange between any
business and its target audience. This exchange
lays the very foundations of a strong relationship.
Whether you’re trying to reach new customers or
new clients, the principle is the same.
The premise of social selling is that the
business provides content with insights and
entertainment value in exchange for reactions,
which develop a dialogue with the customer.
This interaction between the business and the
customer leads the prospect down the sales
funnel and primes them for buying in the future.
No platform, from digital marketing to traditional clear goals and metrics. Planning a strategy raises
marketing offers an organic way to build
relationships with customers like social media.
The wide, targeted reach of social media has
made it a tremendously potent online sales tool
that every business should be looking to use.
Relationships are the backbone of sales in the
modern world.
Companies with reservations about social media
are severely limiting their potential reach. This
is under the belief that social media isn’t the
place to connect with clients on social media.
This simply isn’t the case, whether you’re using
LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Social is a valuable
tool for making sales in the B2B sector, because
it offers companies a way to qualify themselves
within the market.
Putting together a strategy that
builds brand awareness on social
media, and engages with your target
audience boosts your reputation. Any company
that spends a significant amount of time online
will be able to pick up on the companies with
well-defined social media plans. Having a strong
social media presence that receives consistent
engagement provides social proof.
The buying process has become so online
centric that running a social media strategy will
be an imperative skill over the next 5-10 years.
Surprisingly, only 15-20% of organizations have
a formal strategy that they use on social media.
Most company’s that have policies on social
media have ‘negative policies’ which tell staff
what not to do, but not what they should be
doing.
As such, implementing a cohesive strategy is
a real competitive advantage in the market. A
social media strategy doesn’t just give your staff
guidelines for what content to post, but defines
why your posting that content, and sets clear
your brand awareness and helps you to cultivate
an online presence that drives sales.
// 2
At its core, social media is a platform for communicating your value proposition directly to your
target audience. There are many ways to use your content to do this, but the end goal is the same:
providing value to make sales. If you make your value proposition clear and convince your target
audience that you are a business that provides value, you will boost your sales potential dramatically.

It’s no different from real world sales in the sense that you have to show your worth and expertise to
the customer before they do business with you. Likewise, with B2B relationships showing yourself as
a key player in your industry is a good way to make yourself stand out from amongst the crowd.

Social Media Policies

Despite the importance of social media in the world of online sales, most companies don’t have
any concrete social strategy in place. Many organisations are operating under the assumption that
posting on social media is enough to grow brand awareness.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. In order to see any kind of growth on social media you need
to produce targeted content on a consistent basis. When it comes to most social media policies, the
majority of companies fall into one of two camps; a random acts of social policy or a negative policy.

Random Acts of Social

Random acts of social is the phrase given to a strategy that produces content without a formal
plan. Under a random act policy, staff are posting independently of each other and without a clearly
defined goal. The result is that content is produced on an ad hoc basis, and fails to achieve any
targeted growth beyond basic brand awareness.

A random acts of social policy can be incredibly damaging to the reputation of an online business.
A poorly managed online presence looks unprofessional and amateurish, qualities that alienate
potential customers and clients. Likewise the lack of a common goal leads to the absence of a clear
brand voice.

// 3
 Negative Social Media
Policies
On the other hand, a negative social media policy is designed around a list of dos and don’ts.
Generally staff are provided with guidelines of what they should and shouldn’t be doing on social
media. Whilst it offers more guidance than a random policy, it’s still extremely limited and ineffective.

A negative social media policy prescribes restrictive measures on how to avoid doing anything wrong
on social media, but doesn’t provide any useful information in making sure what’s posted on social
media is actually effective. Under this model staff know what not to post, but there is no overall
strategic direction.

This makes social media marketing incredibly complex. Companies with a large team posting on social
media can have an extremely inconsistent online presence. The reason is that a team of individuals
ends up relying on guesswork to find content that sticks rather than methodically targeting an
audience with valuable content.

