This post is based off a podcast with Koka Sexton. If you’d like to listen to the full episode, you can check it out here and below!
Go ahead and ignore social buyers.
Social buyers are only spending 84% more per purchase and making 61% more purchases than those who don’t leverage social.
Wait a second…
Those numbers are HUGE.
Social selling means leveraging your professional brand to fill your pipeline with the right people, insights, and relationships.
people buy from people, not from logos.
Hear more about how a marketer fell in love with social selling by listening to Koka Sexton’s full talk from this year’s #FlipMyFunnel conference.
Online Visibility
Social sales are on the rise.
With this increase, online visibility has become more critical than ever. Because visibility means opportunity, and opportunity may mean success.
Koka Sexton, Sr. Group Manager of Content and Editorial at Slack, and social selling expert, knows how important this truly is.
He believes that “visibility creates opportunity for a salesperson.”
“Visibility creates opportunity for a salesperson.” -Koka Sexton
There are some challenges for visibility.
Problems with visibility online include bad profile pictures, lack of headlines, privacy settings that are too tight, and a lack of activity and consistency posting.
We can overcome these challenges with time and practice in the social selling world. Koka believes that we need to be training our sales team about these practices, and how to be more visible online.
Because if salespeople are using social media the right way, connecting with buyers, engaging them, and sharing the right updates – this will make a huge difference in sales.
Leveraging Social Media
You should be leveraging the contacts and connections you have.
Why?
Because “…social selling is leveraging your professional brand to fill your pipeline with the right people, insights, and relationships.”
Many of these connections are made on LinkedIn, but many marketers do not know how to use this platform effectively.
So, educate one another. If you learn a new tip or trick to leverage a platform, share it with your sales team. Host a lunch and learn. Don’t keep your knowledge to yourself. Share share share.
And be sure to incorporate social media literacy into your sales team training. This literacy will allow your team to leverage their connections, and social selling will succeed because of it.
Some Tips
Koka’s tips for successful social selling:
- Identify the people within the organization
- Find common connections
- Ask for the introductions
And lastly, but certainly not least, don’t forget to add value.
Customers need to know why your product or service is the solution to their problem. Why do they need what you’re selling?
Value and social selling: two huge keys to success.
