Social Selling, according to Hootsuite, is the art of using social networks to find, connect with, understand, and nurture sales prospects. It’s the modern way to develop meaningful relationships with potential customers that keep you—and your brand—front of mind.
Social selling can provide greater client access, allow sales reps to build more authentic relationships, and opens the potential for listening with social data. B2B marketers now rank social selling above email for demand generation.
Social Selling is less of an optional sales tactic, and more a MUST HAVE tactic! We’ve put together a quick crash course on the topic. You’ll learn 3 important areas of social selling so you can better prepare your sales team to dominate your industry!
You Need To Establish Your Personal Brand
When it comes to social selling modern marketers and sales professionals first need to develop their personal brand to connect with customers. Creating this brand requires that you:
- Become an information concierge
- Curate interesting content and resources to attract your buyers
- Socially surround your buyers and their sphere of influence
Basically, you’ve got to leverage your social capital to build identity and relationships–and video can help. Using video, a salesperson can explain why they’d like to connect and this genuine outreach goes a long way with customers.
Research Your Audience And Be Relevant
There is so much more information about your prospects available to you now both professionally and on a personal level. Today, effective salespeople use social networks to show job position and history, location, and interests.
There is nothing worse than emailing a prospect assuming they work for Company XYZ when a quick LinkedIn search would have told you they left for another company 2 months ago (we’ve all gotten those emails, and delete them right away).
Once you find the right audience be relevant. A key component of social selling is to share valuable content, generally or with specific prospects. If you’re not offering content that’s directly relevant to your prospects, they’ll find what they’re looking for somewhere else. You also need to keep them engaged to cut through the noise of all the communications they receive daily, which is where video comes into play.
Video creates a meaningful connection with your buyer and makes your outreach that much more engaging. It’s personalized, tailored content like this that will help you stand out from your competitors and get you that much sought-after meeting for a pitch.
Select The Right Social Selling Tools
Forrester reports that social selling is no longer optional–it’s required. Business buyers just don’t respond to traditional tactics like they used to and sales and marketing organizations are feeling the squeeze. They’re using messaging apps, social media, and video to gain an extra edge.
While there are many free tools out there to help sales teams spend less time prospecting so you can spend more time selling, social selling is a successful tactic that warrants an investment. The latest Forrester report examines the top social selling tools for you so you can make an informed decision and start investing in the proper vendors.
Take a look at their latest report where you’ll learn:
- Why 60% of organizations plan on spending more on social selling
- Why social selling tools beat email
- How social selling can generate 18% more leads
- A list of the top tools to use
Are you already using video for social selling? We would love to see your examples, link them in the comment section below for a chance to be featured in an upcoming blog.
The post Social Selling Is Here To Stay appeared first on Vidyard.
source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/social-selling-improves-performance/
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