Positive Social Media

Policy
In order to be effective on social media, companies need to deploy a positive social media policy.
A positive social media policy is built on a foundation of clear goals. Once goals are outlined, an
organization can implement social media practices that work towards fulfilling this aim. A positive
approach increases the online sales opportunities of the companies that use it.

A positive social media policy is not only more effective, but also safer to implement than a negative
or random policy. At the best of times these policies resort in uneven or stagnant progress, at the
worst they result in damaging the credibility of a brand. In short, they don’t foster growth like a
positive social media policy.

// 4
 Training
Standing right behind a successful social media
policy is social training. Training your staff
ensures that each member of your team knows
their role on social media, and understands
how to use it in order to grow your brand
safely. Running a successful campaign is simply
impossible if your team isn’t cohesive.
If you’re mixing posts, photos, and videos across
multiple channels, it can be very difficult to
manage your online presence without a plan.
When your staff are following a generalist strategy
to raise brand awareness, you’re not going to
have a consistent brand voice and your not going
to achieve adequate growth.
The key to incorporating quality
training is to make your staff clear of
what your grand strategy is.
You want your staff to know why you’re posting
on the platforms you’re on as well as the content
schedules and the techniques they are going to
use to nurture leads. Everyone from business
leaders, to business developers, marketers and
the sales team should have specific training on
how to use social media.
In order to make sure your staff know what to
do, all employees should receive social media
policy training. They should be given an extensive
education on social best practices, from creating
posts with clear hooks, to optimising profiles
and commenting guidelines. You’re looking to
give your employees guidance not just on how
to produce quality content, but how to avoid
creating a negative impression on social media.
Your training should be tailored to the role of
your team members. For example your sales
team should be briefed on tactics for using social
media to network and creating content that
drives the sales process forward. This gives them
the training to do their jobs effectively without
running into any obstacles. Giving them the basic
tools to network makes their job much easier.
Make sure that your training is tailored to the
work your team will be doing on a daily basis.
Broad theoretical knowledge is ineffective.
Instead you want to provide staff with clear
actionable guidelines on how to post. Whilst you
don’t want to be too formulaic with templates,
it’s a good idea to give staff real world
knowledge of what they need to do to
build your brand.
As part of your social selling strategy,
you should be implementing customer
relationship management solutions
(CRMs). Whether you’re marketing on LinkedIn,
Twitter or Facebook, social media is all about
nurturing your leads. Social media is where your
customers are, and by combining their data with
a CRM you make it easier to reach your target
audience where they’re most attentive.
Today customers expect constant
communication, and a CRM will make it much
easier for your sales team to follow up with
a hard sales pitch once your leads have been
nurtured. From responding to customer
complaints to sharing user posts, you can use a
CRM to build up a connection between you and
your audience.
// 5
The goal is to use a CRM to make sure your
team is in the position to be opportunistic.
Social media is all about priming your audience
with content and being in the right place at the
right time. A CRM gives you that extra visibility
that makes the process much easier. There are
hundreds of different CRM’s available so it’s
important to pick one that’s tailored to your
industry.
In addition to a CRM, you should also be running
print ads. Even though social media has grown in
importance to rival print, print still has its place
in the marketing landscape. One of the best
ways to build your brand is to reach out to your
target audience through multiple channels. A
multichannel presence will build up your brand
voice and your reputation.
The more channels you’re visible on, the clearer
your brand proposition is. Your social media
presence and your print advertising work
Optimising Your Strategy
When it comes to social media, implementing
your campaign is only half the battle. Once
you’ve got your strategy up and running, you
need to provide adjustment over the long term.
Your social media presence isn’t static and needs
to be continually refined in order to see long-
term growth. Optimising your strategy is all
about assessing how well your connecting with
your audience.
Whilst it can be useful to look at vanity metrics
such as likes and shares, you’re really looking
to find out how many sales you’re making.
Your mission is to quantify how well your social
strategy is aiding your sales funnel. This means
click through rates, your qualified lead pick up
rates and other metrics.
together to bolster your pitch and make you
stand out as a key player in your industry. This
is invaluable when it comes to establishing your
credibility as a brand.
Regardless of CRM or print ads you run, you want
to make sure that everyone in your organization
is aware of any activity made on your social, email
and website campaigns. This way your brand
voice will stay consistent across all channels.
Pursuing a consistent voice will leave you in good
stead to situate yourself as an authority in your
industry.
To keep your staff in the loop, it’s a good idea
to provide regular updates. This helps to make
sure your strategy stays effective over the long
term. Even if your team is comprised of trained
individuals, your brand voice can easily become
jarring and inconsistent if it’s not monitored over
time.
To build a better picture of your performance,
it’s a good idea to look at how your competition
is using social media and what metrics they’re
landing. This will give you a strong idea of where
you stand in the market and how effectively
you’re engaging your target audience. You
can tell a lot about how successful you are by
comparing your metrics to your competition.
Once you’ve measured your performance, see
how well you’re doing and start to draw up
improvements. Look for ways your social media
presence could be improved, and start improving
it. Nine times out of ten, the answer will be that
your content isn’t providing clear value to your
target audience.
// 6
How the Sales Role is
Changing
Alongside the rise of social media there has
been a tremendous change in the way the entire
sales process is conducted. Around 10 years
ago, telemarketing was the go-to method for
engaging with cold prospects and closing the
deal. Yet today, it’s become much less effective.
Telemarketing isn’t delivering the returns it
once was because people aren’t at their desks as
often. Of the people are, a gatekeeper is often
acting as a barrier to reaching the prospect.
This has made it much more difficult to connect
with prospects over the phone. That being said,
telemarketing is far from dead. It’s still a great
way to close deals with a personal touch, but it’s
not as effective as it used to be.
Telemarketing is not alone in falling into decline.
For some time, email marketing has been in an
uncertain situation. As a marketing channel,
email marketing is delivering low response rates,
as spam folders are cracking down on sales
pitches. Of the content that gets through, much
of it is unread because modern email inboxes are
saturated promotional content.
Unfortunately the implementation of the GDPR
is likely to make email marketing more difficult
as companies will be forced to limit the data
they can hold on EU citizens. The traditional
online sales channels have been steadily eroded,
and it is in this environment that social selling
has emerged as a dominant force for driving
revenue.
Today, social selling has become one of the best
ways to reach your target audience and make
sales. Once you’re connected with a follower
you’re free to engage with them directly via
posts and messages. There is no spam folder or
gatekeeper looking to restrict your access to new
prospects. Likewise, if you’re producing content
that generates lots of engagement, your post
will jump straight to the top of the pile.
As soon as you open a
social media profile, you
have an opportunity to find
and build rapport with a
network of customers and
business decision makers.
At a basic level, the sales role has changed from
hard selling to nurturing. Social media is not the
platform for hard selling. In fact, there is next to
no hard selling on social media.
The reason is that people come on social media
for content. They don’t want to be bombarded
with sales pitches, they want to read and see
entertaining and informative content. In this
environment, you need to deploy content to
nurture your content and play the long game.
Your providing value added content that gets
your target audience ready to progress down the
sales funnel.
// 7
The role of your social selling team is to provide
value by getting people excited about your
product. On social media that translates into
short snappy punchy content that gets people’s
attention. Users on social media have a low
attention span and don’t want to be sifting
through tons of information before they get to
the point.
Social media users expect value instantaneously.
On platforms like LinkedIn, you want to use
marketing posts that highlight strategy rather
than product features. The reason is posts that
cut straight to selling products are dull and
robotic (particularly on a competitive channel like
social media). On a business social network like
LinkedIn, users seek insight.
In this new sales role, social media is effective
because it helps to develop your network and
build rapport. Rapport is key to establishing your
company as an authority in your industry. Your
reaching out to customers and key contacts in
your industry, and providing knowledge that
actively benefits them.
As a bonus, networking on social media bolsters
your presence on other channels and makes
them more effective. Your social presence and
traditional advertising come together to create
360-degree sales funnel. When a member of
your sales team picks up the phone to a warm
prospect who’s seen your social media profile,
they will already know you’re a respected part of
your industry.

For example if you belonged to a marketing
firm that sold office supplies, you would discuss
strategy rather than your products, and market
how office supplies can influence productivity.
Pitching your products isn’t interesting, but
commenting on how certain equipment can
boost productivity in the form of value added
content is.
There’s nothing more attractive to a potential
client then a brand that’s established a name
for itself. An effective online presence is
demonstrative of your organizational capabilities
as a company, and is directly illustrative of your
value proposition. The number of followers
you have and your engagement rates stand as
evidence of your ability to network and provide
value.

Content as Currency
As outlined above, one of the biggest changes brought about by social media is that content has
become a currency. Everyday online users are bombarded with masses of disruptive influences to the
point where there has become a clear monetary value attached to attention. Social selling is all about
harnessing this attention.

When it comes to selling, modern buyers are so inundated with sales pitches, that they are actually
starting to become evasive. Whether it’s sending sales pitches straight to the spam folder, or ignoring
cold calls, people are going out of their way to avoid salesmen. In this environment, content is the
new way to interact with buyers and slip under the radar. // 8
At a basic level, content provides value in the
form of information. In the early stages of the
buying process, customers want information.
They don’t want to be sold to. Before reaching
the stage of the actual pitch, the salesman
has to demonstrate that they have substantial
information, insights and expertise in order for
the interaction to continue.
Content is now the predominant online medium
through which information is exchanged
between an organization and its clients. Your
social media content is used to testify to your
knowledge of the industry and lets your target
audience know you have the insight that they’re
looking for. Providing value before seeking to
extract it is a core principle of social selling.

On social media, most businesses don’t attempt

to qualify themselves. This oversight results in
alienating their target audience. The time for
typical sales content is long gone. Now social
media is about providing 80% value with 20%
promotion. The reason is that people no longer
trust insights and information delivered in the
hard sales style. Promotional content acts as a
repellent to even the most open-minded social
media user.

If you want to use content as a currency, you

need to make empathy a fundamental part of
your approach. You can’t hope to provide value
to your audience if you don’t understand what’s
important to them. Social selling is all about
using your content to nurture your leads and
preparing them for your sales pitch, before you
make it. Put simply, you don’t come out with a
sales pitch until the time is right.

// 9
Preparing a Social
Selling Campaign
There are generally five stages when building a social selling campaign:
01 02 03 04 05
Random Acts
of Social
Policy Training
As mentioned earlier, random acts of social
is a policy of improvised social media posts.
Businesses following the random acts of social
are using social media without any specific goals
in mind, and without any strategy in place to
achieve their goals. Generally, most B2C and B2B
companies fall into this bracket.
As a result, the first thing you need to do when
preparing a social selling campaign is create a
positive social media policy. The way to do this
is to gather your team, and inform everybody of
their role within the strategy. Staff from business
development, IT, HR, marketing, sales and even
the CEO should be made aware of the social
media policy.
Of the businesses that have a strategy, most will
either have a negative policy or a general policy
of usage. For example, a typical policy like this
will discuss intellectual property, privacy and
risk management but won’t address strategy.
Your policy should make staff aware of your
overarching strategy and what they are using
social media to achieve.
System Measuring
Social selling is all about using social media to
create content that aids your sales process. It’s
hard to make any long term sales progress if you
don’t have the foundations in place that make
staff aware of where they fit into the bigger
picture.
Once you’ve drawn up a clear policy, the next
step is to implement social media training. Your
training will give your staff the technical skills to
be able to put your strategy into practice. Social
media training is critical. Many businesses have
an attitude that social media is something that
can be dabbled with, without specialist training.
The problem with this mindset is that any
mistakes made on social media are tied directly
to your brand. Employees without training
are prone to creating content that reduces
your credibility and makes your team look
amateurish. This is detrimental when we consider
that platforms like LinkedIn are a core part of
relationship building. In the B2B world, having
untrained staff results in a poor social media
image that acts as negative social proof.
// 10
When implementing social media training you want to
educate your staff on social media best practices.
This includes education on how to set up and
optimize social profiles, default privacy settings
and posting guidelines. Your policy will define
how employees discuss your business and your
competitors on social media.
As part of your training process, you should set
up a number of resources for your staff to refer
to. Creating a small library of resources in the
form of specification sheets, videos, blog posts
and how-to guides will ensure that your staff
remain up to date on how to use social media.
This includes training on creating specialist
content for members of your team tasked with
sales. In the world of social selling, social media
is a means to an end. As such your sales team
should know the nuances of sales on social
media, inside out. They need to have a strong
understanding of how to deploy content to drive
the sales process forward.
All your training should be focused on real world
knowledge that emulates the day-to-day tasks
your team will be doing. Social media never
stops, and your staff should have the training
to be able to navigate this vibrant landscape
effectively. There is no time for uncertainty when
your customer’s newsfeed moves at such a high
pace.
When it comes to implementing a system,
from the outset you want to establish whom
you’re trying to engage, where they are, and
the type of content they like to see. You want
to know everything you can about the style of
content that gets people talking, and identify
the techniques that are working for your
competition.
Once you start to produce content you want
to measure how effective it is against your
competitors. You need to be working with your
sales team to dissect and segment your audience
before you start targeting them. To begin, build
a database about your audience and design
content to resonate with them. In practice this
means content to increase page views, likes and
content to alienate.
Next you want to design a landing page to qualify
the data you’ve gathered. Your social media
accounts act as a funnel to your landing page
so its important that it’s optimized with clear
website copy that encourages the visitor to take
action. To build your network data effectively
you want to link with your existing customers on
social media. Your established customers should
be your first port of call because they will help
you to increase your organic presence.
No less important is measuring your results.
Measuring your results keeps you accountable
for your progress over the long term. By tracking
the relevant metrics, you know where your
social selling campaign is falling short and what
you need to do to improve it. The key to be
measuring your results effectively is to know
your market inside and out.
Identifying the engagement rates of your
competitors and other key players in your
industry offers you a great point of reference.
Compare your engagement rates with those of
your competition and see how well you stack up.
There will be areas where you outperform them,
and areas where they outperform you that you
can learn from.
Likewise it’s a good idea to compare how
big your network is, and how many of your
followers are actively engaging. For example, if
you’re active on LinkedIn you could check what
percentage of your connections follow you on
Twitter, how many likes and comments you’re
getting and what percentage are coming back to
you via message.
// 11
The Social Selling
Formula in the Modern
World
The entire social selling formula is designed
to help sales teams to navigate the world of
When going into social
social media. As more business interaction selling, your initial goal
has migrated online, it’s become extremely
important for companies to have the expertise
should be to provide value.
to situate themselves as content providers. That’s it.
When you engage in social selling, you jumpstart
The start of the social selling formula is about
the interaction with your target audience by
establishing what target audience you’re going
providing value for free. Your value added
to pursue, and identifying the types of content
content brings insight to the table without
that they like to see. The more you know about
offering up any promotional pitches. By doing
what their tastes are, the better you can tailor
this you provide tangible value to your audience
your content to address their pain points.
by keeping the value high and the promotion
down. This lays the groundwork of your future
Providing value is the number one goal of the
relationship.
social selling formula. Producing value in the
form of informative content establishes you as
In theory, social selling is extremely simple.
a brand that can be trusted, and makes people
However, in practice you have to undergo a
want to do business with you. It’s a strategy
balancing act of qualifying your prospects on
designed to get your brand recognized before
social media before closing them over the phone.
you reach out on the phone.
You are simultaneously responsible for providing
valuable content and having the opportunistic
Social selling has become an integral part of
confidence to go for the sale when a lead is ripe.
modern marketing because online users are
inundated with content. On social media, sales
Your main focus is on building relationships
pitches get lost in the background. The only way
rather than making sales. Make no mistake,
to make a name for your brand and build new
social selling increases sales, but if you go into it
relationships is to produce valuable content.
with a sales dependent mindset, you’re going to
There is no other alternative course of action.
provide limited value to your target audience.

// 12
Measuring Your
Results and
Benchmarking
The best way to measure your social selling
progress is to use benchmarking. In a nutshell,
benchmarking is the term given to comparing
your company’s performance against others
in your industry. You assess how well you’re
performing based on key performance metrics.
On social media you can measure your
effectiveness via the analytics solutions located
on your platform. You’re looking to measure
mentions, reception, demographics and shares to
get an idea of how well your performing on social
media. This well let you how large your reach is
and how effective your strategy is in a real world
sense.
For example on Twitter there is a range of
metrics you can benchmark. On the Twitter
dashboard you’re able to see a detailed
breakdown of your monthly performance
detailing your total tweets, profile views, third
party tweets and mentions. You can use this
The social media market isn’t stagnant, so if you
find yourself performing well but fall on hard
times further down the line, it’s important to
update your strategy. People are constantly
changing the content they put out, so what could
be thought leading today could be a run of the
mill post tomorrow. You need to pay attention
to where the market is going and make sure
that you don’t become out of touch with your
audience.
Measuring your results is essential because it
keeps you honest about your progress. Relying
on vanity metrics takes your attention away from
making the changes that need to be made, and
ensuring your brand is moving forward. Over the
long term, your competitors are the best people
to measure your performance against because
they belong to the same industry.

Measuring
information to help quantify your social media
footprint and assess where you are towards

your results
achieving your goals.

With social selling your goal is to make sales

is essential
rather than to simply grow brand awareness
(even though growing your brand awareness is a

because it
secondary goal). If you find out that your results
are quite poor against your competitors, you can
go back to the drawing board and see how your
strategy can be refined.
keeps you
honest about your progress.
The How and Why of
Content Creation
When it comes to B2B sales, content is a valuable
commodity. Though companies have embraced
content marketing to grow their brand, few have
committed to producing consistently engaging
content on social media. Companies produce
content with the intention of boosting their
social media engagement and increasing their
brand awareness, but not necessarily providing
value to the customer.
Providing value to your audience should be a
methodical, team lead process. You want your
content team to compile a social media content
creation strategy that’s informed by clear data
and insights on the interests of your target
audience. At a fundamental level, your content
should be informative and/or entertaining.
The idea of value added
content is so important
because it stimulates a
conversation between you
and your audience.
Your content is providing value rather than
seeking to take it from new prospects. There is
a big difference between those two in terms of
effectiveness. With insightful content, you’re
providing value from the beginning of your
interaction.
By starting the interaction off by providing
valuable information, you’re going to get the
attention of your target audience and make
more sales. That being said, your content needs
to have a direction. Content that engages is a
good start, but you’re looking to use content to
achieve certain goals. In other words your looking
to produce nuanced forms of content that take
potential customers on a journey and prime them
for the rest of the sales funnel.
In order to maximize the return on your time
investment, you need to be scientific and smart
in order to provide value. This means breaking
down your target audience into segments and
having an in depth understanding of the type
of content that they respond to. After all, value
means different things to different people.
Value within the context of social media sales
is very much dependent on your industry. That
being said, to aid social selling all your content
should be serving to aid your audience’s buying
process. As a result, you want to create posts
that are 80% informative and 20% promotional.
Aiding the buying process situates your brand
as an authority and makes prospects much
more open to interacting with your brand and
converting into a sale.
What’s valuable to your audience can be
established by regularly checking social media.
Have a look at what content gets this group
talking, and how other competitors are getting
your demographic enthusiastic. Likewise, identify
the questions that they have. One of the best
ways to do this is to create common customer
personas.
// 14
For example if you were a tech recruitment
consultant looking to sell your brand to technical
staff, you could develop a front-end developer
persona to market towards. This demographic
are highly employable and tend to prioritize work
based on it’s creative merits. As such posting
content with a creative or visionary slant on the
industry could be a great way to connect with
this audience.
It’s important to remember that every
demographic has problems that they need to be
solved. By creating a social selling strategy where
Why You Need a Call to
Action
Including a CTA is one of the most important
things to remember when posting content on
social media. A CTA is simply a short invitation
for users to click a link through to your site or
page. You can use CTA’s to encourage your users
to take a variety of actions. For example, you
can open an invitation for them to sign up to a
newsletter or to go to your contact page.
In the world of social media (and indeed on other
marketing channels as well), CTA’s guide your
prospects down the sales funnel. Your CTA is
actually a prerequisite for driving traffic to your
site. When you put up a post, you want to make it
easy and compelling for a user to click through to
your site. If they have to work to hard to find you,
they won’t.
you position yourself as a helpful intermediary,
you put yourself in a position of influence that
will aid your sales figures down the line.
Once you’ve established your target audience,
develop an editorial calendar to keep your
content production in alignment. As a starting
point, posting 2-3 times a week with backlinks
and a call to action for each post is an effective
way to start building your brand awareness. You
also want to make sure that each member is staff
is aware of the content they are responsible for
within the calendar.
To make the process easier you should include
a couple of call to action’s on your social media
page. This way, when people come through to
read more about your company, they’re able
to travel to the next step of the buying process
without having to invest too much effort. A CTA
needs to be placed prominently to be effective.
After all, a compelling CTA is no good if none of
your prospects can see it!
Including a CTA puts the prospect within one
click of your site and your sales funnel. Without
a CTA, you’re relying on the prospect to take
the initiative to find your site details or contact
you. On a medium with such low attention spans
as social media this is an ineffective strategy.
Without a CTA, your posts won’t drive traffic to
your website, and they won’t be getting your
prospects down your sales funnel.
// 15
 Turning Engagement into
Opportunity
The secret to turning engagement into Ultimately, Social selling still requires hard work
opportunity is to leverage your social media when it comes to qualifying prospects. It’s not as
attention into real world business. Once you start simple as putting up posts and watching revenue
receiving likes and attention online, you need soar. When it comes to social selling, we can
to pickup the phone! Start calling the people deploy our own staff to help make the process
you talk to on LinkedIn. Social media is a great easier. We’ll be able to provide you with the skills,
tool for priming your audience but you want expertise and manpower to boost your sales.
the phone to be your method of closing. Social
media’s role is to qualify your targets before your
sales team seals the deal on the phone.

In order to make your life easier it’s a good idea

to use third party tools. For example Hootsuite
is a great platform for aggregating your
content. Likewise Hearsay social helps marketing
managers to map out content, and organize it
for teams of 20 or more. Mapping out content
can help to dramatically increase your reach and
allows small companies to rival the voice of a
large corporation.

// 16
Application
Turning engagement into opportunity is all Your long term content has already qualified
well and good, but it can be difficult to know your brand and positioned you in a position of
how to apply this in practice. The reason is that value. As such, when you reach out your prospect
engagement is not a guarantee of opportunity. knows who you are, and what you’re about.
High levels of engagement are generally
indicative of opportunity, but you still need to You’re starting the personal interaction from
capitalize in order to make any progress. a position of strength and value. Getting a
prospect on the phone or dropping them a
The first phase of applying this is to build up your message is a great way to turn the buzz you’ve
network as much as you can. If you keep posting generated into genuine opportunity.
quality content on social media, and keep putting
in the legwork to draw eyes to it, you’re building
up your net of prospects. Social media is all about
networking, and you should always be looking to
expand your base.
The key is to
understand
A wide base of contacts gives you a much clearer
view of the market and the mindset of your
audience. Once you’ve expanded your base, you

that social
use your content to build a relationship with
your target audience. This is where you begin to

media is a
put what your theory into practice. Out of your
prospects, those that are engaging most vocally
and actively with your brand are offering you an
opportunity to reach out.
means to
qualifying
Users that are actively engaging with your brand
are showing you that they’re receptive to your
message and are ready to take the next step

your brand,
down the sales funnel. This is where your sales
team needs to take the initiative and reach out.

and then
it’s down to your sales team
to make the final push.
Automation and Why
it’s Important
In order to reach out to your prospects, it’s very
important to automate your social media data
mining with a CRM solution. The reason is that it
links your sales team, directly with the prospects
you’ve been nurturing on social media. This
means when you interact with them over the
phone you’re talking to a lead you’ve already
nurtured.
As such, you’re not conducting a completely
cold call. Using your social media data with
an automation solution makes it much easier
to reach a wide cross section of your target
audience without spending an overwhelming
amount of time searching for their details. In
short, it makes your social selling process more
efficient.
In the traditional online marketing environment,
automation was relegated to email marketing,
but sales teams are starting to embrace social
media as a new frontier as well.
An automated platform offers
you a medium for connecting
with prospects and allows
you to share your content
much more easily. This in
turn increases your output of
valuable content.
Automation software allows you to reach out to
warm prospects and develop relationships with
them. In the world of B2B communication, this
is invaluable. You’ve used your content to pique
the prospects curiosity and primed them for the
sales funnel before reaching out to call them and
building a relationship. This sets you apart from a
company going straight for a cold pitch.
What makes this model so effective is its
authenticity. You and the prospect are familiar
with each other because of the content you’ve
produced. Your past content stands as a token
of your authenticity. When you reach out, your
prospect is much more receptive because you’re
approaching from a position of genuine interest.
This is monumental because social selling is
all about forming a relationship with your
prospect. Today inauthentic and promotional
communication alienates modern audiences.
Therefore it’s crucial that your sales team come
across as authentic brand ambassadors. This is
when the time is right for you to launch your
pitch.
All the time you’ve spent nurturing your prospect
will pay off when you get them on the phone.
Manually managing all of your content and
posting it on social media would be incredibly
time consuming. By automating the process, you
can identify what content your audience likes to
see and start posting it promptly.
You’ll be able to develop a schedule down to the
unique requirements of your audience and your
organization. If you want to be taken seriously
and maximize your online reach its important
to post regularly. Scheduling your posts in an
advance of their publication date will ensure that
you always have a consistent output of content.
// 18
Pick up the Damn
Phone
Finally, once you’ve primed your target audience
through regular content, you need to pick
up the phone and make the sale. Taking the
time to cultivate an effective online presence
that nurtures leads and builds your brand is
important, but it’s picking up the phone that
allows you to close the deal and increase your
revenue.
This is the part where you’ll find out how
effective your social selling strategy has been.
This will be clear from whether your pickup rate
from social media contacts, is greater than your
pickup rate from cold calling. If you’re producing
content that comes across as valuable and
authentic, then your pickup rate on social should
be higher.
If your prospect is fully
aware of who you are and
why you’re calling from the
beginning of the conversation,
you will know you’re running
an effective campaign.
Once you get your prospect on the phone, your
entire interaction will be shaped by your past
content. If you’ve successfully qualified yourself
as a brand that provides insight and guidance,
you will have your prospects trust. However, if
you’re content was overly promotional, your
warm lead is going to be less receptive.
If your social media strategy has been poor
in the past with hard pitches and little to no
qualification, you’re unlikely to receive that
preapproved stamp of authenticity. Under a true
social selling formula, there are no cold-calls.
Every prospect you interact with will be qualified
via your content.
// 19
Next steps

If you’d like help implementing social selling in your company, contact us to book your free
consultation. We’re experts on social selling and will be able to assist with everything from social
media training to deploying a sales team that makes you sales.